36. I want to hate you. （Aleksander）
I WANT TO HATE YOU. (ALEKSANDER)
“Can he get in here?”
Anna Morozov asks the question as soon as she closes the guest bedroom door.
She stands in the middle of our living room, wearing a white dress shirt that was probably clean this morning tucked into high-waisted jeans, her hair escaping its bun and one hand pressed flat against her stomach.
Her face is pale, but her voice is steady.
That tells me she has practice staying functional when scared.
I understand that kind of woman.
“No one gets past the lobby without us knowing.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Tamara rises from the sofa. “Anna, please. Sit down.”
She looks at Tamara, then in the direction of the bedrooms. Refusing my help, she carried Ivan from the garage into our apartment herself.
“I asked if my son is safe.”
I look toward the hallway. Ivan is behind one of the doors, asleep at last, with his mother’s scarf clutched in one fist and two armed men stationed outside the private elevator.
Then my attention catches on the empty wall above the fireplace.
The Kandinsky is still gone. Tamara has changed the room around that absence without trying to disguise it—warmer chairs, a low wood table, linen lamps softening the severe corners. The room no longer feels preserved for a dead woman.
The missing painting should make it feel incomplete. Instead, it makes room.
For Anna standing terrified in the center of it. For the child sleeping down the hall. For Tamara, who has not touched her son because another mother’s arms are the only safe place he knows tonight.
Tamara did not fix this room. She made it capable of holding what arrived.
“For now, yes,” I tell Anna, finally. “He is safe.”
Her mouth tightens because the answer is honest enough to frighten her.
I keep my voice calm. “The building has private elevator access, lobby cameras, garage coverage, and service corridor coverage. My men are in the lobby, outside the building, and downstairs. If anyone comes near this address, we’ll know before they reach the front desk.”
She blinks. “And tomorrow?”
“We make tomorrow safer than today.”
She gives a short, humorless breath. “That sounds expensive.”
“It is.”
“I cannot pay for expensive.”
“You won’t have to.”
Her eyes sharpen. “Why are you helping me?”
Tamara takes another step toward her. “Please sit down, Anna.”
“We will not hurt either of you,” I say, handing Anna a glass of water.
She eyes it with understandable suspicion.
“If harm were the goal, you wouldn’t be sitting in my living room with your son asleep behind a locked door and your phone in your pocket.” I nod at the glass. “Drink.”
Anna stares at me for another second. Then she takes the water and lowers herself beside Tamara.
The drive from Woodstock sits between us, unspoken but present.
Ivan crying in the back seat, trying to swallow every sound until his body gave up and shook against Anna’s side.
Anna holding him with both arms, answering questions she could not possibly answer.
Tamara sitting beside them with her palms locked in her lap, watching her son bury his face in another woman’s coat and refusing to reach for him.
Once, near the bridge, Ivan lifted his head and asked who we were. Anna answered without hesitation.
“People helping us.”
The boy believed her because she is his mother. Tamara looked out the window after that and did not move for the rest of the drive.
Now Anna sits in my living room, still angled toward the hallway as though she might need to run back to him at any second. She looks tired enough to collapse and angry enough to stay upright for days.
“When can we go home?” she asks.
“Not soon.”
Anna hears the answer exactly as I intend it. “What does he want?”
I let her take a sip of water before answering.
“David Kalinin was planning to take Ivan.”
Anna lowers the glass to the table. Ice strikes the side, water spilling over. She turns to Tamara, studies her. Not her clothes or her hands or the wedding ring. Her eyes.
Pale gray, ringed darker at the edge. I watch the realization reach her.
“Why?” Her words are barely audible.
Tamara sits beside Anna, composed in the way people are when breaking costs too much. “David Kalinin is Ivan’s grandfather.” Tears spill down her face, her expression the same.
“No.” Anna’s voice is threadbare. “You’re lying.”
Tamara doesn’t defend herself. She doesn’t rush to the folder on the table or look to me for proof. She only reaches for Anna’s hand and takes it gently, giving her time to pull away.
Anna does not.
“I wish I were,” Tamara says.
Anna looks at their joined hands. “Pavel said the adoption was legal.”
“It was made to look that way.”
“He said the mother signed.”
“I didn’t.”
Anna pulls free and stands. The water glass wobbles on the table, then steadies. “He told me there was a girl who couldn’t keep him. He told me her family wanted privacy. He told me everything went through an attorney.”
