Vadim
It happened so fast.
One moment Iskra was on her knees shielding the baby with her body, the next she was on the floor.
The baby was screaming—a sound that filled the small apartment and found every wall simultaneously.
Konstantin moved before I could speak, dropping to the floor, trying to reach the baby, but she was still tangled in the sling against Iskra’s chest.
“You fucking moron,” I roared at Bogdan, rounding on him with the specific fury of a man who had given no such order. “Who told you to touch her?”
He raised his hands and backed away, the colour leaving his face.
“Sorry, Pakhan. I thought you wanted—”
“Get out of my sight before I toss you off the fucking balcony,” I said, my voice dropping to something quieter and considerably more dangerous than the roar.
He turned and left at speed.
Konstantin had managed to free the baby from the sling.
Runa.
Her cheeks were red and blotched from screaming. A pink mark sat on the side of her head where she had gone down with her mother. I stared at it.
I would castrate that mudak before the week was out.
I took my daughter from Konstantin—my daughter, the words still arriving with the distinct weight of something not yet fully processed—and tried to cradle her.
She was squirming, all four limbs moving at once with the furious energy of someone who had opinions about the situation and intended to express all of them simultaneously.
I tightened my grip so she wouldn’t fall and began to walk the small length of the apartment, humming low under my breath.
It took a moment to find the right note. Then another.
Her cries began to wane.
“Check the suitcase for Runa’s things,” I said quietly to Konstantin, keeping my voice level so as not to disturb the fragile progress. “Dump anything of Iskra’s. Take the suitcase.”
He moved to check Iskra first—fingers to her pulse, rolling her carefully onto her back—before crossing to the suitcase. The cries had reduced to hiccups now, small and involuntary, racking through her tiny body with the complete exhaustion of a baby who had screamed everything she had.
Nikolai had done well. Even accounting for the three grown men who had somehow managed to lose a woman with an infant for the better part of an hour.
“Got it,” Konstantin said, zipping the case.
I glanced down at the woman by my feet. Blood had matted into her hair above the back of her neck, dark against the gold of it.
“Brat?” Konstantin’s voice, carefully neutral.
“Leave her,” I said, and moved toward the door, stepping over her without looking down again.
Then Runa shifted.
She leaned into my chest—a small, exhausted weight—and rested her head there with one final hiccup, her eyes drooping, her fist finding the lapel of my jacket and gripping it.
I stilled for a moment.
Then I gently stroked the back of her head and walked out of the apartment.
??
??
??
Runa had fat tears running down her cheeks as she stared at us.
I realised, somewhere at forty thousand feet, how spectacularly ill-equipped three grown men were to care for a baby.
The aeroplane ride couldn’t have been comfortable for her either.
Bogdan held her on his lap with the careful rigidity of a man handling something he was terrified of dropping.
I tried to entertain her. Konstantin had his phone out and was reading with the focused concentration of a man cramming for an examination he had not known he was taking.
I glanced at Bogdan.
“Try not to drop her,” I said, my voice dry, before turning back to coo at my daughter.
My child.
Whole. Well. Alive.
“She feels… damp,” Bogdan said, his eyes moving between us with barely concealed alarm.
“Right,” Konstantin said, scrolling. “I found something. Basic care for a baby at five months.”
“Go on,” I said, already moving toward the suitcase.
“For sleeping—baby should still sleep in your room. They require twelve to sixteen hours of sleep per day.”
“Mm,” Bogdan said, staring down at Runa’s head as though it might provide further instruction.
“Breastmilk or formula is sufficient at this stage.”
I pulled the suitcase open and began rummaging. Nappies—a considerable supply. Jars and pouches of food. I reached for a rolled bag, opened it, found more bags inside, and eventually extracted several bottles of milk. Breastmilk, possibly. I hadn’t quite factored that in.
“Nappies will be wet several times a day. Bowel movements once a day or every few days—as long as the stool is soft, that’s acceptable.”
“Who is changing the nappy?” Bogdan asked, lifting Runa slightly off his lap as though the question and the action were related.
Konstantin carried on as though he hadn’t heard him.
“Bathing a few times a week is sufficient. Then there is playtime—toys, reading, and apparently babies love bubbles.” A pause. “There is something called tummy time that strengthens the upper body.”
I shoved a milk bottle into Konstantin’s hand.
“Look up how to warm breastmilk,” I said, and gathered a nappy, ointment and sensitive wipes before taking Runa from Bogdan, who looked immediately and profoundly relieved.
“You’ll want to air her out a little,” Konstantin added, still scrolling. “Prevents nappy rash.”
I held up the ointment. I had done some research of my own.
Bogdan’s jacket went down on the table. I laid Runa on it and considered the logistics of the nappy while she began gearing up for another round of screaming. I moved faster.
This was not easy.
My mind went to Iskra. I shut it down.
Here was my child—and she was terrified of me. Her own father.
That fucking deceitful bitch.
“Straps at the sides,” Konstantin said, holding his phone up helpfully.
I managed it.
Clean. Fresh. Fed.
She fell into an exhausted slumber in my arms with the absolute totality of a baby who had run out of everything and surrendered to sleep as the only remaining option.
I inspected every part of her in the quiet—her tiny ears, the curve of her cheek, the dark hair that was all mine, the fist that had gripped my lapel in Istanbul and hadn’t fully let go of the memory of it.
Her passport listed her date of birth and full name.
Runa Valeria Kozlova.
That would be amended.
Runa Valeria Dragunova.
A warmth settled deep in my sternum and I cradled her a fraction closer. She whimpered without opening her eyes.
“You’re a papochka,” Konstantin murmured, settling beside me and brushing his hand gently over Runa’s head. “My niece is considerably prettier than her father.”
I glanced at him. Then exhaled.
Yes. A father at thirty-seven.
Not to a son or an heir in the way I had imagined it. But this child was mine to claim—and somewhere beneath the fury and the exhaustion and the thirty-seven years of being everything except this, that fact was beginning to settle into something that felt permanent.
??
??
??
The welcome Runa received when we reached home was too loud for her. She tried to burrow her face into my jacket, shying away from the noise and the people pressing in around us. She only raised her head when Olya spoke—gently, instinctively, the way Olya did everything that mattered.
This concerned me. I wasn’t capable of being soft-spoken at all times. That was simply the truth of it.
“She needs rest,” I said, and carried her upstairs.
Only then did I remember she would need a nappy change.
“Bring the case,” I said, as I neared the top of the stairs.
Her makeshift travel cot had been set up in my bedroom as instructed.
I laid her on the bed and began to talk—about the house, about what life had been like for me and her uncle, about Chernograd in winter when the cold came off the water and the city turned to stone.
It didn’t matter what I said. It was never about the words.
It was about the tone—low, steady, the certain register that seemed to reach her before anything else did.
Her eyes stayed on me as I talked and worked on the nappy. It wasn’t as wet or heavy as before, which meant I had caught it in reasonable time. Progress.
Lev would have disregarded her for being female.
I pressed the fasteners shut one by one beside her legs, each one snapping into place while she yawned and bit into her fist with the focused dedication of someone with important business to attend to.
I lifted her and cradled her in one arm, then crossed the room and drew the full-length curtains closed, blocking out the light entirely.
Her gurgles began—not unhappy sounds, something closer to the murmur of a person settling.
I began to pace, talking low, the slow rhythm of it calming us both in the particular way of two people who had not yet decided what they were to each other but were finding their way toward it regardless.
Some things were in place for her as an emergency. But nothing was more important than her wellbeing.
She would soon forget her mother.