KATERINA
The lunch gets worse for me after that, which is saying something.
Not because of Vika. She’s predictable. Vika has only ever had three modes where men are concerned: bored, hunting, and pretending not to hunt. Not because of Arkady either. Arkady is the kind of man who thinks children should like him because he has expensive cufflinks.
No, it gets worse because Roman is good with my children.
Not performatively good. Not in the way some men are, smiling too much, lowering their voices, acting charmed by things they actually find inconvenient. He does not do any of that. He simply starts speaking to them as if they are people, and both of them respond to it immediately.
Sofia decides, after about ten minutes, that he belongs to her.
That’s the only way to describe it.
She makes him judge the quality of her fries, which he does with inappropriate seriousness.
She tells him one of the gulls near the railing has ‘criminal energy,’ and he agrees without hesitation.
At one point she climbs half into his lap to show him a tiny sticker she stole from somewhere in her school bag, and instead of looking startled or annoyed, he studies it like it’s a document of state importance.
“It’s a moon princess,” she tells him.
“I can see that.”
“She has powers.”
“What kind?”
“She can make boys cry.”
Roman glances at me over her head.
I hate how much that look unsettles me.
“She’ll go far,” he says.
Sofia beams.
Nikolai is more cautious, but not for long. He doesn’t climb, doesn’t chatter, doesn’t perform. He watches. He listens. Then he starts asking questions in that quiet, measured way of his, the kind that would sound shy on another child but on him sounds almost like an interview.
“Do you own boats?” he asks.
Roman says, “Some.”
“What kind?”
“The useful kind.”
“What makes a boat useful?”
Roman wipes his mouth with his napkin and answers him as if this is an entirely normal lunch conversation. “If it makes money, carries weight, or gets you somewhere fast, it’s useful.”
Nikolai thinks about that. Then he says, “A ferry is useful.”
“Yes.”
“A pirate ship is useful too.”
Roman nods once. “Depending on the century.”
I should stop it. I know I should.
I should interrupt, redirect, put distance back between them, gather the children, remind all three of us that this is not normal and cannot become normal.
Instead, I sit there listening to my son and the man who should never have met him discuss boats while my daughter steals olives off Roman’s plate and Elena quietly orders another coffee like this is all an ordinary afternoon.
And the worst part is that I don’t hate it.
I hate that I don’t hate it.
Because there is something so easy in the way he is with them.
Not soft, exactly. Roman is not soft. But there is patience in him with them that he does not offer adults.
Sofia tests him constantly, and he lets her.
Nikolai studies him like a puzzle, and Roman does not rush to solve anything for him.
Once, while I’m looking down at my untouched salad, Sofia slips her hand into his.
Just like that.
Her little fingers curl around one of his, and Roman goes still for the briefest second.
I see it. No one else does.
He recovers immediately, but not before something in his face changes. Not his expression. Something lower. Older. The kind of thing men probably don’t know is visible unless someone has spent enough time wanting them to memorize those small shifts.
My chest tightens.
He lifts Sofia’s hand and looks at the sticky patch of ketchup on her wrist. “You’re very messy.”
“No,” she says. “I’m artistic.” She laughs and leans against his arm like she has known him forever.
I look away because the sight is too strange, too intimate, too dangerous in its own quiet little way. A child trusting a man she should not know. A man letting her. The shape of something almost ordinary trying to form itself in the middle of this ridiculous, compromised lunch.
When I look back, Nikolai is watching Roman too.
Not smiling.
Not suspicious either.
Just looking with that solemn, unnerving focus that makes adults underestimate him right up until he says something that cuts too close.
“You don’t talk down to us,” he says.
Roman’s eyes shift to him. “Would you like me to?”
“No.”
“Then I won’t.”
Nikolai nods, satisfied.
I know my children. Sofia attaches easily, generously, with all the reckless confidence of a loved little girl. But Nikolai is different. He gives his trust in pieces. Watching him hand even a small piece of it to Roman makes something painful and complicated rise in me.
Because I want this.
Not the mess. Not the risk. Not the chaos that would follow if the wrong truth came out. But this. Roman sitting at a lunch table with my children, answering their strange little questions and looking at them as if they matter.
It’s such a stupid thing to want that I almost feel angry with myself for it.
And then Sofia says, “You should come to our house.”
I nearly choke.
Roman’s eyes flick to mine immediately.
Nikolai says, “Sofia.”
“What?” she asks. “He should. Mama likes him.”
I put my fork down very carefully. “Sofia,” I say.
Arkady comes back in a hurry. “I’m sorry darling, but I’ve got to go. Raincheck?”
I try to school my expression, so he doesn’t see my disgust. “Sure.”
He gives Roman a look before hurrying away. I keep my gaze on Roman. He’s looking at Arkady weirdly.
I should be relieved when Arkady left. That doesn’t mean I’ve to pretend anymore, but that also means I’m left with
Roman still at the table, Elena watching everyone like she’s one insult away from ordering an execution, and Vika leaning back in her chair with that bright, poisonous smile she gets when she thinks she has learned something useful.
Sofia is swinging her legs under the table, still talking.
“And then Ms. Yulia said the moon isn’t a planet, and I said I know that, I’m not stupid, I’m imaginative.”
Roman looks at her like this is a perfectly normal thing for a four-year-old to say. “Reasonable distinction.”
“It was,” Sofia says.
Nikolai, who has been quieter for the last few minutes, adds, “She still got corrected.”
“That teacher is anti-creativity,” Sofia says darkly.
I rub my forehead.
Roman glances at me, then back at the children. “They sound older than they are.”
The comment is casual. I just nod, trying not to show him how That’s quickly becoming my concern. They’re losing the wonder of their innocence.
“They have tutors.”
Roman’s eyes lift to mine. “Both of them?”
“Mostly for Nikolai,” I say. “But Sofia refused to be left out.”
Sofia sits straighter at once. “Because I’m not stupid.”
“No one said you were.”
“She gets very offended by the idea of being excluded,” I say.
Roman’s mouth shifts. Not quite a smile, but close enough to make my stomach tighten.
“She’s competitive.”
“Oh, violently,” I say.
That gets an actual smile out of him.
By the time lunch finally starts breaking up, I feel wrung out.
Elena is clearly relieved. Vika is not. She had been enjoying herself far too much, especially once she realized Roman was staying at the table and not going anywhere quickly.
The children are tired now. Sofia is sticky and loud in that dangerous end-of-lunch way that means a collapse is coming. Nikolai has gone quiet, which is worse. He only gets that still when he’s exhausted or thinking too much.
Mama’s driver arrives to collect us, and I let the children go ahead with the nanny because I need one breath of air before I get back into the car and pretend this lunch did not happen.
The wind off the water is colder now.
I step away from the restaurant, one hand on the rail, eyes on the river, trying not to think about Roman’s body in that corridor, Roman’s hand catching my glass, Roman being so stupidly, dangerously good with my children.
Footsteps come up behind me.
I know who it’s before he says anything.
“You left quickly.”
I turn.
Roman stands a few feet away, coat buttoned now, expression unreadable again. The softness from lunch, if it was softness, is gone.
“The children are tired.”
“So are you.”
“That’s observant.”
“It usually is.”
The river moves dark and flat behind him. A ferry passes farther down, its lights blurred in the cold. For one ridiculous second, the whole city feels narrowed down to just the two of us and everything we never finished.
Roman looks at me for a long moment.
Then he says, “I know the truth.”