Chapter 33
KONSTANTIN
I stand outside his door, the dull hum of machines on the other side more ominous than any silence. My fingers twitch near the handle. One breath. Another. Then I push it open.
Dmitry sits propped up on a single pillow, IV line threading into the crook of his arm, monitors ticking soft green constellations behind him.
He looks smaller than I remember, as if parting with marrow shaved inches off his height.
Yet, his eyes, so like mine, track me the second I cross the threshold.
“You asked to see me,” I say, keeping my voice level.
“Yes.” His tone is almost conversational, but the tremor at the edge betrays fatigue he’ll never admit.
I wait. He gestures to the chair beside the bed; I stay on my feet.
“Roman’s funeral is in three days,” he says, fingers worrying the blanket. “I want you there.”
I let the words hang between us, weighed down by everything we’ve never been able to say. “You don’t want me there.”
“Why not?” he counters, brow lifting, as though the idea is absurd.
I give a humorless laugh. “You still think I killed him.”
He shakes his head once, too quickly. “No. I don’t.”
He looks away as he says it—eyes drifting to the half-closed blinds where night presses against the glass. A flicker of something shadows his face, gone before I can name it. Regret? Fear? The truth struggling to surface?
“What aren’t you telling me?” I ask, taking a step closer. “You didn’t burn my warehouse, you say you believe I didn’t pull the trigger on Roman—so who did? And why call a truce now?”
Silence settles, deep and brittle. The monitor beside him beeps steadily, an impatient metronome. He’s hiding something.
The shift is subtle, but I know him. Every calculated breath, every feigned pause. There’s a flicker of something else in his face now—regret? Uncertainty? Guilt?
I step closer. “What is it?”
He doesn’t respond. Just exhales slowly and finally meets my gaze again, and the look he gives me is not one I recognize. It isn’t commanding. It isn’t mocking. It’s…tired.
“I want you there,” he says again, quieter this time. “That’s all.”
But it’s not all. I know it. He wants something else, something he’s not saying.
And for the first time in a long time, I don’t know what it is.
I wait for him to say more. I watch him like a man trying to read the sea in the stillness of a single wave. But nothing comes. Just the steady rise and fall of his chest, the tick of the heart monitor, the man who taught me not to blink first now refusing to meet my eyes.
“That’s all?” I ask, my voice low.
“That’s all,” he says again, but even he doesn’t sound convinced.
I nod once, then turn and walk out.
The hallway feels too long, too narrow, like it’s closing in on me. I move through it on muscle memory, back toward the pediatric wing. My hands are clenched at my sides. My jaw aches from the way I’ve been grinding my teeth.
Nikolai’s room is quiet when I step in.
Nadya’s there—curled up in the chair beside his bed, watching our son sleep. She doesn’t look up right away, but I see her shoulders lift, her body sensing me before her eyes find me.
“Hey,” she says softly.
I lower myself beside her, not ready to speak yet. The soft beeping from the machines and the gentle hiss of the IV fill the room.
“He’s resting better,” she adds, reaching over to adjust Nikolai’s blanket. Her fingers linger there, brushing against his tiny arm.
“Good,” I manage.
She turns to me, studying me now. “You saw him?”
I nod. “He wants me to go to Roman’s funeral.”
She doesn’t respond right away, just looks at me with eyes that don’t blink, like she’s weighing the weight of that ask.
“You think it’s a trap?” she finally says.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “It didn’t feel like one. But nothing about him ever feels like it is until it’s too late.”
She exhales and rests her head against my shoulder. “Then don’t go.”
“I have to,” I say.
“Why?”
“I need to know what he’s doing. What he’s playing at. And—” I hesitate. “Part of me feels…responsible now, considering what he’s done for Nikolai.”
She’s quiet for a while. Then she lifts her head. “I’m coming with you.”
I turn to her, startled. “Nadya—”
“Don’t argue with me. I want to be there. I’m not letting you face any of this alone anymore.”
I search her face. She’s serious, more than serious. Steady and certain, even after everything. Even with Nikolai on that bed.
“I don’t want you near him,” I say quietly. “You know that.”
“I’ll be near you,” she says. “That’s what matters.”
I look back at Nikolai. His chest rises and falls in slow, even breaths. Stronger than before. Still so small. Still ours.
“All right,” I say finally, threading my fingers through hers. “We’ll go. Together.”
Rain hammers the windshield in relentless sheets, turning the cemetery lane into a slick ribbon of black water.
I kill the engine beside a row of idling limousines, and for a moment neither Nadya nor I move.
The wipers stall mid-arc; the blur outside resolves into a scattering of black coats and black umbrellas and faces blurred by grief—or curiosity—under the gray canopy of Russian sky. Even in death, Roman draws a crowd.
I step out first, the downpour soaking my lapels before I can yank the umbrella from the back seat.
Nadya slips beneath the canvas with me, her hand light on my arm, the only warmth in a world gone cold and wet.
