Chapter Twenty-Six
Aleksei
I leave the pool with the image of my shattered sister still playing in my head, her hunched shoulders a reminder of the damage our father inflicted.
Damage that time hasn’t healed, that power and wealth haven’t erased.
As I move into the building, each step feels heavier than the last. My body, loose and energized from the workout this morning, now tightens with a tension I haven’t felt in years. My jaw locks. My shoulders stiffen. My hands curl into fists at my sides.
The physical responses of a child preparing for pain.
I’m no child anymore, but my body remembers.
The reaction angers me. That boy is long-gone, replaced by a man who has pushed away any signs of the weakness that he used to prey on.
Still, I don’t want to see him. The thought hammers through my mind with each footfall.
I don’t want to see him. I don’t need to see him.
I could send Sasha and Kostya to remove him.
I could have him transported back to Siberia without ever laying eyes on his face.
His face. My face.
The resemblance has always been my curse. Same height. Same build. Same sharp jawline and heavy brow. When I look in the mirror, I see him looking back— the man I’ve spent my life trying not to become.
The corridor stretches before me, elegant and endless. Original artwork lines the walls, Persian rugs muffle my footsteps, crystal sconces cast warm light across imported wallpaper. All the trappings of wealth and power I’ve accumulated to prove I’m nothing like him.
Yet with every step toward that spare bedroom, I feel the years and achievements falling away.
Memory rises once more— the smell of vodka on his breath. The sound of his belt sliding through the loops of his pants. The weight of his fist connecting with my ribs. The sharp crack of my head against the wall when he threw me across our small kitchen.
I was nine the first time he broke one of my bones. A simple fracture of the wrist, easily explained away as a childhood accident. I was twelve when he cracked three ribs for spilling his drink. Fifteen when he dislocated my shoulder for looking at him “disrespectfully.”
Diana tried to intervene once, throwing her small body between us. He backhanded her so hard she lost consciousness. I carried her to our shared bedroom afterward, applied cold compresses to her swollen face, promised her I’d never let him hurt her again.
A promise I couldn’t keep. Not then.
Our mother tried to protect us too, in her quiet, desperate way. She’d draw his attention when his mood darkened, accepting the blows meant for us. She’d slip into our room after he passed out, tending our wounds with gentle hands, whispering that things would get better.
Until the day she disappeared.
I reach the halfway point of the corridor, pausing as nausea rises in my throat. Thirteen years since I last saw him. Thirteen years of nightmares, of flinching at sudden movements, of Diana’s panic attacks. Thirteen years of building an empire partly to ensure he could never touch us again.
Yet here he is. In my home. Near my children.
Not a fuck!
The thought of Bobik and Polina sharpens my focus. Whatever weakness my father’s presence brings out in me, I cannot afford it. Not with my son hidden away, vulnerable in his wheelchair. Not with my newborn daughter sleeping peacefully in her nursery.
I force myself forward, steps quickening with renewed purpose.
I am not that frightened boy anymore. I am Pakhan of the Tarasov Bratva.
I command men who kill without question.
I move weapons that topple governments. I have built something from nothing, rising from the ashes of that broken childhood.
Yet with each step closer to that spare bedroom, my heart pounds harder against my ribs. Sweat beads at my temples despite the manor’s perfect climate control. My mouth goes dry.
The most terrifying part isn’t what he might do now— I’m physically stronger, surrounded by men loyal to me— but how easily he makes me remember what I once was: helpless.
Vasya escaped the worst of it. Our older brother was already away at school when our father’s drinking worsened, returning home only for brief holidays.
He saw the bruises, the fear, but never witnessed the full extent of the violence.
Never understood why Diana and I cling to each other with such fierce protectiveness.
How could he? No one who hasn’t lived under the constant threat of unpredictable rage could understand how it reshapes you from the inside out.
I reach the end of the corridor. The spare bedroom door remains closed, no sound coming from within. Perhaps he’s still sleeping. Perhaps Diana was mistaken, and this really is some elaborate hallucination brought on by stress.
The childish hope disgusts me.
As Pakhan , I’ve ordered men’s deaths without blinking. But facing the man who made me— who broke me— requires a different kind of courage.
I stand before the door, hand hovering over the knob. Time seems to slow, each second stretching into painful awareness. I hear my own breathing, too shallow and rapid. Feel my pulse throbbing in my temples. Taste the metallic tang of fear I thought I’d left behind years ago.
