Chapter Thirty-Seven
Aleksei
The sickroom reeks of antiseptic and decay.
Sweat. Urine. The unmistakable odor of a body eating itself from the inside out. Too fucking hot in here— sweat prickles along my spine— yet my hands are ice cold.
Medical equipment surrounds the bed where my father lies, his once-powerful frame now so shrunken the sheets barely rise from the mattress. The wet, gurgling rattle of his breathing fills the silence— that distinctive sound that marks death’s approach as clearly as a sniper’s laser sight.
The death rattle. The body’s final, futile struggle.
My father is dying.
Nakonets-to, blyad.
About fucking time.
Diana stands beside me, her fingers crushing mine. We haven’t spoken since the nurse left twenty minutes ago with her quiet “it won’t be long now.” What is there to say? This ending that once seemed impossible is now inevitable, playing out on stained sheets before us.
The skeleton dying before me bears no resemblance to the monster who haunted my childhood.
Yet they are one and the same. Those hands now motionless atop the blanket once formed fists that broke my ribs, split my lip, left bruises that took weeks, sometimes months to fade.
That throat struggling for breath once roared threats that sent us scrambling for hiding places throughout our cramped St. Petersburg apartment.
He deserves this. This weak, pathetic death with its stench of disinfectant and vomit. No final fanfare for a hero. Just a sad old man gasping his last breaths with no one to love him.
Hurry up and die, pizda.
I’ve got better things to do than watch you wheeze.
I search my heart for what I should feel. Satisfaction? Vindication? The culmination of decades wishing to see him suffer as we suffered? Instead, I find a tangle of emotions— hatred for what he did, yes, but also an unexpected hollowness. A void where closure should be.
His eyelids flutter, then open with visible effort. His gaze drifts around the room before settling on us at the foot of his bed. His eyes are cloudy with morphine, but he’s still recognizably a Tarasov.
“Aleksei… Diana…” His voice is sandpaper on rust, nothing like the booming roar that used to make my bladder clench in terror. “My children…”
Beside me, Diana flinches as if slapped. I tighten my grip on her hand, a silent promise of protection that comes decades too late. The gold of her bracelet bites into my palm.
“Father,” I acknowledge, the word unnatural in my mouth after so many years of refusing to speak it.
Silence stretches between us, heavy with echoes of pain, abuse, abandonment. The rhythmic beep of the heart monitor pulses in my temples, counting down the seconds of his miserable life.
“I know,” he begins, each word clearly costing him, “that I deserve no forgiveness. That what I did to you both… to your mother—” He pauses, overcome by a violent coughing fit that racks his emaciated body.
Let him choke.
Let him suffer.
Yet, in spite of my thoughts, I find myself moving to the bedside table, pouring water from the pitcher into a glass.
The ice cubes clink against the sides, obscenely cheerful in this room of death.
I hold it to his lips, supporting his head with my other hand.
His scalp is hot and damp against my palm, his hair thin and brittle.
As he drinks, memory floods back: my father’s hand around my throat, lifting me against the wall until my feet dangled. I was twelve. My crime had been dropping a glass of his vodka. The same hands that now tremble weakly against the sheets once held the power of life and death over me.
So easy to end this now.
Squeeze that throat.
Press a pillow over his face.
Finish what cancer started.
The thought comes and goes. I am not him. I will never be him.
Slabak.
Weakling.
Finish what you started when you exiled him.
I return to Diana’s side, resuming my stance as I take her hand. Her perfume— jasmine and something citrusy— cuts through the sickness in the air.
“I was a monster,” he continues once the coughing subsides. His lips are cracked, flecks of blood at the corners. “To you especially, Aleksei. And to you, Diana, for forcing you to watch. For making you try to protect him when it should have been me protecting you both.”
Diana remains silent, but I feel her trembling beside me. Her grip on my fingers is painful now, but I welcome the discomfort. It anchors me to the present, to the man I’ve become rather than the terrified boy I was.
I think of my own children— of Bobik’s gentle intelligence, his eyes lighting up when I bring him new books.
Of baby Polina’s trusting gaze, her tiny fist wrapped around my finger.
Of how I would tear apart anyone who caused them pain.
Of how becoming a father has reshaped my understanding of what it means to protect, to guide.
I think of Stella, the scent of her hair on my pillow, the way she challenges me, the future I want to build with her. How I plan to earn her love.
Eto pizdets.
This is fucked up.
