Chapter Twenty-Six #2
“I don’t blame you,” he continues. “You had every reason to. But those years… they were the hardest.” He pauses, coughing slightly, before continuing.
“They threw me into a labor camp, out in the middle of nowhere. Snow and ice for miles in every direction. The cold… it gets into your bones, into your soul. I spent my days chopping wood, digging trenches, doing whatever they told me to. It was brutal, mindless work, but it kept me from thinking too much. At least during the day.”
He pauses, eyes growing distant. When they meet mine again, I see a flicker of the man he used to be—the man I feared and hated.
“At night… That’s when the memories came. The fights, the drunken rages, the way I tore our family apart. In the dark, there was no escaping it. Every mistake, every hurtful word… it all came back to haunt me.”
I pour another shot, unwilling to acknowledge the hint of remorse in his voice. “Sounds like exactly what you deserved.”
“More than deserved.” He accepts the second drink, though his hand shakes so badly now that liquid sloshes over the rim.
He stares down at the drops on his paper-thin skin, eyes unfocused.
“I turned back to the bottle, even in exile,” he says quietly.
“There’s always someone who can get you vodka, for a lot of money, of course.
It helped… or at least I thought it did.
But it didn’t make the regret go away. Nothing did. ”
“Glad to hear it,” I mutter. What the fuck does he want from me? Tears?
Pizda!
My father looks down at his hands, now trembling more visibly. “But Siberia… it also strips you bare. When you have nothing left, no one, and the only thing to keep you warm is your own bitterness, you either break or you find a way to survive. I found a few others, men like me, broken and angry.”
“Why does that not surprise me?” I scoff.
He sighs, ignoring my outburst and emptying his glass. I fill it again, the gesture mocking him.
“I knew I was dying long before the doctors said the words. The pain in my gut… it’s been with me for years.
I could have stayed there, waited for it to end, but I couldn’t.
Not without trying to make things right.
I found a man— a forger. He gave me a new name, new papers.
It cost me everything, but I got out. Walked away like I never existed. ”
My father’s eyes lock onto mine, a pleading look in them now. “It’s not Siberia that killed me, son. It’s guilt. I don’t have much time left. I know there’s no excuse for the things I’ve done, but I can’t leave this world without trying to make amends.”
Something in his tone— the raw honesty, perhaps— penetrates my carefully constructed wall of hatred.
Part of me feels a surge of anger— how fucking dare he come back now, after everything he’s done?
But there’s also a part of me that knows I can’t let him go, not in the state he’s in.
Not like this. The bitterness and the pain, they’re still there, but so is a sense of responsibility. I don’t want to admit it, but I nod.
“You can stay,” I say abruptly, the decision forming even as the words leave my mouth. “Until… until the end. But there are conditions.”
Relief softens his features. “Anything.”
“You stay in this room unless accompanied by me or Diana. You don’t wander the property. You don’t speak to the staff. You don’t ask questions about my business or my family.”
He nods, accepting each restriction without protest. “I understand.”
“And you stay sober.” I gesture to the vodka bottle. “This was a one-time exception.”
A flicker of something— resistance, perhaps— crosses his face before resignation settles in. “I’ll try.”
“Try hard.” The threat is implicit.
He smiles, a small, weary lifting of lips. “You’ve become hard, Aleksei. Like I was.”
“I am nothing like you,” I snap, the comparison hitting a raw nerve.
“No.” He looks at me with unexpected clarity. “You’re better. Stronger. You built something. I only destroyed.”
The compliment, if that’s what it is, leaves me unsettled. I move toward the door, eager to end this strange encounter. “Rest. The staff will bring food later.”
“Aleksei.” His voice stops me at the threshold. “There’s something else you should know.”
I turn back, irritation rising. “What?”
He seems to shrink further into himself, his gaze dropping to the floor. “Your mother… she’s alive.”
The words don’t register at first. They can’t. They contradict twenty years of certainty, of grief, of hatred directed at the man before me.
“What did you say?” My voice sounds distant to my own ears.
“Maria. Your mother.” He looks up, eyes watery but clear. “She’s alive.”
The room spins around me. I grip the doorframe, steadying myself against a wave of dizziness. What the fuck is he talking about? Is he delirious? “That’s impossible. She disappeared. You—”
“I didn’t kill her.” He shakes his head slowly. “I couldn’t. Not her.”
“Then where?” The question comes gruffly. “Where has she been for twenty years?”
“Vostok.”
The single word makes me sway on my feet.
Vostok Institute— the notorious Soviet-era psychiatric facility, rumored to house political prisoners alongside the mentally ill.
A place where people disappeared, where treatments included ice baths and electroshock, where patients were test subjects for experimental drugs.
A place of living nightmares.
“Why?” I cross the room in two strides, looming over him. “Why the fuck is my mother in Vostok?”
He shrinks back, alcohol and exhaustion clouding his eyes. “She was going to take you… take my children… I couldn’t…”
“Couldn’t what?” I snap. I grab his shoulders, shaking him slightly. “Finish the fucking sentence!”
But his head lolls, eyes unfocused. The combination of vodka, medication, and exhaustion has pushed him beyond coherence. His mumbled response makes no sense— fragments about threats and protection and choices no man should make.
“What the fuck is she doing there?” I snarl, knowing I probably don’t want to hear the answer.
I release him in disgust, watching as he slumps back onto the bed. Within seconds, his breathing deepens into the heavy rhythm of unconsciousness.
“ Blyad ,” I mutter, running a hand through my hair.
Twenty years believing she was dead— twenty fucking years of hatred based on a lie. My mother, alive all this time in that hellhole, while I built empires and exiled the man I thought had murdered her.
Even now, he can’t give me a straight answer. Even dying, he’s still a drunk piece of shit.
I pull out my phone, dialing Vasya. He answers on the third ring.
“I need everything you can find on Vostok Institute,” I say without preamble. “Current operations, security protocols, patient records. Everything.”
“Vostok?” His confusion is evident. “The psychiatric facility? Why would you—”
“Mama is there.” The words still feel foreign, impossible. “She’s been there for over twenty years.”
Silence stretches across the connection. A long one. Then: “I’ll call you back in an hour.”
The call ends. I look back at my father, now snoring softly on the bed.
In sleep, the years fall away, and I see flashes of the man who once terrorized our household.
The strong hands that dealt out punishment.
The broad shoulders that tensed before inflicting violence upon those he should have loved.
The face that could shift from charm to rage in an instant.
All diminished now.
All fading.
I leave the room, closing the door quietly behind me. My mind races with implications, with questions, with the beginnings of a plan.
If my mother is alive— if she’s been imprisoned in that place all these years— I will find her.
I will bring her home.