Chapter Fifteen
Osip
The Gulfstream touches down smooth as silk, but my jaw stays clenched tight.
Boston’s familiar skyline spreads before me through the small cabin window— steel and glass monuments to American capitalism, reflecting the dying light of another day I’ve spent separated from my boy.
The last time I stood on this soil, my world cracked open— discovering my son existed, that he breathed the same air I’d been poisoning with my sins for a year without knowing.
Now I’m back to claim what’s mine.
Fuck the lawyers.
Fuck the system.
Fuck anyone who thinks they can keep my blood from me.
The rental agency delivered exactly what I requested— a black Range Rover with enough horsepower to outrun my own demons if necessary.
I slide into the driver’s seat, and the weeks of vodka and sleepless nights feel heavy in my bones.
The engine roars to life, and I peel out of the private airfield, weaving through traffic with the precision of a man who’s spent his life calculating risks and accepting consequences.
The speedometer climbs. Sixty. Seventy. Eighty on city streets.
Let them try to stop me.
Beacon Hill Orphanage materializes ahead, its red brick facade worn smooth by decades of Boston winters.
Ivy crawls up the walls, and the windows reflect nothing back at me— dark, empty eyes in an institutional face.
The building squats between two residential streets like it’s trying to blend in, trying to pretend it’s not a warehouse for broken childhoods.
I park with a squeal of tires and slamming of doors and stride through the front entrance.
The lobby smells of industrial disinfectant and something else— the particular sadness that clings to places where children wait for families that may never come.
Fluorescent lights buzz overhead, casting everything in harsh relief.
Motivational posters line the walls, their cheerful messages obscene in this context.
Simpson emerges from an office down the hall— a thin man in his fifties with carefully cropped gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses that he adjusts constantly.
His suit is off-the-rack but pressed, his shoes polished but not expensive.
He moves with the quiet economy of movement of someone who’s spent his career managing other people’s tragedies.
“Mr. Sidorov,” he says, extending a hand I don’t take. His professional smile wavers when he sees the violence radiating from every line of my body. “Thank you for coming so quickly.”
“Where is he?” The words come out as a growl, my eyes scanning the sterile hallway. Every cell, every fiber of my being screams with the need to see Slava, to touch him, to confirm he’s real and safe and mine .
“Don’t worry, Mr. Sidorov. Slava is safe,” Simpson says, his voice carefully modulated. He adjusts his glasses again, a nervous tic. “His nanny is taking care of him at the Vorobev residence. She agreed to stay until we could arrange a place for him here at the orphanage. Shall we go collect him?”
The word “nanny” lights something savage in my chest. Some stranger has been feeding my son, bathing him, comforting him when he cries. Tasks that should have been mine. Rights that were stolen from me before I even knew they existed.
A fucking nanny.
“What’s the address.” It’s not a question. I’m already pulling out my phone, calling up the map app.
Simpson rattles off an address that I punch into the GPS as I turn and walk off. He follows me to the Range Rover, and I can see him hesitate before climbing into the passenger seat. The man has good instincts— he should be afraid.
The engine launches us forward with enough force to press us back into leather seats.
Boston traffic becomes an obstacle course I navigate with the cold calculation of a man who’s driven through war zones.
Simpson grips the door handle, his breathing shallow and quick as I take corners sharp enough to leave rubber on asphalt.
“Mr. Sidorov, I’d like to make it there alive…” he ventures when I blow through a yellow light that’s already turning red.
I don’t respond. Words are worthless right now. Only action matters. Only getting to Slava matters. The city blurs past us— storefronts, pedestrians, other cars all reduced to mere obstacles between me and my son.
The GPS announces our arrival just as a sprawling mansion materializes ahead, all colonial elegance and old money arrogance. The kind of place that speaks in whispers about trust funds and boardrooms while my world operates in the language of bullets and broken bones.
My boots hit the front steps with purpose, Simpson trailing behind like an anxious shadow. I raise my fist to knock, but the sound of footsteps approaching from the other side makes every muscle in my body coil tight.
The door swings open.
Time fractures.
The woman standing before me stops my heart mid-beat.