No. I refuse to give him that power.
I straighten my shoulders, consciously relaxing the tension in my jaw. I am not nine years old anymore. I am not helpless anymore. Not afraid of him.
The last lie rings hollow even in my own mind.
Every day I fight to ensure his blood in my veins doesn’t make me become him. With Bobik, I measure every word, every gesture, terrified of seeing fear in my son’s eyes. With Polina, I handle her tiny body with exaggerated gentleness, as if my hands might betray me.
The door before me represents more than a physical barrier. It’s the threshold between the man I’ve become and the boy I once was. Between the present I’ve built and the past I’ve tried to bury.
My hand closes around the doorknob, cold metal against my palm. I take one final deep breath, centering myself in the present. In who I am now. In the power I wield.
I am Aleksei Tarasov. I am not my father’s son.
The door swings open.
* * *
For a moment, I don’t recognize the man sitting on the edge of the bed.
This gaunt figure with hollow cheeks and yellowed skin can’t be the towering monster of my nightmares. The father I remember filled doorways with his bulk, his presence suffocating rooms with menace.
This… this is just an old man.
He looks up, and the eyes are the same. Dark, penetrating, set deep beneath heavy brows— my eyes, staring back at me from a withered version of my own face.
“Aleksei.” His voice is rougher than I remember, scraping and raw. “Son… you’ve become a man.”
The unexpected warmth in his tone freezes me in the doorway. I’d prepared for rage, for accusations, for the drunken violence that defined my childhood. Not for this strange gentleness, this almost proud assessment.
I remain silent, cataloging the changes. His once-black hair is now completely gray, thinning at the crown. Skin hanging loosely from his frame as if he’s lost weight rapidly. The slight yellow tinge to his eyes and complexion. The tremor in his hands as they rest on his knees.
“ Ty vyglyadish’ kak der’mo. You look like shit,” I say finally, the words coming out harsh. I don’t bother to soften them.
He laughs, the sound dissolving into a wet cough that he muffles with a handkerchief. When he pulls it away, I notice the spots of blood.
“Siberia wasn’t kind to me.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.” I step into the room, leaving the door open behind me. An escape route. A reminder that I control this space. “How did you get out? How did you find us?”
“Money solves most problems.” He shrugs, the movement accentuating the boniness of his shoulders beneath his shirt. “I saved up over the years. Enough for forged papers, a flight, some information.”
“Why?” The question contains everything— why now, why here, why bother after all this time?
“I’m dying.” He says it simply, without self-pity. “Pancreatic cancer. Stage four. Three months, the doctors say. Probably less.”
The information should bring satisfaction. Instead, it creates a hollow feeling in my chest. I wanted this man dead for decades. Now he’s dying, and somehow that feels like being robbed of something.
“So you came to what? Make peace before you go?”
He nods, eyes never leaving mine. “To see my children one last time. To ask forgiveness, though I don’t deserve it.”
“You don’t,” I agree coldly.
His gaze drops to his hands, which tremble visibly now. “No. I don’t.”
The submission in his posture is so foreign, so at odds with the violent tyrant of my memories, that I find myself momentarily unbalanced. This frail old man seems more ghost than flesh, more memory than threat.
Blyad.
I need a fucking drink.
I move to the cabinet near the window, where Diana has thoughtfully— or perhaps ironically— placed a bottle of vodka and glasses. I pour two shots, the familiar ritual creating a surreal sense of normalcy.
“ Na zdarovye ,” I say, handing him a glass.
“To health.” He smiles faintly at the irony, accepting the vodka with a trembling hand. “Yours, at least.”
We drink in unison. I watch him over the rim of my glass, noting how his throat works with difficulty, how he winces slightly at the sensation.
“So now what,” I say, not out of interest but to fill the unsettling silence. “You come here and apologize, and then what happens?”
“I die in peace,” he says, stiffening when I snort in disgust.
“You have no right to ask for peace, old man.”
“I know,” he says. “You gave me what I deserved: exile. He sets his glass down carefully. “Siberia was cold. Always cold, even in summer. But it wasn’t the cold that cut deepest. It was knowing that my own son sent me there.”
I shrug, not knowing how he expects me to respond to that.