Chapter Twenty-Two
Ilona
I lie on the worn-out sofa in my mom’s tiny rented apartment, staring at the water stain on the ceiling that looks like a bruise against the yellowed plaster.
The fabric beneath me smells of my mother, and I imagine the endless hours she must have sat here facing her own mortality. Alone.
God, Ilona.
How could you have left her?
I don’t even remember how I got myself home from the hospital. The journey from those sterile corridors to this cramped living room exists in my memory as nothing more than scattered images: a taxi’s vinyl seat, the sound of traffic, keys fumbling in a lock.
My mother is dying.
The words echo keep rattling around in my head, each repetition sending ripples of pain through my chest. Her death will be another bead in the string of tragedies I have had to endure over the past year and a half— another weight added to a necklace of grief that already threatens to drag me under.
It all started with my father. His death— that senseless act of violence that tore our family apart. The official report that ruled it as suicide when Mom and I both knew it could never be. And if I’d known then what I know now, the next step in the path would have been unthinkable.
Osip.
Osip entangling me in a web of emotions I still can’t unravel.
Anger and longing twist together like barbed wire around my ribs.
Pain that cuts both ways, slicing me open every time I think about those eyes, those hands that could be gentle as a whisper or firm as a command.
The pregnancy that felt like a chance at normalcy, at motherhood— something pure rising from the ashes of my devastation— but turned into a downward spiral into misery when my body betrayed me once again.
I loved my unborn baby with everything I had, even though it never drew breath outside my womb.
And I love it’s sibling still growing under my heart just as much, despite knowing what its father has done to my family.
I still don’t know what to think about it.
How could I? The fact that the father of my unborn child is the man who murdered my own dad is like a riddle that’s impossible to solve.
The cosmic cruelty of it makes my stomach churn.
How does the universe arrange such twisted ironies?
How does Fate conspire to make a woman fall in love with her father’s killer, to carry his child, to grieve for the life they created together while simultaneously grieving for the life he destroyed?
But it didn’t end there because his life exists in me still. The twin who survived against the odds. The baby he can never know about. Because if I thought my life was complicated before, it would be completely impossible if he learned I was pregnant.
And now… there’s Slava.
Sweet, innocent Slava who, of all the children in the world, is Osip’s biological son.
And I still don’t know the full backstory behind it— how a baby ended up in an orphanage while his powerful father continued his life on another continent.
Maybe I don’t even want to know. Some truths are too heavy for a heart that’s already breaking under the weight of too many revelations.
But I can’t stop thinking of him. His small hands reaching for me, trusting and warm.
His sweet giggle that sounded like music in a world that had forgotten how to sing.
The way he’d toddle toward me on unsteady legs, babbling my name in his broken toddler pronunciation: “I-lo.” Each memory is a sharp and painful, cutting deeper than any physical wound.
Tears spill from the corners of my eyes, hot against my skin.
I don’t wipe them away— what’s the point?
They’ll just be replaced by more, an endless supply of salt water that seems to be all my body can produce anymore.
I might never see him again. That thought alone feels like a betrayal, as if I’ve abandoned him just like everyone else in his short, tragic life.
The adults who were supposed to protect him failed him.
His biological mother, whoever she was, couldn’t keep him safe.
The system that was supposed to care for him warehoused him like an object instead of nurturing him like the precious soul he is.
And now me— I’m walking away too, leaving him to wonder why another person he trusted simply vanished from his world.
But what choice do I have? How can I stay in the life of a child whose father is a murderer? How can I look into those innocent eyes without seeing reflections of the man who destroyed my family?
And Osip. God, why does his face haunt me as much as Slava’s does?
He murdered my father, for Christ’s sake!
The man who taught me to ride a bike, who stayed up all night when I had the flu, who walked me to school on my first day and cried harder than I did— Osip took him away from me with those same hands that used to trace my spine like he was memorizing every inch of my skin.
You’re sick, Ilona!