Blonde hair catches the porch light, falling in waves around her shoulders.
Blue eyes— the color of ocean water on a clear day— widen in recognition.
Full lips part in shock. She’s holding a child against her chest, and every detail of her face burns itself into my consciousness with devastating clarity.
What the…
Ilona?
The word explodes in my skull, leaving me blind and deaf to everything except the impossible sight before me.
She stands in the doorway of this mansion, cradling my son, and for one insane moment, I wonder if all that Stoli and insomnia have finally driven me over the edge into full psychotic break.
But no. She’s real. The same woman who haunted every bottle, every sleepless hour since I returned from Boston to find my home empty, her clothes gone, no trace of her except the lingering scent of her perfume.
How?
The question lodges somewhere between my chest and throat, choking off oxygen. Of all the cities, all the houses, all the fucking impossible coincidences in this godforsaken world— she’s here. With my son.
The elegant foyer behind her stretches into shadows, crown molding and hardwood floors speaking of untold wealth. Crystal chandeliers throw scattered prisms of light across marble surfaces, but all I can see is her.
She’s been taking care of Slava.
My Slava.
The thought hits me with the force of a sledgehammer.
This woman— the one I’ve ached for, the one whose absence carved hollows in my chest— has been mothering my child.
Feeding him. Singing to him. Probably reading him bedtime stories while I drowned myself in vodka and rage three thousand miles away.
Recognition crashes across her features.
I watch her face cycle through the same disbelief that’s currently turning my guts to mush.
For just one fraction of a heartbeat, something that might be joy flickers in her eyes— so brief I could have imagined it.
I probably did. But then her expression shuts down, color draining from her cheeks until she looks like she’s witnessed a horrible crime.
She clutches Slava tighter, maternal instinct overriding whatever complicated emotions are warring behind her eyes. The sight of her protecting my son does something violent and primal to my chest cavity.
Mine.
Both of them.
The thought comes unexpectedly, dangerous in its intensity.
“Osip,” she whispers, and my name on her lips makes my throat tighten.
“Ilona,” I rasp the word, then take a step forward, drawn by invisible chains that have apparently survived whatever spell she cast when she vanished from my life. But she stiffens, every line of her body screaming retreat even as her eyes remain locked on mine.
The air between us sparks with enough voltage to power half of Boston. Shock, longing, the phantom heat of remembered skin against skin— it all swirls together into something so potent I’m surprised the doorframe doesn’t burst into flames.
Bozhe moy!
My body responds to her proximity the way it always has, blood heating and pulse accelerating despite the surreal circumstances. Even now, even with my son in her arms and confusion thick as smoke between us, the attraction burns bright enough to blind.
Simpson clears his throat behind me, a sound that cuts through the charged atmosphere. “You two know each other?”
Know each other?
I want to laugh bitterly. Maybe she does too.
But neither of us responds. We’re frozen in this moment, two people staring across an impossible chasm of coincidence and consequence.
I can hear Slava’s soft breathing, can see the gentle rise and fall of his small body against Ilona’s shoulder, but I can’t seem to move.
Can’t form words. Can’t do anything except drink in the sight of the woman who’s haunted me since she left.
She’s been here.
With him.
All this time.
The realization cuts deep. While I was tearing apart Boston looking for my son, while I was building cases and hiring lawyers and threatening bureaucrats, she was here. Caring for him. Being the parent I should have been.
Simpson, clearly uncomfortable with the tension radiating off us, extends his hand toward Ilona. “My name is Cameron Simpson. We spoke on the phone.” Then, with the casual brutality of bureaucratic efficiency, he adds, “Mr. Sidorov here is Slava’s biological father.”
The words clearly hit Ilona with devastating force. What little color remained in her face vanishes completely, leaving her looking like she might collapse right there in the doorway. Her grip on Slava tightens reflexively, and I see the exact moment when understanding crashes over her.
And suddenly, I understand too. She didn’t know. Somehow, impossibly, the woman I’ve been aching for has been caring for my son without realizing the connection.
What are the fucking odds?
What kind of cosmic joke is this?