Razvan
The cold side of the bed hits me before I even open my eyes.
I reach out, my palm sliding over the silk sheets, searching for the heat of her skin, but there is only a lingering scent of peonies and the fading indentation of her head on the pillow.
The room is still bathed in the blue, ghostly light of four in the morning.
My heart skips a beat. Since St. Petersburg, my internal alarm is wired to the sound of breaking glass and gunfire, but the house is silent. Too silent.
I’m out of bed in a second, not bothering with a robe or shoes.
I’m halfway down the hall toward the nursery before my brain even catches up with my feet.
Every shadow looks like an intruder; every creak of the floorboards sounds like a threat.
I push the door to Theo’s room open so hard it hits the stopper with a dull thud.
“Lena?” My voice is a low, jagged rasp.
She’s sitting on the edge of the bed, her back to me. The small lamp on the nightstand is dimmed, casting a pale yellow glow over the scene. She doesn’t jump. She doesn’t even turn around. She’s leaning over Theo, her hand moving in a slow, rhythmic circle on his chest.
“He’s burning up, Razvan,” she whispers.
I move to the bedside, my lungs suddenly feeling like they’ve been filled with wet sand.
I look down at him. Theo’s face isn’t pale anymore.
It’s a deep, terrifying crimson. His curls are matted to his forehead with sweat, and his breathing is coming in short, wet gasps that rattle in his tiny chest.
“What do you mean, burning up?” I ask. I reach down, my large hand covering his entire forehead.
The heat is a physical shock. It’s like touching the hood of a car in the middle of a July afternoon. My skin stings from the contact. I pull my hand back as if I’ve been branded, my heart slamming against my ribs so hard it hurts.
“How hot is he? Did you check the numbers? Where is the tool?” I start looking around the room, my movements jerky and uncoordinated.
I’m the Pakhan. I coordinate hits on three continents.
I manage millions of dollars in untraceable assets.
But right now, I can’t remember where the fuck we keep the thermometer.
“I checked, Razvan. It’s 103.5F,” Lena says. Her voice is steady, but I can hear the strain in it. “I’ve already given him the medicine, but it hasn’t started working yet.”
“103…39C?” I shout the number, the sound echoing off the walls. “That’s too high. That’s—his brain will fry, Lena. We have to do something. Why are you just sitting there? We need a doctor. No, I’m calling the chief of pediatrics at the state hospital. I’ll have them fly a specialist in.”
“Razvan, breathe,” she says, finally looking at me. Her eyes are tired, rimmed with red. “It’s a fever. Children get fevers.”
“Not like this,” I snap, already reaching for the phone on the wall. My fingers are shaking. I can’t even hit the right buttons for the internal line to the security gate. “He’s shaking. Look at his hands, Lena. Why are his hands shaking? Is he having a seizure? Is he dying?”
“He’s shivering because his body is fighting the infection,” she explains, standing up to grab a bowl of water and a cloth from the dresser. “It’s normal. Please, stop pacing. You’re making him restless.”
I don’t stop. I can’t. I pace from the window to the door, back and forth, my hands buried in my hair.
Every time Theo lets out a small, whined groan, I flinch.
I feel like the walls are closing in. I’ve seen men bled out in front of me.
I’ve seen limbs lost and lives ended in the blink of an eye, and I never lost my cool.
But this? This tiny boy, struggling to breathe in a bed that looks too big for him?
It’s stripping the skin right off my soul.
“Where is the doctor?” I roar into the phone when the house physician finally picks up. “Get up here now. If you aren’t at this door in sixty seconds, I will have Lyosha drag you here by your throat. My son is burning! Do you hear me? My son!”
I slam the phone back into the cradle and rush back to the bed. I grab the cloth from Lena’s hand, nearly knocking the bowl over.
“I’ll do it. Let me do it,” I mutter. I press the cool cloth to Theo’s face, but my hands are too heavy, too clumsy. I’m trying to be gentle, but I’m vibrating with a frantic, wild energy.
