Chapter 31 Polina
Polina
Dmitri goes white before the rage hits, and by the time he reaches the third page of the file, I know neither of us will leave this room the same.
He’s standing behind his desk with the folder open in both hands, reading so closely he seems to forget I’m in front of him.
I sit across from him with my fingers locked together and watch every page land.
First comes disbelief. Then fury. Grief arrives last, and that one does the most damage because for one awful second, he looks like the boy who stood beside me at my parents’ funeral and not the pakhan he’s become.
“Where did you get this?” he asks without looking up.
“Tony gave it to me.”
That gets his attention. His eyes lift fast. “Tony handed you this file?”
“Yes. I suspect he knew what it was, and he knew I deserved to see it before anyone started managing me.”
Dmitri stares at me for half a second before dropping his gaze back to the page. He keeps reading. I already know what he’s seeing. That makes it easier to watch my cousin get there too.
He turns another page, and his mouth pulls tight. “Jesus Christ,” he breathes.
I don’t respond. There isn’t anything useful to add.
He reads for another minute, then sets the file on the desk. “If this is real, then Vadim Morozov ordered the hit. And… Lev knew.”
That one takes a second to push past the burn in my throat. “Yes.”
Dmitri doesn’t speak right away. He just looks at me as if he wants me to contradict myself, save him the trouble of believing it, and tell him this doesn’t end with blood and betrayal and every old wound torn open again.
I can’t do that for him. I couldn’t do it for myself, either.
“He knew,” I confirm again. “He hid it.”
Dmitri turns away from the desk and starts pacing. That’s worse than shouting. Quiet Dmitri is dangerous. Dmitri pacing means his mind is doing ten things at once, and at least half of them end with someone dead.
“I’ll kill him,” he growls.
I let out a sigh, because as much as I hate to remind him of the obvious, I have to. “You need him.”
He lets out a grunt then drops into the chair across from me and opens the file again. He taps one page with his finger.
“This part,” he says. “The cross-reference.”
I already know where he is. I wish I didn’t.
“Tell me I’m reading it wrong.”
“You’re not. It means someone on the Kozlov side may have known. Or even approved it. Or maybe they just learned what happened after and helped bury it.”
The silence that follows feels heavy enough to bruise.
Dmitri leans back slowly, and for a second, he looks at nothing. “No one else has seen this?”
“Not from me.”
“Good.” He closes the folder and rests both hands on top of it.
“I’m going to verify every page. I’m going to trace where it came from, who touched it, and whether anyone on our side knew what Vadim Morozov did.
If someone in this family had a hand in your parents’ murder, I’ll find out.
And if someone covered it up, I’ll find that out too. ”
The promise should feel like solid ground. It doesn’t. All I want is to hear from the man who made sure I’d never trust him again.
Dmitri studies my face for a long moment, and something in him softens.
“Listen to me,” he says.
I look up.
“You are my family. Nothing in that folder changes it. Not my father. Not my uncle. Not any dead bastard with a name tied to this. You’re my cousin. That does not change.”
My eyes sting, but I blink away the tears. “You don’t have to say it like I’m five.”
“You’ve had a brutal week, Polina. Take the comfort.”
I push up from the chair too quickly, and my stomach turns hard enough to make me grab the armrest and close my eyes.
Dmitri is beside me at once. “Polina.”
“I’m fine.”
“You look like you’re about to throw up on my rug.”
“That’s a very loving thing to say.”
“It’s a very expensive rug.”
I breathe through my nose and wait for the nausea to pass. It takes longer than I want. When I straighten, Dmitri is watching me too closely.
“Are you sick?” he asks.
“No.”
He lifts a brow.
“I mean, yes. Technically. But not with anything contagious.” I wave him off. “I’m going upstairs.”
He doesn’t move aside at first. He studies me for a second, then steps back. “I’ll start on this today.”
“Good.”
“And Polina.”
I stop at the door, but I don’t turn around.
“You won’t go through this alone.”
I want that to comfort me. It should. Dmitri means it, and he’s one of the few people alive whose promises actually count for something.
Instead, I nod and leave before I do something humiliating, like cry in his office.
By the time I get upstairs, my stomach has gone from unsettled to vicious.
I barely make it to the bathroom before I’m on my knees in front of the toilet, with one hand braced against the floor and the other latched onto porcelain.
