Vadim
It took the better part of a year for my home to be rebuilt.
Not because of delays or lazy contractors, but because I expanded the property at the rear.
To the naked eye the front looked identical—the same stone facade, the same gates, the same unremarkable approach.
But foundations had been dug and a fresh set of rooms carved out before the rebuild began.
The kitchen was longer now, opening out to the back.
A double-storey extension on the east wing stood complete.
“Nice of you to make some extra room for me, brat,” Konstantin said, coming down the stairs.
“You moved our father’s killer in but refuse to let me live with you,” he complained, with the wounded dignity of a man who had rehearsed this argument.
“Like I said — you’re welcome to join him in the basement,” I said, my voice pleasant.
Olya was already in the kitchen, organising everything to her specifications with the focused energy of a woman who considered the new layout a personal challenge.
Tau was doing rounds with the byki, ensuring security remained rigorous.
The men had tried to mock him for getting drugged by Iskra.
He had remained silent in his usual manner and said nothing, which was somehow more unsettling than anything he could have said.
I hadn’t remained angry with Radovan or Tau. In the end she had fooled us all. She left me with photographic evidence of myself passed out and vulnerable, distributed to no one and kept only for herself—which was almost worse.
The memory irked me enough that I shouldered past my brother without a word.
My phone chimed. I reached for it as I strode toward the tall glass doors.
“Valentin,” I said, wondering why he was calling when we had concluded business not an hour ago.
“We might have found something,” he said, his voice carrying the brightness of a man about to deliver news he had been sitting on.
“Be more specific,” I said, my voice dry but composed. “You know how much we deal with.”
Then he said two words.
“Your wife.”
Time stopped for a moment while I processed the information.
I turned slowly and took in the shiny new kitchen—the longer counters, the glass doors, the east wing above it—and smiled.
“Come over. I’m at home. The one she blew up.”
He was still laughing when I disconnected.
I thought I could let her go, not realising how deep her talons ran. She was out there enjoying her life without my consent. That wasn't how my world worked. She had a debt to settle.
This time I was armed with knowledge and fully prepared.
This time she would understand what ownership meant.
??
??
??
Within twenty-four hours I was flooded with images of the woman who had absconded with more than just my dignity. The more images I flicked through, the more I felt the blood draining from my face.
“Vadim?”
I zoomed in on the small face crowned by thick locks of dark hair that took me straight back to the day I saw Makari. My throat clogged and I swiped again quickly. More images. Then a clear picture—pale blue eyes, an open smile, a small hand raised toward her treacherous mother’s face.
“You’re worrying me, brat,” Konstantin said, his voice dropping.
I closed my eyes and handed him my phone.
“Bogdan—alert the captain. We fly as soon as we reach the airport,” I said, but my voice fell flat, matching the hollowness that had opened up somewhere beneath my chest.
He wisely left the room to make the preparations.
My child.
A girl.
A Dragunov daughter.
How could I have been so careless as to forget that drunken night?
“Wow. Holy—” My brother stopped himself.
I took the phone back from him, needing to see her again. The little girl who was unmistakably, entirely mine.
“You’re a father,” Konstantin said, his voice hushed with something approaching awe. “I’m an uncle.” A pause. “A girl uncle.”
Iskra looked different in the photographs. Younger. Glowing. So—happy. I went back to the beginning and worked through each image carefully, silently calculating what age my daughter was.
“I’m not sure how to be a girl dyadya, brat,” Konstantin mused, apparently working through his uncle concerns regardless of my silence.
The baby was four months. Possibly a few weeks older.
“Damn,” he said, with a slow chuckle. “You’re a girl papochka.”
I raised my head as something shifted in my chest.
A girl daddy.
I shook my head as the full weight of what had been stolen from me settled in.
I hadn’t watched my child swell in her belly.
Hadn’t been there when she entered the world—when she took her first breath, when she suckled at her mother’s breast for the first time.
Every milestone catalogued in those photographs had happened without me. Every one of them taken from me.
If there was one thing the Bratva did not forgive, it was disloyalty. But theft of my flesh—that was the most intimate betrayal of all.
“You don’t look so good,” Konstantin continued, conversing largely with himself.
I dialled Nikolai’s number.
Waited.
“I got everything. Get every man available and guard them with your lives,” I said quietly. I didn’t need to add or else. It was implied. “I will let you know when I am due to land.”
“Of course, Pakhan,” he said—but I heard the curious note in his voice and chose to ignore it.
“Nikolai?”
“Da, Pakhan?”
“With your life,” I stressed, my voice dropping to something quieter and more absolute than a threat.
“They will not leave my sight. I swear it,” he vowed.
I nodded, more to myself than to him.
“Spasibo,” I murmured.
Offering my thanks was not something I did often. But Valentin and Nikolai had earned it.
With the call disconnected I finally faced my brother.
For a moment his excitement became contagious.
I was a papochka.