Chapter 17 #2
The oak loomed above me, the same tree that had once hidden our whispered vows, now an unmarked headstone for what used to be my heart.
I hit it again, again, until the pain numbed and all that was left was emptiness.
Then—
A voice, soft but clear, broke through the storm.
“Dmitri?”
I froze. My head jerked up, breath ragged.
A figure stood a few paces away, half-shrouded by rain and moonlight. She held an umbrella, her coat glistening, her hair plastered to her face. Her eyes—there was something painfully familiar about them.
“Who the hell are you?” I rasped, my voice shredded from crying. “Get away from me.”
She took a tentative step forward. “I’m your mother.”
The words didn’t land—they detonated. For a moment, all I could do was stare, the world tilting under me.
“My mother?” I laughed, bitter, hollow. “She’s dead. She died years ago.”
Her chin trembled. “No. Those people in Italy... they’re not your parents. They’re your foster family. You were stolen from us in Moscow when you were five. I’ve been looking for you ever since.”
Rain roared between us. My heart stuttered, half-believing, half-breaking all over again.
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head. “No more lies. No more ghosts.”
But even as I said it, something deep inside me—a wounded, desperate part that had never stopped hoping—wanted to believe her.
She took a step closer, desperation flickering in her eyes. “Dmitri...”
“Stop.” I sliced the air with my hand, shaking my head. “I don’t want your story. You’re just another liar with good timing.”
“Look at me,” she pleaded. “You have my eyes. My son—”
“I don’t believe you,” I said, voice raw, but even as I spoke a sliver of doubt skated across me.
The papers I’d found hidden in the attic hadn’t lied about a thing: the family I’d lived with wasn’t mine. They’d made that very clear. They’d made me nothing.
She didn’t flinch. Her eyes were enormous in the downpour, bright with a danger that felt like truth.
“You have to believe me,” she said, urgency cutting through the rain.
“Your father and I—we’ve been looking for you for years.
We spoke to people, paid people, begged people.
The Romanos finally told us where you were. ”
At the name, something cold uncoiled in my gut.
The Romanos. Penelope’s family.
“Where’s my father?” The question burst out smaller than I wanted, and I hated that it did.
She swallowed hard.
Her face crumpled. “He’s dead,” she whispered, the words muffled by the rain. “Murdered.”
The world went stupidly quiet at the edges.
Rain turned to sound.
My hands — the same hands that had learned to stay clenched — curled tighter, nails carving crescents into torn flesh.
“By who?” The words scraped out of me, too small for the storm tearing through my chest.
“Your foster parents,” she whispered, her voice cracking on the confession. “They found out we were searching for you. They warned him to stop, said you belonged to them now.” Her throat worked, a sob caught halfway. “But he wouldn’t—he said he’d rather die than let you rot in that house.”
A pause. The rain filled it.
Her gaze met mine, wet and trembling. “So they made sure he did.”
For a second I wanted to laugh — a bitter, hollow sound. Then the laugh turned into a sound that was closer to a growl.
“They killed him.” The phrase looped like a curse.
The rain prickled my face, but it could not wash anything away.
My chest hitched; fury pooled and flared.
She stepped closer, water soaking through the hem of her coat. “We have a hotel waiting. I can get you papers, a ticket. Tonight. We go back to Russia, Dmitri. We leave before they can do anything more.”
I looked at her. Her hands trembled, but there was steel in the set of her jaw.
She was trying to become a rope thrown into my chaos. For a beat I wanted to spit on her rope. I wanted to curl into the hollow that had kept me alive and refuse any help that smelled of pity.
Instead, the words came out like iron. “You said ‘we.’”
The laugh that followed was bitter and very small. “You don’t know what you’re asking. You don’t know what it costs to step into my life.”
Her fingers closed around mine before I could think it through — firm, warm, an accusation and a promise all at once.
“I don’t care what it costs,” she said. “We leave tomorrow. The Romanos will cover whatever we need. But you must move now. Your foster aunt will notice you gone and they won’t let it slide. ”
“I’m not a boy to be rescued,” I said.
It was less truth and more armor.
I’d learned to survive alone, to take what had to be taken. But the thought of home — of a place that might actually be mine — scraped at the scabs on my heart until they bled.
She didn’t flinch. “Then come as the man you want to be,” she said. “Or come as you are. I don’t care how broken, how angry—just come with me, Dmitri. Please. Let me save what’s left of you.”
My breath caught in my throat, suddenly too tight to form a sound.
She hesitated for the briefest second, then slipped a hand inside the pocket of her soaked coat.
Her fingers closed on something small and warm.
When she brought it out, it looked ordinary at first — a tarnished silver locket on a thin chain, the metal nicked from years of handling.
But when she opened it, the hair on my arm rose like static.
Inside, on a scrap of vellum, a single name was written in a looping, familiar script: ДМИТРИ (Dmitri).
Not the casual transliteration I’d seen in dossiers or printed papers — my name in the language I’d never thought would be spoken to me again. The letters were smudged from years and rain, but there they were, undeniable.
She held it to my face.
The chain smelled faintly of chamomile—the same soft, honeyed scent Penelope loved.
The familiarity hit like a blade under the ribs, the memory of her splintering through me. My chest clenched, heartbreak surging anew, raw and needled, like pressing on a wound that refused to close.
“You keep that with you?” I asked, breathless, half-command and half-hope.
“My mother gave it to me the night you were born,” she said, voice low. “She kept a record of your name. She carries things in Cyrillic so only family will recognize it. If you doubt me—read it.”
My fingers hovered over the locket, clumsy with cold.
When I touched the paper inside, the ink smeared slightly, and that small, messy imperfection made it feel less like a prop and more like proof.
I heard the dumb, stupid part of me — the part that had learned to distrust everything — whisper that any mark could be forged. But beneath that whisper there was something harder: recognition.
A memory unspooled — a lullaby in a language I had listened to once and then locked away, the cadence of a woman humming by a bedside; a name spoken in the dark as if saying it could hold someone back from the world.
I followed her at last, the weight of her words settling unevenly in my chest—half hope, half disbelief, all exhaustion.
The rain didn’t let up; it hammered the pavement like a warning. By the time we reached her car—a dull gray sedan crouched beneath a dying streetlight—I was shaking from more than cold.
She slipped behind the wheel, movements quick, practiced.
I slid into the passenger seat, the leather groaning beneath my soaked clothes.
My knuckles stung, the cuts splitting open again as I clenched my fists.
She started the engine, and the windshield wipers carved furious arcs through the downpour, slicing the world into broken flashes of light and shadow.
I stared out the window.
Brooklyn was just a blur of wet neon and ghosted reflections—Penelope’s name, my foster father’s threats, my mother’s face—all bleeding together until I couldn’t tell which wound hurt more.
The locket hung heavy against my chest, cold and real, proof of something I’d spent my whole life denying.
Russia awaited, she said. A new beginning. Maybe even revenge. But the road ahead was nothing but darkness, and I knew one thing with bone-deep certainty—whatever boy I’d been tonight, he died under that tree. What got into that car was something else entirely.