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Chapter Twenty-Eight

Dimitri

I sat in the back seat of my father’s Lada with my hands clenched between my knees, trying not to shake.

The vinyl upholstery stuck to my skin, and every breath I took felt like it caught on a hook in my ribs.

I couldn’t stop looking at Petyr, even though I barely had the strength to lift my head.

He was sitting beside me, his face turned toward the window, the passing streetlights throwing lines of gold across his bruised cheek.

He looked so calm. Detached. Like someone had reached inside him and turned off a switch.

God, I wanted to hold him. Just fold myself into him and press my forehead to his chest and cry until it all came out—until I was empty.

But I couldn’t. Not here. Not under the weight of my father’s silence, or the steady thrum of the engine, or the eyes I felt on the back of my neck even when I knew no one was watching.

My stomach twisted. I couldn’t tell if it was leftover fear or shame or both. Probably both.

The bruises on my arms pulsed like they were lit from within.

They’d handcuffed me to a table. Then they’d walked in like wolves, and when I asked what was happening, the first one backhanded me so hard my ear rang.

They kept asking about Sanctuary. Who I went with.

Who I saw. I told them the truth: I hadn’t gone inside.

Petyr and I had just been walking. That’s it.

It hadn’t helped.

They didn’t believe me, of course. They said I was covering for “the rat,” and one of them, an older man, tall, with a nose that looked like it had been broken numerous times, called me a queer-loving whore and slammed my head into the table.

I kept telling myself not to cry. If I cried, they’d know.

I tasted blood and bile in the back of my throat, nevertheless, I just kept repeating it: We didn’t go inside. We didn’t know what it was.

When they told me it was a faggot club, I made myself gasp. Like it was the most disgusting thing I’d ever heard. I think I even spat on the floor. My voice cracked when I swore I’d never go near it again.

The car jolted as we hit a pothole, snapping me out of it. My hands had curled into fists without me realizing, fingernails digging half-moons into my palms. Petyr shifted beside me with a wince, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from reaching for him again.

I was terrified that if I touched him, or even looked at him the wrong way, my father would know everything.

His hands gripped the steering wheel like he wanted to tear it off. His jaw was a brick, unmoving, and I couldn’t tell if he was furious or terrified or just empty.

When he finally spoke, it felt like a blade sliding out of the dark.

“Where do you live?” he asked, without looking back.

Petyr’s voice was hoarse. “Lermontovskaya. Just off Kirochnaya.”

My father grunted. “Mm.”

That was all. The engine growled as he turned onto a narrower street, tires bumping against uneven cobblestones. I stared at the back of his head and wondered what would happen if I opened the door and rolled myself out into the street.

It would’ve hurt less than this.

Two minutes later, we pulled up outside Petyr’s building. The lights were off in most of the windows, but a lone bulb flickered above the front entrance like it was trying to die. The car idled in the cold.

Petyr said nothing. He just opened the door slowly, like it hurt to move, and climbed out. I watched the way he limped as he climbed up the steps. He didn’t glance back. Not once. The door closed behind him with a hollow echo.

And I couldn’t breathe.

I pressed my knuckles to my mouth and tried not to make a sound.

The car started moving again.

My father hadn’t spoken. Hadn’t asked me why we’d been taken, or what had happened in there. He didn’t need to. The silence said enough.

I watched the buildings blur past the window and felt like I was disappearing one brick at a time.

After a while, I found my voice. It was so thin and quiet I wasn’t sure he’d heard me.

“How did you know we were there?”

He didn’t answer right away.

Just drove.

Streetlight. Darkness. Streetlight. Darkness.

Finally, he exhaled through his nose. “Wait until we’re home,” he said.

Something in his voice made my stomach sink.

“Then I’ll tell you.”

* * *

We didn’t speak as we climbed the stairs.

The building was quiet, save for the familiar groan of pipes in the walls and the soft, ghostly click of someone’s radio a few floors up.

I counted each step out of habit, not even realizing it until my leg gave out halfway to the landing.

A jolt of pain shot through me like lightning, and I stumbled forward with a gasp.

Before I hit the steps, my father’s arm shot out and caught me.

I expected him to let go right away. Maybe scold me for not watching where I was going, but he didn’t. He kept his arm around my back, tight and steady, and with a grunt, he pulled my weight against his side and started walking again.

We climbed the rest of the way like that. Shoulder to shoulder. My breath shallow, and his steady and quiet.

At the top floor, he unlocked the apartment door. Everything exactly as it had always been. But to me, it felt like stumbling into heaven.

We took off our boots by the door, and I stood there blinking in the dark, so grateful to be home I thought I might throw up.

But then I remembered where I was. Who I was with. And what still hadn’t been said.

Would he ask? Would he already know?

My skin crawled with the fear of it. What if he told me to pack a bag? What if he dragged me back to the police himself and told them they’d been right? That I was a sick little pervert who deserved everything I got?

I made for the couch, just wanting to sit, to breathe…

“Kitchen,” he said.

I stopped.

His voice wasn’t loud. But it left no room for argument.

“I’ll be there in a minute.”

My mouth went dry. I glanced back at him. He was already heading for the hall closet. Without a word, I turned and shuffled into the kitchen like I was walking to my execution.

I stood in the doorway a moment, my heart trying to break through my ribs. The kitchen was lit by a single overhead bulb. It buzzed faintly. Everything looked the same—table, stove, sink, knife rack…

My eyes locked on the blade. The sharp one. The one Papa used to slice up the Sunday roast.