In this moment, I understand something I’ve been fighting for weeks: holding onto hatred for this dying man poisons only me.
It changes nothing about the past but threatens everything about my future.
To break the cycle requires more strength than continuing it— a truth I want my children to learn from me, not about me.
Slabak.
Weakling.
He deserves your hatred.
And as I think of all these things, something dawns on me. A realization of what I have to do… something that may be the toughest challenge I’ve ever faced.
“Father,” I say, the word coming easier this time. “I forgive you.”
Diana’s sharp intake of breath beside me cuts through the mechanical beeping. My father’s eyes widen slightly, disbelief evident even through the haze of morphine.
“Not because you deserve it,” I continue, my voice steady despite the acid burning in my throat. “And not because it erases what you did. I forgive you for my own peace. So I can be the father to my children that you never were to us.”
Something shifts in his expression— relief, perhaps, or simple recognition of the truth in my words. He nods once, the slight movement seemingly taking all his remaining strength. The skin of his face hangs loose on the bones, yellow and waxy in the harsh light.
“I can’t.” Diana’s voice is low, her words directed more to me than to our father. “I’m sorry, I just can’t.” Tears stream silently down her face as she shakes her head. “I saw what he did to you, Lyosha. I heard your screams when I couldn’t stop him. I can’t forgive that. I can’t.”
I release her hand only to wrap my arm around her shoulders, pulling her against me. Her familiar scent momentarily transports me back to our childhood, when we’d huddle after one of Father’s rages. Even then, she was the one who bore the emotional scars while I carried the physical ones.
“It’s alright, sestra . You don’t have to.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. Diana has always been my mirror— reflecting the pain I refuse to acknowledge. “Your truth is your own. I’m not asking you to share mine.”
Liar.
You want her to join you in this weakness.
To make it easier.
She turns her face into my chest, her body shaking with silent sobs. I hold her as she once held me, clinging together in the dark, whispering promises that someday things would be different.
From the bed, our father watches this exchange, his breathing becoming more labored. Each inhale a wet, sucking sound, each exhale a wheeze.
“Diana,” he says, his voice surprisingly tender. “My sweet girl… I’m sorry I was not the father you deserved.”
She doesn’t respond, but her sobbing quiets slightly. I keep my arm around her, protective even now when the threat can no longer harm us.
“The doctors,” Father continues, each word now separated by gasping breaths, “say it won’t be long. I wanted… to see my children… one last time.”
The monitors beside his bed show his declining vitals— heart rate slowing, oxygen levels dropping. The green line jumps less frequently, the numbers falling. The nurse was right. It won’t be long now.
“Tell your mother,” he whispers, “I’m sorry. For everything.”
His eyes close, the effort of speaking now leaving him completely sapped. Diana and I stand in silence, watching the rise and fall of his chest become shallower, less regular. The monitors beep more slowly. The space between breaths grows longer.
Then… nothing.
The final exhale comes without drama— just a soft release of air, followed by stillness. The monitors flatline, their alarms silenced in advance by the nurse who knew this moment was coming.
Rodion Tarasov is dead.
Vsyo.
It’s done.
The smell in the room changes subtly. Something releases— bowels, gases, the last grip of life. The hairs on my arms rise.
Diana’s tears have stopped, replaced by a hollow-eyed shock that I recognize all too well. I keep my arm around her, anchoring us both in this strange new reality where our abuser no longer exists.
“It’s over,” I say quietly, the words inadequate for the complexity of this moment.
She nods, her gaze still fixed on our father’s body. “Is it wrong that I feel… nothing?”
“No.” I squeeze her shoulder gently. “There’s no right way to feel about this.”
Liar.
You should feel triumph.
Victory.
Instead, you feel… what?
Empty?
Fucking pathetic.
We stand together for several more minutes, bearing witness to this ending that feels less like closure than a door opening to something unknown. The monster of our childhood is gone, leaving behind only a frail old man who died seeking forgiveness he didn’t deserve.
Yet in offering that forgiveness, I’ve freed something within myself— not for him, but for the children who will never know him.
For Bobik, who will someday walk because of medical advances his grandfather would never see.
For Polina, who will grow up without the shadow of violence that shaped her father’s childhood.
For myself, finally stepping out of the darkness my father created into the light my children deserve.
Ne bud? slabym.
Don’t be weak.
This changes nothing.
But it does. As I face my sister, I feel the weight shift. Not gone— never gone— but different. Manageable. Mine to carry or set down as I choose.
The monster is dead.
And I am still here.