I shouldn’t miss him. I shouldn’t want him in my life.
Every rational cell in my body screams that I should feel nothing but revulsion when I think of him.
But some part of me— some broken and irrational part of my being— still craves his presence.
His warmth that made me feel safe even in the middle of chaos.
His strength that felt like shelter from storms I couldn’t weather alone.
His passion that made me feel alive when everything else in my world had gone numb.
A thought sneaks in completely unexpectedly: I need a drink.
I never drink— barely touched alcohol even in college when everyone around me was drowning their insecurities in cheap beer and cheaper wine.
But right now, the idea of liquid numbness appeals to me in ways that should probably worry me.
Something to blur the sharp edges of reality, to soften the brutal clarity that keeps showing me truths I don’t want to see.
I actually stand up and walk to the tiny kitchenette. Mom keeps a bottle of brandy in the cabinet above the sink— medicinal purposes, she said, though I suspect it served more emotional than physical ailments. My fingers close around the amber glass, the weight of it solid and promising in my palm.
But then, like a slap across the face, reality strikes me. I shake my head and push the idea aside, my grip loosening until the bottle settles back into its place with a soft clink against the wood.
Ilona!
Are you fucking nuts?
You’re pregnant!
The knowledge hits me fresh every time, like walking into the same glass door repeatedly.
Despite the miscarriage— despite the blood and the pain and the devastating emptiness— I’m still carrying life inside me.
The miracle that shouldn’t exist, the impossible pregnancy that continued when everything else fell apart.
I must not drink. I must not do anything that could harm this fragile new existence that somehow clung to life when logic says it should have been lost along with its twin.
The baby deserves better than a mother who drowns her sorrows in alcohol. This child— Osip’s child, my father’s grandchild, a walking contradiction of love and tragedy— deserves a mother who fights for survival instead of surrender.
I close the cabinet door with a finality that echoes through the small apartment. And then a new thought strikes me. A much better idea that makes my pulse quicken with something that might be hope.
The Scarlet Fox.
It’s been a while since I thought of The Masked Guy at The Scarlet Fox— really thought about him, not just the fleeting memories that surface when sleep eludes me or when silence stretches too long.
The man in the shadows, the one who made me feel seen, safe, understood in ways I still can’t explain.
Does he still go there?
What would he say if I told him everything? About my father’s murder, about Osip’s betrayal, about Slava’s innocent laughter, about this sinking feeling that my life is falling apart piece by piece while I stand helpless to stop it?
The Masked Guy had listened without judgment when I’d poured out my pain about Dad’s death.
He’d offered comfort without trying to fix anything, understanding without demanding explanations.
For those precious moments in Room Five, I hadn’t been a victim or a tragedy or a cautionary tale— I’d just been a woman worthy of attention, of desire, of care.
Maybe he could help me make sense of this chaos.
Maybe he could offer perspective from someone who exists outside the fucked-up mess of my current reality.
Or maybe— and this thought makes me feel pathetic and desperate in equal measure— maybe he could just hold me while I fall apart, the way he did before when my world first started crumbling.
Either way, I’m an emotional wreck, and perhaps it would help if I could speak to someone. Someone like TMG, who knows how to listen to pain without trying to solve it.
A small, irrational urge stirs within me, growing stronger with each passing second.
It’s evening now— the sky outside the grimy window has deepened to the color of old bruises.
It’s past visiting hours at the hospital, so I can’t go back and be with my mother.
She’s on morphine, anyway, floating in pharmaceutical twilight that keeps the pain at bay but also keeps her unreachable.
The nurses assured me she’s comfortable, that the medication will help her rest, that there’s nothing more I can do tonight.
And to top it off, it just happens to be Friday night.
“Maybe it’s a sign,” I whisper. It’s like the universe is offering me exactly what I need when I need it most.
Do they still do the masked nights on Fridays?
Has anything changed in the year and a half since I last walked through those doors, since I last surrendered my identity to the shadows and candlelight?