When it passes, I stay there for a minute with my forehead against the edge of the tub and wait for the room to stop moving.
This is getting harder to hide.
When I finally make it back to the bedroom, there’s a tray on the low table by the sofa filled with tea, crackers, and a wedge of lemon.
Mila is beside it with one hand around her own cup, watching me with that calm, observant look I’ve come to associate with Alexei’s wife.
Since I started staying here, she’s been kind and asks nothing of me.
Tea appears when I need it. Fresh towels turn up before I ask.
She checks in without prying, and I’ve been grateful enough to like her while keeping enough distance to avoid any real confessions.
That distance vanishes the second she sees my face.
“You look awful,” she comments.
“Thank you,” I mutter.
Mila’s mouth curves faintly. “Sit down before you fall down.”
I sink onto the sofa because arguing would require more strength than I have. Mila pours tea and hands me a cup, then takes the chair across from me. For a few seconds, she lets me pretend this is casual.
Then her gaze drops to the tray.
“How long?”
My stomach drops. “How long, what?”
Mila looks at me steadily. “How long have you been pregnant?”
There it is. No soft lead-in. No dancing around it. Just the question I’ve been dreading, dropped cleanly into the middle of the room.
I open my mouth to deny it, to make a joke, to do anything except tell the truth. Instead my face crumples.
Mila sets her cup down at once. “Oh, sweetheart.”
That does me in.
The tears come so fast I can’t breathe around them.
I put my tea on the table before I spill it, and then Mila is kneeling in front of me, pulling me against her while I fold into her like I’ve forgotten how to hold myself together.
She doesn’t ask anything. She doesn’t offer platitudes.
She just wraps her arms around me and lets me cry until the worst of it burns through.
“I’m sorry,” I choke out.
“For what?”
“For ruining your blouse.”
“I have plenty of shirts, Polina.”
A broken laugh slips out of me, then turns into another sob. Mila rubs my back and waits. She waits through the tears, through the hitching breaths, through the mess of it, and by the time I finally pull away, my face feels swollen and my pride is somewhere on the floor.
“I’m pregnant,” I whisper.
“I gathered that.”
“I haven’t told anyone.”
“Not even Lev.”
It isn’t a question. I shake my head.
Mila studies me, and when she speaks again, her voice is gentler. “What did he do?”
I close my eyes and draw in a breath. “He knew things about my parents. About what happened to them. He found out long before I did, and he said nothing.”
“Oh, Polina.”
“I should hate him.” My laugh comes out ragged. “That would be easier.”
“But you don’t.”
“No.” The word breaks apart on the way out. “I love him anyway, and I hate myself for that.”
Mila’s hand moves over my hair, slow and steady.
“I keep thinking about what he hid,” I whisper. “Then I remember his face or his voice or some stupid thing he said months ago, and… I love him, and I despise that I do. What does that say about me?”
“It says you’re hurt,” Mila replies softly. “It says you’re in love. Not the same thing as being weak.”
“It feels close.”
“I know.”
That nearly starts me crying again.
Mila rises and sits beside me instead of across from me.
She keeps one arm around my shoulders and says nothing for a long time, which turns out to be exactly what I need.
There’s comfort in not being pushed toward an answer I can’t survive yet.
I listen to the faint sounds from elsewhere in the house and try to get hold of myself.
When she finally speaks, she does it carefully. “You can be furious with him. You can refuse to forgive him. You can throw things at his head for the next decade, and I’ll probably help you choose which objects make the strongest statement.”
That wins the smallest, wettest laugh of my life.
“But this isn’t only about him anymore.”
I go quiet.
Mila takes my hand and squeezes once. “It will hurt the baby, too.”
The room seems to narrow around that sentence.
I stare at our joined hands. “I don’t know how to face him when I want him this much and still hate him for it.”
Mila’s thumb brushes across my knuckles. “You do not need to decide everything today. You only need to understand that your child cannot pay for what he did.”
I swallow hard and nod because that’s all I have left.
Mila nudges the cup back into my hands. “Drink the tea before it gets cold.”
“That’s your grand wisdom?”
“For this minute, yes.”
I wrap both hands around the cup and stare down into it, wishing the one person I want comfort from hadn’t been the one to break me in the first place.