Chapter 28 - Dani
Some days still don’t feel real, regardless of how many times I wake up in Nikolai’s bed with sunlight pouring through the curtains, hearing the distant hum of traffic somewhere below the penthouse windows.
For a few blissful seconds, everything feels normal. Before long, the memories return all at once and settle in like an ache beneath my ribs.
My father is gone, and regardless of the medical trial not being real, it still had very real consequences.
People died because men like Grigori Malenkov and Dr. Volodin decided human lives were worth less than profit, and somehow, I survived it.
The weight of that truth still shifts around inside me in strange ways. Sometimes it crushes me unexpectedly while I’m brushing my teeth or standing in the kitchen half-awake with coffee in my hands.
Other times, I can think about it with a strange sort of distance, like my mind is finally learning how to hold the grief without letting it consume me whole.
I’ve been learning that healing is not linear, as frustrating as that can be at times.
That’s what my therapist tells me during our sessions, and it has ingrained itself in my everyday life now.
At first, I hated the idea of therapy and sitting in a quiet office talking about trauma with someone paid to listen.
It sounded exhausting when I was already barely keeping my head above water emotionally, but Nikolai encouraged it carefully, never pushing too hard, but reminding me that I didn’t have to carry all of it alone.
So I tried, and now, weeks later, I’m glad I did.
It still hurts to talk about my dad, and I don’t think that part will ever stop hurting entirely. But the memories don’t feel quite as heavy anymore, and I can finally speak about him without immediately feeling like I’ll never come back from it.
Sometimes I even laugh while talking about him, which felt impossible before.
Regardless of the joy that comes with remembering Dad in those special moments, today’s session leaves me emotional anyway. It’s a tender sort of pull I feel in my chest that leaves behind more warmth than ice, yet I have to let myself sit with it anyway.
We spent most of the hour talking about guilt and survival, and whether I blame myself for not seeing the warning signs sooner. By the end of it, I felt wrung out in the way deep honesty tends to leave a person.
Even so, when I step out of the office building into the warm Las Vegas afternoon, I feel lighter than I did going in, like that progress is working even behind the scenes in my mind.
The desert heat wraps around me immediately, dry beneath the afternoon sun. Cars move steadily along the street while tourists wander nearby, completely unaware of any darker aspects of the city they frequent.
Before long, I find the black SUV parked near the curb, and Nikolai leaning against it.
I soften instantly at the sight of him, which has been more like an instinctive response to his presence lately.
He’s dressed more casually in cargo pants and a black compression tee like he just got back from work, biceps more pronounced with his arms crossed as he watches the building entrance with that same focused intensity he seems incapable of turning off entirely.
The second he sees me, his posture shifts subtly like he’s been waiting for proof that I walked out alright, and it still affects me more than it should.
I make my way toward him, and by the time I reach the SUV, he’s already opening the passenger door for me with a gentle expression.
“How was it?” he asks quietly, leaving out any stoicism now. He genuinely wants to know, like he always does.
Pausing beside the open door for a moment, I exhale before answering with quiet admittance. “Hard. But good.”
His expression softens slightly, and he reaches out to pull me closer. He murmurs against my hair, “That sounds productive.”
I huff out a faint laugh and settle against his chest, soaking in the comforting and familiar smell of him while my arms wrap around him in return. “Apparently, confronting your emotional repression is productive.”
One corner of his mouth twitches upward, and he hums. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“Right,” I snort softly as I look up at him, heart warmer now with him near. “Says the famously emotionally available one.”
That earns me a low laugh out of him before he presses a soft kiss to my forehead. “I can admit things now…that’s an improvement.”
I huff an amused breath and smile to myself as he pulls away to let me slide into the vehicle, then he circles around to the driver’s side.
The sound of his laughter still catches me off guard sometimes, only because I remember when I thought this man was incapable of softness altogether. He really has opened up more than most people would give him credit for. We both have.
The SUV eventually settles into traffic smoothly while Vegas blurs around us in flashes of sunlight and the usual landscape.
For a while, the silence between us feels easy and comfortable while my mind circles back on some of the topics I went over with the therapist before I allow myself to tuck them away for the time being.
Nikolai glances toward me briefly while resting one hand against the steering wheel. “You look tired.”
“I am.”
“You want to go home and rest?”
Home.
The word still does strange things to me, since one way or another, his place became exactly that. Rather than a temporary shelter or a prison I once viewed it as, it’s something we share now, and it really does feel like home.
“I think I want food first,” I admit, noting the subtle hunger pains kicking around.
“Done.”
I smile faintly and lean my head back against the seat, taking in the warm breeze surrounding us.
There’s another pause before he speaks again, quieter this time. “You seem to be doing a lot better.”
The observation settles gently over me, and I look out the window briefly before answering honestly.