It would be quick, I thought. One quick slice. No more questions. No more shame.

My fingers twitched.

But then I heard him coming. The scrape of the hallway floor, the box tucked under one arm as he entered the kitchen. It was small and gray, a box you only saw in hospitals or back rooms of clinics.

“Take your shirt off,” he said, setting it on the table.

I blinked. “What?”

He looked up, eyes flaring. “Take your fucking shirt off, Dima.”

I flinched. But I did as I was told.

Every movement hurt. The cotton stuck to dried blood along my ribs, and I had to grit my teeth to peel it away.

My shoulder screamed when I raised my arm, and my back felt like someone had taken a belt to it.

I gasped as the fabric slid down my arms, and then I was standing there, half-naked under the kitchen light.

My father turned. And froze.

He said nothing at first. His jaw twitched, then his eyes glossed over, and not from anger.

“What have they done to you…” he whispered, almost too quietly to hear.

His hands trembled as he opened the box.

Inside was an old bottle of rubbing alcohol, some cotton, gauze, and tape. Supplies I didn’t even know we had. He set them down with surprising care, like they were something sacred.

He motioned for me to sit, and I sank into the hard kitchen chair.

He worked quietly. Methodically. First, dabbing the alcohol onto a cotton square, then gently—gently, like he’d never been before—cleaning the dried blood from the cuts on my back and shoulder. It stung like hell, but I didn’t make a sound. I was too stunned. I’d never seen him like this.

Every time I winced, he paused. Said nothing, but waited. When he spoke, it was only under his breath. Mutters, like curses spat into the wind.

“Fucking police…”

“…bastards, all of them…”

“…this fucking country…”

He wrapped a bandage around my ribs, careful not to pull it too tight.

I watched his hands. Big, scarred, still calloused from years of work.

These were the hands that had raised me.

That had once slapped me for not standing straight enough.

Now they were shaking as they tucked the gauze under my arm.

I couldn’t take it anymore.

“How… how did you know we were there?” My voice came out raw. Childlike. “At the police station.”

He paused. Sat back on his heels and wiped a hand down his face.

“I have friends,” he said finally, not looking at me. “People who still owe me things. Don’t ask. The less you know, the better.”

I stared at him. Friends? Since when did my father have friends who would pull strings at a police station?

Before I could ask, there was a sudden crash outside, the sound of something falling over in the street. I turned toward the window automatically.

That’s when I saw it.

My reflection.

I gasped, and my hand flew to my mouth.

My left eye was swollen nearly shut, the skin black and purple, ringed with angry red.

My jaw looked lopsided—bruised, puffy, with a minor cut near the corner of my lip.

A welt curved along my temple, already turning yellow.

The face staring back at me wasn’t mine.

It was someone else. A stranger who’d been beaten half to death.

Behind me, I heard a sound.

A sob.

I turned.

My father had his face in his hands, and his shoulders were shaking.

I froze. Not because I didn’t know what to do—though I didn’t—but because I had never, in my entire life, seen my father cry.

Not when his brother died.

Not when Mama had gotten so sick that winter she couldn’t leave bed.

Not even when our neighbor’s little boy drowned in the Neva and everyone on the block had stood at their windows in mourning.

Never. Not once.

But here he was, hands over his face, his shoulders hunched in on themselves like the weight of the world had finally crushed him down.

“Papa…” my voice cracked.

He didn’t move.

I reached out, gently, like I might spook him. “It’s okay. I’m okay…”

“Don’t,” he snapped, lifting his head. His voice was raw, not angry. More like something scraped across broken glass.

I recoiled on instinct, heart pounding, already preparing to be yelled at, struck, thrown out…

But the next second, he was kneeling again in front of me, picking up the cotton and the bottle like nothing had happened. Like the moment had never existed.

“Sit still,” he muttered, not looking at me. “I’m not done.”

So I sat.

The rubbing alcohol stung worse this time—he’d gotten close to a deep cut under my collarbone—but I bit down and kept quiet.

The silence buzzed like radio static between us. I didn’t know what to say. I was still waiting for the explosion. Still bracing for the actual reaction I’d expected: the shouting, the disgust, the accusation. That word spat again in my face, like it had been at the station.

Faggot.

Pervert.

Criminal.

Instead, he kept going. Swapping out bloody gauze, checking my arm, lifting my chin like he was inspecting a piece of glass for fractures.

And all I could do was sit there and try to make sense of this man.

The same man who’d barked at me for slouching, who had once broken the neighbor’s nose for calling our family weak. Now dabbing my skin like I might fall apart if he pressed too hard.

I let out a shaky breath and looked down at my lap. “How the hell am I supposed to show up to work like this?”

It came out more like a joke than I meant it to, half-laugh, half-cry. A bitter little thing, barely alive.

Papa stopped and put the bandage down. Then, without warning, his hands were on my shoulders. Not rough. Firm. He turned me so I was facing him, and his eyes locked onto mine. For the first time all night, I saw something in them I recognized.

Resolve.

“You’re never going back to that place,” he said.

I stared at him. “What?”

His grip didn’t tighten, but it didn’t waver, either.

“You hear me?” he said. “Not tomorrow. Not next week. Never.”

“But I…” I blinked. “That’s my job. That’s…”

“I said you’re not going back,” he interrupted. “Let the Party send someone else to that miserable factory. Let Korovin rot with his green blankets and his vodka breath. You’re done.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it again. I didn’t even know what question to ask first. Why was he saying this? Did he know something? Had someone told him about Petyr and me?