Five of my men fan out behind us in plain suits, nothing ostentatious but visible enough to remind Dmitry’s loyalists that I’m not walking into a lion’s den unarmed.
We reach the edge of the assembled mourners just as the casket begins its slow descent.
The crane squeals; taut straps hiss through metal guides.
A priest drones the final rites, the Latin swallowed by thunder.
Roman’s coffin—jet-black mahogany banded in silver—glides downward into a rectangle of mud, the polished lid already stippled by raindrops.
I don’t push forward. Nadya and I stay under a cluster of skeletal birches, half-hidden yet impossible to miss.
My coat is heavy with water; each breath clouds the air between us.
Across the open grave Dmitry stands beneath a massive black umbrella held by a bodyguard.
He turns, meets my gaze, and inclines his head—neither welcome nor warning.
Beside him Alexei does the same, eyes rimmed red, looking smaller than I’ve ever seen him.
The crowd ripples with whispered recognition.
A few glances turn hostile; more turn wary.
They know the rumors—Konstantin set the fire, Konstantin betrayed his own flesh, Konstantin’s war will bury us all.
I feel each stare like a stone in my coat pocket, but I keep my face empty, rain streaking down my jaw in place of tears.
Then she sees me. Ludmila breaks from the front row. Hysteria rides her voice, high and raw. “What is he doing here?” She points, hair plastered to her cheeks, mascara running in gothic streams. “You know what he did! Dmitry—why is he here?”
The murmurs swell into a tide. My men step instinctively closer. Nadya tightens her grip on my elbow.
Dmitry says nothing—only lifts a hand, a silent command for calm.
Ludmila wrenches free of the aide trying to restrain her and lurches toward me, but Alexei catches her, arms around her shoulders, guiding her back beneath the umbrella.
Her sobs pierce the drum of rain; every eye flicks between her grief and my stillness.
I should speak. I should offer some hollow condolence.
Instead I watch the coffin settle, the straps loosen, the crane retract—steel bite of finality.
A worker shovels the first wet clod; it lands with a dull, definitive thud.
Roman, who once called me brother more than blood, is now only a shape in the ground.
A gust flips the edge of our umbrella, spattering Nadya’s face. She doesn’t flinch.
“I told you,” Ludmila sobs. “He’s cursed. Everything he touches turns to blood.”
Dmitry finally steps forward and places a hand on her arm. “Enough,” he says quietly. “This isn’t the time.”
She shoves his hand away and disappears back into the crowd, shaking and muttering.
I exhale.
“I think we’ve paid our respects,” Nadya says quietly beside me.
“Wait,” I say.
The earth keeps swallowing Roman, shovel by shovel.
Rain turns the grave into a mirror, the dark water rippling with every drop, every whispered prayer.
Nadya and I don’t move. We stay rooted at the edge of the crowd, exposed but silent.
The umbrella above us trembles in the wind, but neither of us speaks.
I can feel the weight of every glance like it’s pressing into my ribs. I hear them too—low voices slipping through the storm, meant to be buried in the downpour but not quiet enough.
“Is Dmitry welcoming his bastard back now?”
“Can’t believe he had the gall to show his face.”
“Must be some deal he’s come up with.”
My jaw locks. The same words I’ve heard my whole life, flung like knives behind my back and sometimes to my face. Bastard. Interloper.
I look across the grave to Dmitry. He stands motionless, umbrella tilted, his face a carved sculpture—stoic, unreadable. Like marble. Like Roman’s tombstone will be. There’s no pride in his expression. No shame either. Just that careful neutrality he’s always worn like armor.
And now I don’t know what to make of him.
He gave his own blood to save my son. Made himself a donor. Risked the surgery.
Nadya squeezes my hand, grounding me, but it doesn’t stop the heat that floods my chest. Not anger. Not shame.
Confusion.
Because they’re not wrong. Dmitry doesn’t just let people back into his life. He tests them. Breaks them. Uses them. And if they fail—he buries them, sometimes in graves like this one, sometimes in silence.
So, what is this? Why call me to Roman’s funeral?
Why offer up a piece of himself for Nikolai, his grandson he’s never met?
Why now?
My eyes drift across the crowd. Familiar faces. Some I grew up with. Some who wanted me gone. Some who helped push me out. Most avoid my gaze. A few linger long enough to make their disapproval known. One man crosses himself and mutters something that sounds like “traitor.”
I don’t flinch. But inside, a part of me is turning over and over, trying to find solid ground. Is he using this funeral to bring me back into the fold? Is this a power play? Is this guilt?
Or is this another game I haven’t figured out the rules to?
Beside the casket, Dmitry bows his head. Water trickles off the brim of his umbrella. Alexei shifts, whispering something to him, and for a fleeting second, I think Dmitry looks tired.
Not aged. Not weak. But…tired. In a way I’ve never seen.
It’s gone the moment I blink.
“It’s time now,” Nadya says again. “Let’s go.”
This time I don’t argue.