Page 206 of Mafia and Scars

She’s slow and deliberate with him, the way she is with all precious things. And when she gets to green, she starts humming—a soft, wordless tune she’s creating just for this moment—and Viktor actually tilts his head, listening like her voice is the most beautiful music he’s ever heard.

The green bleeds slightly over the yellow, and I tense, waiting for his reaction. But Viktor just watches, his mouth soft with something that might be wonder.

Blue comes next, then indigo, each color building on the last until a rainbow is blooming across his tattoos like a storm of color breaking through gray clouds. Like Sofia’s painting him back to life, stroke by stroke, and he’s letting her.

“There,” she announces at last, sitting back to admire her work. Her cheeks are flushed with pride and concentration. “Now your tattoos looks…happy.”

Viktor lifts his arm, studying the transformation with the same intensity he once brought to avoiding color entirely. The markers have wandered outside the lines in places, and the colors are slightly uneven, applied with the enthusiastic imperfection that only comes from a child’s hands.

It should look messy.

It should feel wrong.

But his mouth softens into something that looks like peace. “Yes,”he says quietly, and his voice carries a kind of awe I’ve never heard from him before. “It’s happy now.”

Sofia grins—the satisfied smile of an artist whose vision has come to life—and hops down from the chair. She rushes off to rouse Queenie from her afternoon nap, leaving Viktor and me alone in this moment of transformation.

I lean against the table, studying him as he turns his wrist this way and that, watching how the afternoon light catches each imperfect stroke of color.

This is Viktor choosing love over fear.

Choosing Sofia’s joy over his own rigid control.

Choosing to trust that sometimes the most beautiful things come from letting go.

“Viktor?” I murmur, my voice thick with emotions I don’t have names for.

“Mmm?” His eyes are still on his arm, still marveling at what Sofia has created.

“I love you, Viktor.” The words come out rough with feeling. I love him for doing this for Sofia, for understanding what she needed in a way that goes deeper than words. I love him for the courage it took to sit still while chaos painted itself across his carefully ordered world. I love him for being exactly who he is. Rigid and flexible. Controlled and surrendering. Black and white and every color of the rainbow.

He turns toward me then, and the smile that spreads across his face is radiant, unguarded, and completely his. My heart forgets how to beat properly.

“I love you too, Avelina.” He says it like a prayer, like a promise, and like the most important truth he’s ever spoken.

“Happy?” I ask. Because I need to hear him say it, need to know that this moment is as perfect as it feels.

He looks down at the rainbow on his arm, then back at me, and the contentment in his eyes is so complete it takes my breath away. “Yes,” he sighs, and the word carries the weight of every wall he’s torn down, every fear he’s faced, and every choice he’s made to let love in. “Wholly and completely.”

And I think—no, I know—those are the most beautiful words I’ve ever heard, painted in every color of Sofia’s careful rainbow across the canvas of his willing heart.

I don’t notice it at first. Not really.

It’s Monday morning, and I’m still working at the marketing company while Babulya helps look after Sofia and Leon. I’m halfway down the stairs, juggling a tote bag, a thermos, and Queenie who refuses to be put down, when something catches the edge of my vision.

Viktor is at the bottom of the landing in an all-black suit as usual, getting ready to head to the casino for a meeting. Except for the small, clean line of a red handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket.

It’s not a screaming, bright red. It’s more muted, like the heart of a pomegranate seed. And it’s folded with the precision he brings to everything—the square sits perfectly even, no corner daring to misbehave. But it’s there. Color.On Viktor.

My breath catches for just a moment before I tell myself I’m reading too much into it.

Queenie flicks her tail like she approves. She’s been watching Viktor bloom alongside Sofia these past months, and I swear that this cat knows something about healing that the rest of us are still learning.

With one final glance at that impossible splash of red, I tell myself it’s nothing and hurry on with our day, knowing I’ll be late if I linger.

A quick kiss to Sofia and Leon while Babulya chatters away in Russian about how the children will thrive without my hovering, and then I’m out the door.

But all day, I carry the image of that handkerchief with me like a special secret I don’t want to share.