Chapter Forty-eight
Inna Grace
My fingers curled deeper into the blanket as Dmitri got into bed beside me. Cigarette smoke and alcohol followed him into the sheets. We agreed to end things two hours ago. After that, he left. He must have been drinking.
I wasn’t even sure when he returned from Cuba, too, maybe after hearing I was sick.
It didn’t matter anyway. He asked for permission to leave as if my answer would have changed anything.
People always did that. They wrapped words inside concern so it sounded softer.
Like care and abandonment couldn’t exist in the same sentence.
He didn’t move toward me. He stayed on the far side of the bed and turned the lights off.
Silence settled between us. The distance helped.
The farther he stayed, the easier this became.
If he touched me, spoke softly, pulled me into his chest, everything inside me would weaken again.
Distance was safer. It gave people room to survive what came after.
I stared at the wall in the dark.
Dmitri was good to us. That was the problem. In those past months, he became important to me. Falling for him happened naturally because he was easy to love.
But my mother used to feel that important too.
She tied my hair before school every morning and read stories to me at night while I lay against her chest. Some mornings, she woke up early just to cook food she knew I liked, then got me dressed herself.
Back then, life was certain. But she disappeared without warning. No goodbye or explanation. Nothing.
My father stayed longer until he couldn’t. Yes, Iker took him, but all those years, my father still said nothing about what our family really was. He left me blind inside it. I spent years not knowing if my parents were alive or dead, suffering somewhere or comfortable somewhere else.
My mother appeared again, glowing as if she had a simple life. Her skin was clear, and she wore expensive clothes. She looked rested, healthy, untouched by the kind of life that nearly swallowed Cole and me whole. And knowing who she truly was now, I understood something worse.
She knew where we were. She could have reached us if she had wanted to. It didn’t have to be openly or directly. But through strangers. She could have sent a message through someone else. She sent nothing.
Cole and I barely had enough to eat some nights.
I skipped meals, so his portions looked bigger.
Other nights I sat awake, doing calculations over and over, hoping the numbers would change if you stared at them long enough.
We lost our home and slept in someone else’s house, where our existence felt temporary every single day.
I smiled through it all because at least we weren’t outside.
Why did this still hurt so much?
I pressed my palm flat against my chest and rubbed slowly against the ache building there. Something unpleasant climbed my throat, and I swallowed hard against it.
Dmitri would leave eventually. Not because he was cruel.
That would have been almost easier. The good ones left too.
The people who made staying feel permanent were always the ones who could destroy you completely once life pulled them elsewhere.
Business would call. Duty would call. Something bigger than love would arrive, and they would go.
I would not wait for him to leave. I would leave first.
The nausea rose suddenly before I could finish the thought. I shoved the blanket aside and rushed toward the bathroom. I made it to the toilet and bent forward.
Dmitri appeared behind me so fast I never heard him move. One hand gathered my hair away from my face while the other moved slowly in circles on my back. My body shook through each wave as I emptied everything left in my stomach. Tears blurred my vision.
He held me until I finished and helped me up.
I moved to the sink and turned on the water, splashing my face.
The room tilted slightly, and I didn’t realize I was falling until his hand closed around my waist from behind, steadying me.
He wet a cloth and pressed it to my face, cleaning me up with a care that made my chest ache.
My body felt weak, and all I wanted was to lie down and disappear into sleep. Dmitri pressed his lips briefly to mine and murmured against them, “You’ll be alright.”
I wasn’t sure if I heard him well.
He carried me back to bed and lay me down. “Take a sip.” He pressed a glass to my lips, and I drank before sinking back against the pillow.
At some point, he was talking while his hand moved through my hair. The ceiling softened above me. Everything drifted out of focus until the doctor appeared somewhere over me, saying something I couldn’t hold on to long enough to understand.
The sleep dragged me under, and I let it.
When I woke again, it wasn’t Dmitri’s voice or the doctor’s that pulled me back. It was Cole’s.
I stayed still for a moment, blinking at the ceiling while the room rebuilt itself around me. The light was brighter now. It wasn’t night anymore.
“I remind her every single day that I’m grown up,” Cole complained, “but she still treats me like I need supervision.”
Someone chuckled. “You are grown up. That is true.”
I sat up too fast the second I heard Dad’s voice. Pain split through my head, making me groan, pressing my fingers to my forehead while the room swayed around me. I waited for it to settle before opening my eyes again.
Cole was already beside me on the bed. “Should I call the doctor? You look terrible.”
I barely heard him because I was staring across the room on the sofa where Dad sat watching me. He was awake. He was here.
Cole squeezed my hand until I looked at him. “You’ll be fine,” he said with complete confidence. “You’re strong. Should I remind you the same way you always remind me?”
A weak laugh escaped me. “I’m fine.” My free hand covered his smaller one and held it there.
“Dad is back,” Cole announced proudly, turning toward him with a smile so bright it hurt to look at. “He said he’s done with work. No more leaving. Right, Dad?”
Dad smiled at him. “Yes.” He pushed himself up slowly, and I noticed the strain, the slight stiffness in his movements, the pain hidden beneath the effort. “Go bring your sister some warm water.”
Cole jumped off the bed and disappeared from the room.
Dad moved closer after Cole left, the limp subtle but impossible to miss once seen. He stopped beside the bed and looked down at me.
I didn’t know what I was supposed to feel. He was here. After years of silence, years of not knowing whether he was dead or suffering or simply gone by choice, he was standing in front of me like all that absence could somehow fit inside one room.