“Razvan, you’re pressing too hard,” Lena says softly, reaching out to steady my wrist.
“I can’t lose him,” I whisper. The words tear out of my throat, raw and bleeding. I look at her, and for the first time, I don’t care if she sees the wreckage inside me. “Lena, look at him. He’s so small. If his heart stops…I can’t. I won’t survive it.”
“He’s not going to die,” she says, but I’m not listening anymore. I’m spiraling. I’m falling down a dark hole where every bad thing I’ve ever done is coming back to collect the debt.
“This is it, isn’t it?” I start pacing again, my voice rising. “This is the price. For everything I did to you. For the men I buried. God is taking him to get back at me. He’s taking the only good thing I’ve ever had because I don’t deserve to be a father.”
“Razvan, stop it,” Lena pleads, standing up to block my path. “That’s not how this works. It’s just a virus.”
“I wasn’t even there!” I shout, the grief finally breaking through the anger.
I stop and lean my forehead against the cold glass of the window, my shoulders heaving.
“I wasn’t there when he was born. I didn’t see his first steps.
I spent three years being a ghost while he was growing up, and now that I finally have him, he’s slipping away.
I haven’t even heard him call me ‘Dad’ yet.
Not once. He calls me Superman. He thinks I can do anything, but I can’t even stop a fucking fever! ”
I turn around, and I can feel the hot, stinging tracks of tears on my face. I’m a grown man. I’m the Pakhan of the Moscow Bratva. And I am sobbing in a nursery because I am terrified of a toddler’s temperature.
“I love him so much it feels like my chest is being ripped open with a dull knife,” I choke out, stumbling toward her.
“I didn’t know it would be like this. I thought I could just own him, like I own everything else.
But he owns me. Every breath he takes is mine.
If he stops breathing, I’m dead. I’m already dead, Lena. ”
I sink to the floor, my back against the bed frame, my head in my hands. I’m a mess of raw nerves and useless power. I’ve never felt smaller. I’ve never felt more human.
Lena drops down beside me. She doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t tell me to be a man. She just wraps her arms around my neck and pulls my head into her shoulder. I can feel her own tears wetting my skin, her body trembling against mine.
“It’s okay,” she sobs, holding me tight. “It’s okay to be scared. I’m scared too. But he’s strong, Razvan. He’s a fighter, just like you. It’s just a fever. I promise you, it’s just a fever.”
“You don’t know that,” I moan into her neck, clinging to her like she’s the only solid thing in a world that’s turned to water. “You don’t know.”
“I do know. I’ve done this a dozen times without you,” she whispers, her voice a mix of comfort and a tiny, sharp reminder of what I missed. “He gets high fevers when his teeth come in, or when he catches a cold. He’s going to be fine. Just breathe with me. Please, Razvan. For me. For him.”
I try. I suck in a jagged breath, smelling her scent—the comfort of it acting like an anchor.
We sit there on the floor for a long time, the only sound the soft hum of the humidifier and Theo’s labored breathing above us.
The doctor comes in, looking terrified, but Lena handles him.
She directs him with a quiet authority while I just sit there, my hand gripping Theo’s small, hot foot through the blanket.
The doctor confirms what she said. An ear infection. Common. Not fatal. He administers a stronger fever reducer and checks the vitals, nodding at me with a shaky hand before retreating out the door.
I don’t move. I stay right there on the floor until the doctor is gone and the room is quiet again.
“He’s cooling down,” Lena whispers about an hour later.
I stand up, my legs feeling like lead. I lean over the bed. I touch his forehead again. The searing heat has faded to a warm glow. His breathing has smoothed out, the rattle replaced by a soft, rhythmic snore. He shifts in his sleep, his small hand reaching out and grasping my thumb.
The relief is so violent I feel like I’m going to vomit. I lean down and press a kiss to his damp curls, my eyes closing.
“He’s okay,” I breathe. “He’s really okay.”
“He’s fine, Razvan,” Lena says. She looks exhausted, her face pale in the early morning light.
“Come here,” I say, reaching for her.