“I am,” I admit, even while it feels strange to admit out loud. “Therapy’s working, and everything else doesn’t feel as heavy anymore...I think I want to start that foundation you mentioned.”
Nikolai’s brows go up subtly, like he wasn’t expecting me to follow through with it, but he hums. “You don’t think it’ll be too much?”
Despite the thought crossing my mind, I shake my head. “No, it might be good for me to have something to focus on. Even if I don’t know what I’m doing.”
His lips pull warmly. “Then we’ll look into it. I’ll get things moving, and you can decide what you’d like to do with it.”
I nod, returning a small smile of my own. Even if the thought of being in charge of something significant and public makes me feel nervous, I already know the positives would far outweigh the discomfort.
For so long, surviving was all I could manage.
Every day felt like something to endure rather than experience, but lately, there are moments where I genuinely feel present again.
Moments where I laugh without forcing it, and where I can think about the future without immediately feeling afraid of what it might look like.
A lot of that is because of him, which is complicated in itself.
Nikolai came into my life through violence and lies, all tangled together with fear that held me down.
Nothing about our beginning was healthy or normal, but even so, somewhere inside all the chaos, he became the person who held me together when everything else felt like it was crumbling.
When it seemed like I didn’t have anyone, I had him.
The world knows pieces of the truth now, too, and in a way, it took more of the weight off my shoulders.
The story about the fraudulent medical trials broke nearly a week after the Lukovs quietly pulled enough strings to make sure the evidence reached the right people.
News stations covered the scandal for days, investigations reopened, and families of victims finally started getting answers.
Dozens of names surfaced, and many more lives than I could conceive of were destroyed.
The scope of it all made me physically sick when I first saw it, but it also made me realize my father wasn’t alone. None of us were. Regardless of the pain caused, there was solidarity in it, and that helped more than I expected it to.
And now those men are dead.
Grigori Malenkov can never hurt anyone again, and neither can Volodin, even if he second-guessed his involvement in the end. They both caused unimaginable harm, and now, the city is slightly safer than it had been.
The relief that comes with that knowledge is dark, yet earned, somehow.
Justice won’t bring my father back, but at least the nightmare ends with them, and fewer people have to know what it feels like to lose someone in the same way.
“You’re thinking too hard again,” Nikolai says quietly.
I blink and realize he’s watching me carefully from the driver’s seat before focusing on the road again. A sheepish feeling settles in me. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” he hums, pulling his hand from the steering wheel to settle it over mine, where it rests against my thigh. His touch is warm and steady as always. “I know this isn’t easy; just make sure you aren’t thinking yourself into circles. Give yourself a break every once in a while.”
Emotion presses unexpectedly at the back of my throat as I sense his sincerity, well aware of his subtle concern and the ways he gently checks in with me.
“I just…” I trail off, swallowing carefully to collect myself. “I think for the first time in a long time, I can actually see myself being happy again.”
The confession leaves me feeling strangely exposed, yet I let it sit here anyway.
Nikolai goes still beside me for a moment, then he lifts my hand slowly and presses a kiss against my knuckles. The gesture is so unexpectedly tender it nearly wrecks me on the spot. He’s the only one capable of doing that to me.
“You deserve to be,” he says simply, as if it’s obvious.
My chest aches, and I turn toward him a bit more to study the sharp line of his profile in the afternoon light.
Weeks ago, this man terrified me. Sometimes, parts of him still do, since he belongs to a world built on violence, loyalty, and bloodshed in ways I’ll probably never completely understand, but he also sat beside me through the worst of it.
He held me when grief made me feel so hollow I could barely take care of myself; he encouraged me to heal even when I wanted to disappear into myself entirely, and despite everything, he became the safest thing in my life.
“You know,” I say softly, letting a note of subtle mischief enter my words.
“My therapist thinks I’ve attached complicated emotional associations to you. ”
A faint smirk settles on his lips. “That sounds concerning.”
“She says trauma bonding is common.”
His expression shifts slightly at that as uncertainty moves through his eyes. “Are you saying you want distance?”
“Definitely not.”
The response comes quickly and is loaded with far too much honesty, but I can’t bring myself to regret it.
Nikolai glances toward me again, lifting a curious brow at me. “No?”
I shake my head slowly. “No.”
Our beginning was twisted and painful in ways I never could’ve dreamed up before, but what exists between us now feels real anyway.
Everything about us is messy and complicated, yet so much more fulfilling than anything I’ve experienced before. I can’t quit him now.
The city stretches around us while he drives us beneath the endless Las Vegas sun, his hand still loosely holding mine across the center console while his thumb softly strokes against my skin.
For the first time since my father died, the future doesn’t feel quite so impossible to face anymore, since I won’t be doing it alone after all.