Page 197 of Mafia and Scars

I halt in my tracks. “Viktor, what is this?”

On a bench, two bags sit waiting. He unzips the first and turns it toward me.

My skates.The pair I love. The leather gleams, and the blades are newly sharpened. My throat goes tight. I look at the sight before me. The ice is perfect. A sheet of glass under the white lights. No logos or banners like in most rinks. Just endless, unmarked ice.

The sound that leaves me is something small. “You…you built a rink?”

“Yes. It’s for you. And Sofia. And Leon when he gets old enough,” he says simply.

I walk to the rink’s border, my hands shaking. “How…?”

“There was space.”

As I sit on the bench, he kneels to unlace my sneakers. When he slides the first sneaker away, his palm warms my foot through my sock. It’s the gentlest thing I’ve ever felt from a man who can break bones without blinking. “You don’t have to?—”

“I want to.” He slides my feet into the skates, tucking the loops and lacing them up.

When I stand, the world tilts in that familiar way.

And then Viktor fiddles with his phone, and music comes on. The music to my Tinkerbell routine.

I step onto the ice and pause. There’s that breath before. The one where you ask the ice to take you…

“Go on,” he urges me.

I push off.

The first glide is silk. My knees, hips, and shoulders fall into alignment. The ice feels fast—the kind that sings. I make a lazy arc and come back toward him, my breath clouding in front of me.

He’s watching me the way he’d watch a sunrise he didn’t think he’d live to see. “How does it feel?”

“It’s the best feeling in the whole world,” I say, laughing. And something inside me that’s been bruised for years lets go of its breath.

Viktor steps to the edge, hesitates, then places one blade onto the ice. The second blade follows.

“What are you doing?” I say in alarm. “You can’t skate…”

“I’ll be fine,” he says quietly. And he moves like a man for whom falling is not an option. His knees are bent, weight tipped forward just right. And when he’s three feet from me, he holds out his hand.

I meet him halfway.

His fingers settle on mine with just enough pressure to say, ‘I have you.’

“But who taught you?” I ask as we start to move.

“Matvey. Badly.”

I laugh. “You’re doing well.”

“Barely passable,” he corrects me, but there’s that almost-smile again.

We find a rhythm, my strides measured to his smaller pushes. The cold licks my cheeks pink. We make a slow lap. He only stumbles once but easily recovers.

We stop near the boards. The ice hums beneath us. “This makes you feel alive?” he asks.

I nod. “Yeah. Being here, on the ice. And with you. Why did you do all this, Viktor?”

He studies me. “You once said skating used to make you feel alive. But that you…lost that feeling. I wanted you to have it back. That feeling and that joy. Queenie helped me. You and your family helped me. And now, I want to help you.’