Page 90 of Sins and Virtue

“It’s not okay. You’re hurt. Bleeding so much. Someone call the ambulance!” With aching pain, he yelled, turning back for help.

She raised her feeble hand and touched his scarred cheek. “Igor, it’s okay. I’m going to see the Father.” Her lips trembled.

“Don’t say that. You can’t. You have a whole life ahead of you.”

“It’s for the best.”

His eyes began to glisten with tears, his voice faltering. “No, no! It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“Sometimes, life isn’t what we want it to be but how it has to be.”

“Please, stay, Dina.”

“I’m so… tired of running, Igor. Let me go, please.”

“Please. Stay.” I cried.

My focus came back to the present moment and the woman who held my future before me.

“After that, I noticed the bastard had shot her. I ran over trying to help, and the Pakhan appeared holding her dying body as he pleaded with her to fight, to live, to stay. But poor Sister Dina just wanted to go in peace. However, not without asking Igor one last favor.” Blair’s beady eyes held onto mine, and her gentle hands kept me warm as they gave me, hopefully, security that someone cared for me. Wanted me. Longed for me. “Her last dying words were: ‘Take the boy and treat him as your own.”

“And did he keep his promise?” She asked her question brimming with hope.

I gave a nod, eternally grateful for both of them. “He did. Igor Volkov was a man of his word. Never breaking his promises. Loyal to those he loved until the very end. Even to a child who wasn’t his blood.”

Her eyes tinted with sadness, her lips thinned. “I’m glad,” her voice was small. “And did you ever have a friend?”

I nodded again. “Mikhail, the Pakhan’s son, we became more than blood, brothers.”

The set of circumstances leading to most of my early life was tragic and less than ideal, but it was a past set in stone. Nothing could change it.

Unexpectedly, a single tear trickled down her cheek.

It was an inevitable instinctive feeling to comfort her as I raised my hand, touched her cheek, and with my thumb I wiped it away. Her face nuzzled against my palm.

“Why do you cry,kotyonok?”

“For you.” She began to hiccup.

“For me?”

Her gaze fell down, and she dipped her head sheepishly. “Yes, because of everything you've been through. For all the times you were little and scared. For all the times you were alone. For all you were afraid to ask for help. For all time, you couldn’t cry.”

“I’m okay now.”

Her eyes flashed between mine, searching them so deeply as if she were looking for the truth. “But what about then? What about the little boy who was too scared to say anything and had to fight for everything?”

The pulse beneath my neck spiked. “Perhaps for little Dya, who had nothing but the life I made, I am now the man I am today. If it weren’t for all those actions, I probably wouldn’t be here.” I told her.

The corner of her lips slanted upward. “Well, I’m glad through all the hell you went through that you are.”

“Me too.” I smiled back.

The gentle dawn air drifted through my skin, which made a shiver roll down my spine. My body was relaxed and at peace oddly, which never happened, especially with Dya. I waited for his response, but it appeared he was in deep slumber.

Slowly, my eyes shifted open as a heavy blanket of sleep coaxed them to fight the urge to fall back asleep.

For the next several minutes, I was in and out of consciousness until finally I couldn't fall back asleep. I straightened my back against the trunk of the old, rough oak tree we stopped at last night after the gondola ride. We ended up talking some more until one point. I couldn’t remember when I fell asleep.