17. The eggs are terrible. （Tamara）
THE EGGS ARE TERRIBLE. (TAMARA)
My father lets the phone ring exactly four times before answering.
“Tamara.”
He’s not surprised to hear from me. He knew I would call to collect. So I don’t bother with small talk.
“You said I’d see Mark.”
The line stays open long enough for him to enjoy making me wait. Then, “And good morning to you too.”
Anger flashes hot enough to tighten my grip around the phone.
“You promised me.”
“I promised you’d see him. I didn’t say when.”
“That’s not—”
A faint exhale. Not irritation. Worse, patience.
“He’s safe, Tamara.”
The phone feels too small for what I want from him. “That’s not enough.” My voice sharpens. “I want my son back.”
“It will have to be enough for now.”
“Where is he? What grade is he in?” The questions come out too fast. “Second? What school does he go to? Does he know about me?”
“Tamara—”
“No.” The word cuts sharply through the line. “You don’t get to do this to me. You stole my son from me. You forced me into a marriage in exchange for him. Now tell me where he is.”
He lets that sit. Just when I think he hung up, he says calmly, “You seeing the child depends on stability. The alliance is still settling. The Colombians are watching.”
“I don’t care about the Colombians.”
“You should.”
“I care about Mark.”
A pause.
“I care about ensuring you still have a future once this is over.”
Fury turns from red hot to white.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that if I handed you the child immediately, you would take him and run.”
The bluntness of it steals my breath.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you.” He stays maddeningly even. “You have money. A successful business. American citizenship. No emotional attachment to this life.” He doesn’t even blink. “You would disappear before the marriage has time to stabilize.”
For one clean second, I understand why people break things.
“So this was never about protecting me.”
“Of course it was. But protection requires permanence.”
I feel suddenly sick. “Permanence,” I repeat, the word vile in my mouth.
“You’re married now. Eventually there will be another child. Roots. Responsibilities. Time.” His voice softens slightly. “Then emotions become more complicated.”
The meaning is instantly clear. He wants me trapped deeply enough that leaving becomes impossible.
“Bullshit.” My voice shakes now. “I should go to the police.”
This time my father actually sighs. Not worried. Disappointed.
“As if the police could untangle what men like Aleksander Sokolov and I are involved in.” He knows exactly where to put that reminder. “I’ll contact you when arrangements can be made.”
“Papa—”
The word escapes. Old instinct. Old desperation. I hate myself for it immediately.
His voice softens at the other end of the line. Most people would mistake it for kindness. I know better.
“Be patient a little longer, solnyshko.”
Then the line goes dead.
I stare at my phone long after the call ends. The endearment sits on my skin like something I need to wash off. He always could make cruelty sound like tenderness and wait for me to be the one embarrassed by the difference.
Rage sits sharp and useless in my chest. The kind that burns clean through and leaves nothing behind. Eventually, I force myself upright and move barefoot toward the kitchen.
Coffee first. Functionality second.
If I let myself think too long about the fact that my son is somewhere in the world breathing and alive while I still don’t know his favorite color, I might genuinely lose my mind.
So instead, I open my laptop.
Work. Layouts. Materials. Restoration estimates. Things I can actually touch.
The Kandinsky is propped near the fireplace, wrapped in acid-free paper I found in one of Aleksander’s storage cabinets. The tear is small. Stabilized for now. Barely visible beneath the protective wrapping.
That somehow makes it worse.
A destroyed thing should look destroyed. This looks like something that might be fine from a distance until you come close enough to see where the surface split.
I confirm the conservator appointment for next Tuesday at two and add the estimate to the folder beside my laptop. The woman on the phone had been kind in the careful way experts are kind around damage. On the wall, she’d said, most people might not see the repair.
Some things survive damage. They just stop looking untouched.
The urge to call my father again still burns under my skin, but I know exactly what he’ll do. He’ll let me bleed against the silence. So I close the laptop.
I need to do something small. Something tangible.
Breakfast.
Not complicated or ambitious. Eggs and toast. I can handle eggs and toast.
Probably.
The kitchen still feels designed for someone more competent than me, all gleaming counters and professional-grade appliances.
But I find eggs, bread, butter. Simple things.
The toast comes out darker than intended, but not technically charcoal.
The eggs are less cooperative—too runny around the edges, too soft in the center, which feels unnecessarily personal.
I lower the heat, stir more carefully, and manage to produce something that resembles breakfast if nobody examines it under direct light.
Progress.
