Chapter 79 Lukas
LUKAS
@aaborowski_nyc: why is #lukaslazarev trending what did i miss
@kels_mktg: CNN IS LIVESTREAMING FROM THE PRECINCT. he's about to make a statement. oh my god.
@tikibarfly: "eighteen years ago I killed my wife" WHAT
@danielmrojas: wait wait wait he's saying she was sick?? she had leukemia???
@aaborowski_nyc: i literally just sat down at my desk with a coffee and now i'm sobbing
@tikibarfly: fdasfjdksal;j i am going to be physically ill
@danielmrojas: bro his SON is in the room. his son is RIGHT THERE.
@aaborowski_nyc: i need to call my dad.
The room erupts.
Gasps ripple through the crowd. Camera shutters fire in a deafening cascade, flash after flash strobing across my vision. Questions are shouted from every direction, overlapping into meaningless noise: Mr. Lazarev, how did you— and Was it premeditated— and Did your son know—
I don’t answer any of them. I just stand here at the podium, hands folded in front of me, and wait.
Eventually, the noise dies down. It always does. People run out of breath. Cameras run out of batteries. The human appetite for spectacle has limits, even if those limits are depressingly high.
As the chaos subsides, I find myself thinking about how I ended up here.
Over forty years ago, I arrived in this country with nothing but stolen cash and a willingness to do whatever it took to survive.
I clawed my way up through the gutters of Brighton Beach and built an empire on a foundation of blood and broken bones and sheer fucking stubbornness.
I buried rivals and bribed officials and carved out a kingdom that stretched from shipping yards to boardrooms.
I was untouchable. Invincible. A god among insects.
Then Elena tripped and fell into my arms outside a record store, and I learned that gods can bleed just like anyone else.
I had twenty good years with her. Those years held music in the kitchen and bore us a son who—for a little while, at least—called for me, his Papa, when he found monsters that needed fighting.
And then the cancer came, and I learned that some monsters cannot be fought.
I tried anyway. Hell, I carved myself apart trying. How much fucking blood and flesh did I give up for her?
Whatever it was, I would’ve given more. All of it, if she’d asked.
She didn’t, though. In the end, she asked me for the one thing I couldn’t refuse her. The one thing that would haunt me for the rest of my days.
So I gave it to her.
I held her as she went, I buried her in the place where we first met, I kept her secret for eighteen years, and I let my son hate me because that’s what she wanted.
I look at Kirill now, standing near the back of the room. His face is a mask, but I know him. Even after all this time, I know him. I know the damage I’ve done.
But I also know that some promises are worth keeping, even when they cost you everything.
After a while, the room settles. Everyone waits for what I’ll say next. A hundred reporters’ eyes are fixed on me, and through those eyes, millions more of their readers and viewers will soon be looking on at the grim mess my life has become.
As for me? I’m looking only at Kirill.
“Elena was dying,” I explain. “She had developed a terminal case of acute myeloid leukemia. We tried everything. It was not enough.”
The room has gone still. Even the reporters have stopped shouting.
“When the outcome became clear, she asked me to help her end it on her own terms. She refused to die slowly in front of our boy.”
Kirill’s face has gone white.
“I told her no. For weeks, I told her no. I begged her to keep fighting. I would have done anything to keep her with me for one more day, one more hour, one more breath. But she was tired. And in the end, I loved her too much to make her suffer for my sake.
“My wife, with her dying wish, asked me to protect our son from the truth. She made me promise that he would never know she chose to leave him. I kept that promise for eighteen years.” I pause for a long, long breath.
“I failed her in so many ways while she was alive. This was the one promise I could keep. Now, I’m done keeping it.
Not to save myself—but because my son deserves to know his mother loved him enough to leave before he had to watch her wither away. ”
Kir turns and starts shoving through the crowd toward the exit.
I watch him go—my son, my blood, my greatest failure—and I don’t try to stop him.
He needs time. He’s just had eighteen years of hatred ripped out from under him, and I can’t expect him to process that in the span of a press conference.
But there’s someone else who needs to hear what I have to say next.
It’s Rae’s turn now. She’s standing near the back of the room, her face streaked with tears, her body twisting back and forth as she watches Kirill disappear through the doors. I can see the war playing out across her features—should she follow him out? Stay here? Run from both of us?
I don’t give her time to decide.
I lean into the microphone. “I have one more message. To the woman I tried to push away because I was terrified of losing someone again… I’m done being afraid.”
Rae freezes. Her eyes meet mine across the sea of bodies, and I see everything I’ve been running from reflected back at me.
“I spent eighteen years convinced that loving someone was the worst thing I could do to them. Elena’s death proved it. I watched the light leave her eyes and I swore I’d never let anyone that close to me again.
“Then you, Rae Everett, walked into my life. I tried to push you away. I told you that you were nothing to me and I treated you as such. I lied, because I thought the kindest thing I could do was make you hate me.”
Those brown eyes, wet with tears, still watching me.
“I was wrong. The kindest thing I can do is tell the truth: that I love you, Rae. And if you’ll let me keep you, then I swear to you this: I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”