Tamara nods once. “Samuel Berman.”
Anna’s face drains of color. She recognizes the name.
I pick up the folder from the side table and set it in front of her, within reach but unopened.
“Berman handled the private-placement file. The consent documents have irregular dates and witness names. Pavel received payments through accounts tied to Kalinin after the hospital transfer. We traced the chain.”
Anna looks at the folder as if it might split open and swallow the room. “Pavel wouldn’t steal a baby.”
I say nothing.
Her gaze stays on the folder. “After he died, I found an account in the low six figures. It was enough to pay off the car and cover part of the mortgage.” Her mouth tightens. “I thought he had been hiding consulting money. I was furious with him.”
Her voice sounds younger now, changed by the collapse of a dead man’s memory inside the woman who loved him.
Tamara’s throat moves, but she says nothing.
Anna presses both palms to her mouth, then lowers them. “We lost two pregnancies.” She swallows. “Pavel wanted a child so badly. I wanted one too. I would have believed almost anything if it ended with a baby in my arms.” A broken breath leaves her. “Maybe I did.”
No one interrupts that admission. Her attention moves to Tamara again. “Did he know?”
Tamara’s face tightens. I answer because this truth should not be another wound she has to deliver. “He knew enough to take money and follow instructions.”
Anna absorbs it. I think she will throw the glass at me. I wouldn’t blame her.
Instead, she sits back down. “He had reflux,” she says.
Tamara’s fingers close against the edge of the sofa cushion.
Anna looks at her with raw, exhausted defiance.
“Did your people put that in the report? He screamed every night for weeks. I walked him by the kitchen window until my feet went numb. He hated the blue bottle and only took the green one, though God knows whether it was the nipple or the shape or pure infant tyranny. He still counts stairs when he’s nervous. ”
Tamara doesn’t flinch. “I didn’t know.”
Anna wipes her face with the back of her hand. “Are you taking him from me?”
“No.”
The answer comes immediately.
Anna blinks, stunned by the speed of it. The suspicion sharpening every line of her body softens.
Tamara leans forward. “At the school, when he called you Mama, I wanted to hate you.”
Anna’s breath catches.
“I did hate you,” Tamara says. “For half a second. Then I saw your hand on him, and I knew.”
Anna’s tears fall silently.
“You love him,” Tamara says.
“I do.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t steal him.”
“I know that too.”
Tamara’s voice nearly breaks on the last word, but she holds it steady.
“My father dragged him out of my life. I’m not dragging him out of yours to make the universe feel even.”
Anna covers her mouth as a sob escapes. Tamara reaches for her hand again. This time, Anna lets her hold it.
I look at them and understand, with an irritation that has no useful place to go, that there are limits to what men like me can do in a room like this.
I can secure the building. I can put men at every entrance, watch every car, move money, bury threats, close routes, and make David Kalinin regret touching this child’s life.
I cannot stand between two mothers and the wound he left them.
My phone vibrates in my pocket.
Yuri.
Tamara looks up. She reads my face too well now.
“Go,” she says.
Anna’s grip tightens once around her hand.
I don’t want to leave Tamara in this pain. I also know staying would make me another man deciding where she is safest.
So I nod.
“To answer the practical question,” I tell Anna, keeping my voice low, “you and Ivan stay here tonight. You can call your parents when you’re ready.
We have protection on them. Tomorrow, you get your own lawyer, Tamara gets hers, and Ivan gets a child advocate whose only job is Ivan.
No one makes permanent decisions tonight. ”
Anna watches me over Tamara’s shoulder. “And if I say no?”
“Then you say no with your own lawyer beside you.”
That surprises her.
Good.
“I’ll be in the study.”
She nods, and I leave them there on the white sofa with the empty fireplace wall above them and a sleeping child down the hall bound to both of them now in ways no court will know how to name.
The study door closes behind me, the apartment going too quiet. Quiet enough for the old reflex to open its mouth.
There was a time I would’ve known how to silence this kind of helplessness. Heroin first. Vodka when heroin became too honest. Anything that turned grief into distance so distance could be mistaken for control.
The bar cabinet waits against the far wall, glass and dark wood and expensive bottles I keep for other people.
I open it. Then I close it again.
My hand stays on the brass pull for another second before I let go.
No.
I cross to the sideboard, pour water instead, and drink half of it in one go. Then I answer Yuri’s call.
“Tell me.”