I’m plating everything with extreme concentration when I hear footsteps behind me and turn.
Aleksander pauses at the kitchen entrance. Dark trousers. White shirt. Sleeves rolled to the forearms. Hair still damp from a shower. He looks too composed for this early in the morning, which feels unfair on several levels.
He takes in the counter. The plates. The coffee. The small stack of restoration notes I forgot to move. Then me.
“You cooked again.”
“Attempted breakfast,” I correct. “The outcome remains legally ambiguous.”
He looks at the plate. “Eggs?”
“In theory.”
He sits without hesitation. His attention drops briefly to the restoration notes. “You called more conservators.”
“I damaged the painting. I’m trying to fix it.”
He is quiet for a moment, looking at me in that way he has, like he’s seeing five thoughts underneath the one I admitted to. “What did they say?”
“That it can be repaired. But not erased.”
“That’s usually how restoration works.”
The words are calm. Almost gentle.
I push one of the plates toward him. “Before you say anything, you should know the eggs are probably terrible.”
“I survived dinner the other day.”
He lifts a forkful to his mouth. I watch far too closely. His face doesn’t change as he chews. Not even a flicker. That alone tells me everything.
“They’re bad,” I say.
“Yes.”
I pause with my fork halfway to my mouth. Frankly, I expected him to lie.
His mouth curves. “But you made them.”
We eat in a silence that should feel awkward but doesn’t. When he reaches for his coffee, his attention catches briefly on the little heart at the inside of my wrist.
“It’s pretty,” he says simply.
Most people ask: What does it mean? Who was it for? Aleksander doesn’t. He just takes a sip of coffee and lets his comment be what it is.
“Thank you,” I manage finally.
Aleksander patiently finishes half the eggs without a single complaint.
My father weaponizes patience. Every gesture, every question, every comment eventually reveals itself as leverage.
But Aleksander already has leverage.
And he still sits here eating runny eggs like hurting my feelings would cost him. The thought lodges under my ribs.
Every desperate solution my brain has cycled through since the wedding ends in the same place: my father has too much power, and Aleksander has more. I hate that those are the only terms the world seems to understand.
But sitting across from me is also the only man who has looked at my panic and answered it with logistics instead of manipulation. Security routes. Work schedules. Conservators. Solutions. Not promises. Real things.
It’s starting to look too much like trust. Maybe that’s why I blurt the next thing out.
“I spoke to my father this morning.”
Aleksander’s fork pauses, then continues with the kind of control that makes me wonder what I just stepped on.
“What did he say?”
I stare at my plate, kicking myself for mentioning the call. I cannot tell him about Mark yet. Not before I am sure he would be willing to help me.
“I almost screamed,” I say, trying to deflect.
Aleksander lets it sit there. “Would that have helped?”
“No.”
“Then don’t waste your voice.”
A derisive snort escapes me. The corner of his mouth almost moves before he looks back down at his plate and takes another bite of the terrible eggs.
“You don’t have to keep eating those.”
“I know.”
I shake my head before he can see too much. “You’re strange,” I mutter, ignoring that the morning feels almost normal.
“I’ve been called worse.”
His phone buzzes on the counter, bringing the other world back. But he doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, he looks back at me. “Thursday is confirmed. The Healy visit.”
“Maya told me.”
“I want Mikhail with you.”
“Do I get a vote?”
“Yes.”
That surprises me. Aleksander sets his fork down.
“If you don’t want Mikhail, I’ll assign someone else. But you need someone who can pass socially and still handle trouble if it comes. He can do both.”
I study him.
“I can live with Mikhail. As long as he doesn’t scare my clients.”
“He’ll behave.”
His phone buzzes again. He still doesn’t answer.
“You can take it,” I say.
“I will.”
He finishes the last bite first. Every terrible mouthful. Then he stands, carrying both plates to the sink like this is something we do. Like breakfast is a thing that happens between us now.
At the edge of the kitchen, he pauses.
“Tamara.”
I look up.
“Don’t call your father alone again.”
My spine stiffens immediately. But before I can snap back, he adds, “Not because you need permission. Because men like him know exactly how to hurt you when no one else is listening.”
I don’t know what to say to that. So I say nothing. Aleksander lets me have the silence. Then his phone buzzes a third time, and the moment breaks.
“I’ll be in the study,” he says.
“Working?”
“Yes.”
“On something illegal?”
“Probably.”
I shouldn’t smile.
I do.
He sees it.
Before he turns away, the almost-smile on his mouth becomes real.