“The doctor will check on you again, but you’re stable,” he said softly, like every word needed careful placement. “My daughter.”
Something cracked inside me at those words. The way he said them reached somewhere deep and abandoned, somewhere I had locked shut out of survival. It was the voice of a father carrying too much regret and no idea where to unload it.
He sat beside me and took my hand.
My eyes dropped to his hands around mine.
They looked rougher than I remembered; the skin hardened, faint blisters cutting across his knuckles like evidence of years I never witnessed.
He held my hand with the same grip I used to imagine whenever the silence became unbearable, and I needed to believe he was still somewhere alive.
“No amount of apology fixes what I put you through,” he said. “A father shouldn’t do that to his children.”
My tears fell, and his hand rose to wipe them away. His thumb brushed beneath my eyes the same way it used to when I was little, and life still felt safe. I let him do it.
The sob broke out of me without warning, the kind dragged from somewhere sealed shut for years. It felt like grief splitting open all over again.
“I don’t deserve to be your father.” He looked away and forced himself to stand. A low grunt escaped him as he straightened, pain tightening across his face before he buried it again. “I’ll call the doctor. Do you need something?” He looked confused. “I’ll get you water.”
“Dad.” He stopped but didn’t turn to face. “I missed you,” I admitted, and the honesty surprised me.
The anger was still there beneath everything else. The questions, too. Why did he hide the truth about our family, and why did he never tell us about Iker? I needed those answers, but I missed him too.
He came back smelling faintly of antiseptic, his body still hurting, his movements slower than they used to be. But he came and called me his daughter.
Dad turned and came back to the bed. His arms wrapped around me carefully at first, then tightened. He held me against him as if he were afraid to let go again.
“I’m sorry.” His lips pressed against the top of my head. “I should’ve fought harder. You were waiting for me that night.”
I remembered the night he never came home.
He had been working the late shift. I stayed awake waiting for the sound of his keys at the door, thinking maybe he got called in for extra hours when midnight passed.
Then morning came, and his phone stayed off.
My texts remained unanswered. After two days, fear settled in.
When I reported him missing, the officers barely looked at me. They treated me like an inconvenience, standing behind a desk and asking impossible questions. Eventually, I stopped going because Cole needed food and one of us had to work.
“I’m back,” Dad whispered against my hair. “I’ll fight harder now.” He pulled away just enough to cup my face, both thumbs gently brushing across my cheeks. “I never stopped worrying about you.”
“Cole is grown now,” I said, my voice shaking again. “I took care of him.”
Dad nodded. A tear slipped down his face, and he didn’t bother hiding it. “You did.” His voice broke slightly. He pulled me against him again. “Now I’ll take care of both of you.”
A knock interrupted us, and Dad pulled back first. “I’ll get that.” He moved toward the door with the slight limp still visible in his stride. When he opened it, Anita stepped inside carrying a tray while Caitlin and Cole followed behind her.
Caitlin crossed the room and dropped onto the bed beside me with barely contained excitement.
“Girl, we made two sales,” she announced. “Your marketing skills are actually terrifying. You better recover quickly because we have an organization to build.”
A small laugh escaped me despite everything. “We sold?”
She pulled out her phone and showed me the screen. I saw two separate orders and confirmed down payments. I stared at the numbers for a moment without fully processing them. My brain still felt slow, like everything around me was happening one step ahead of my thoughts.
Caitlin placed the phone on the bed beside me. “You should eat, take your medicine, and recover properly.” She pulled the tray onto my lap and handed me the spoon. “We are officially busy women now.”
I looked past her toward Dad. He was leaning against the wall across the room with Cole beside him. Cole was talking animatedly about something while Dad simply watched him with a smile that looked unfamiliar and deeply familiar at the same time.
“That’s my father,” I told Caitlin.
“I know.” She stirred the porridge. “He has been here since before you woke up.”
I took a spoonful of the porridge and thought about Dmitri. He arranged this. He was probably gone to work, but he still arranged for Dad to be here when I woke up. The realization settled slowly inside me, warm and complicated.
“This blunt food should motivate you to recover faster and start eating actual food again,” Caitlin said.
“It’s working already,” I admitted, and she laughed.
The day somehow turned into something better than I had expected. I couldn’t even decide which part mattered more, seeing Dad alive after years of silence or the sales from the business Caitlin and I built from nothing except stress, stubbornness, and too many sleepless nights.
Both were things I waited for in different ways.
My phone buzzed on the bedside table, and Caitlin handed it to me while laughing at something Cole said across the room.
I unlocked it and opened Dmitri’s message. I expected him to ask how I was feeling or whether I’d seen Dad yet. Instead, he sent a picture.
It was me asleep on the plane, leaning against the seat with my face turned slightly toward the window. I swallowed and stared at it longer than necessary.
After all the times I asked him to take pictures of me when I was properly posed, this man apparently decided my best moment was when I was sleeping. And annoyingly enough, the photo was perfect.
I wasn’t posing or even aware he took it. Yet somehow he captured every angle so well it looked intentional, like I pretended to be asleep for aesthetic purposes.
The lighting softened my face, the window glow catching against my skin while the dark seat framed everything neatly. Why the fuck was he good at photography too?
Dmitri already walked through life unfairly attractive, terrifying, and rich. Apparently, he could also frame a photograph better than half the influencers online.
Did he consider becoming a photographer before deciding that the organized crime business suited him better?