I don’t lead her back to our room. I can’t leave him.
Not yet. I climb into the small twin bed, shifting Theo to the center.
Lena climbs in on the other side. It’s a tight fit—my large frame barely fits on the mattress—but I don’t care.
I wrap one arm around Theo and the other around Lena, pulling them both into the circle of my body.
“I’m sorry I went crazy,” I mutter into the dark.
“Don’t be,” she says, her head resting on my chest. “It’s the first time I’ve actually seen you, Razvan. Not who everyone says you are. Just you. Just the father.”
“It’s a lot harder than I thought. Even harder than being Pahkan,” I admit.
“Yeah,” she sighs. “It is.”
Theo stirs between us, his small body finally relaxed. He mumbles something in his sleep, a nonsensical word that sounds a bit like “Mama,” and then he settles back down. I watch him for hours, watching the rise and fall of his chest, making sure every breath is followed by another.
I think about the years I lost. I think about the man I was before I knew the weight of this boy’s hand in mine. I was a hollow shell, filled with nothing but ambition and blood. I thought I was powerful because people feared me. But I was nothing.
Power isn’t the ability to kill. It’s the ability to care about something so much that its pain becomes your own. It’s the terror of losing a piece of your heart that lives outside your body.
“I’m never leaving him again,” I whisper, though they are both asleep. “I’m never leaving either of you.”
As the sun begins to peek through the curtains, painting the nursery in soft pinks and golds, I finally feel my own eyes start to get heavy. The panic has burned itself out, leaving behind a quiet, solid resolve.
I know who I am now. I’m the man who will burn the world to the ground to keep this room safe. I’m the man who will kill anyone who tries to take this peace away. But I’m also the man who cries when his son has a temperature.
I pull the blanket up over the three of us. For the first time in my life, I don’t dream of blood or betrayal. I don’t dream of the serpent on my wrist or the enemies at the gate.
I just dream of the quiet breathing of the two people who finally taught me how to live.
When I wake up a few hours later, the room is bright. Theo is sitting up, rubbing his eyes, looking perfectly fine. He sees me and a huge grin spreads across his face.
“Superman! You’re sleeping in my bed!”
“I am,” I say, my voice raspy but warm.
Lena stirs beside me, blinking at the light. She looks at Theo, then at me, and a small, genuine smile touches her lips. It’s not a mask. It’s not a truce. It’s real.
“How do you feel, monkey?” she asks, reaching over to ruffle his hair.
“Hungry,” Theo announces. “I want pancakes. Big ones!”
“I think Superman can make that happen,” Lena says, her eyes meeting mine over Theo’s head. There’s a softness there, a shared relief that should make me feel light.
Instead, it feels like a noose tightening.
“I’ll get the kitchen started,” I say, my voice sounding hollow even to my own ears.
I stand up, stretching my aching muscles. My side twinges—the wound I sustained for them—and for the first time, the pain doesn’t feel like a badge of honor. It feels like a warning.
I watch her ruffle his hair, the two of them framed in the pale morning light, and a cold, sickening clarity washes over me.
I’ve spent my life eliminating my vulnerabilities.
I’ve burned bridges, executed traitors, and slept with a gun under my pillow to ensure I had no jagged edges for an enemy to grab onto.
And now? I am all jagged edges.
Every breath Theo takes is a secondary pulse I have to protect.
Every smile Lena gives me is a map for Viktor or the Italians or any ambitious street soldier to find exactly where to drive the knife.
I’m not just the Pakhan anymore. I’m a man with two beating hearts outside of his own chest, and in Moscow, that makes me a dead man walking.
“Razvan?” Lena asks, sensing the shift. I don’t know how she did it, but she did. The warmth in her eyes flickers with a sudden, sharp uncertainty.
I don’t answer. I can’t. The panic from the fever has transformed into something much more dangerous: a predatory, suffocating possessiveness.
If they are my weakness, I have to bury that weakness so deep no one can find it.
I have to make her mine—not just by contract, not just by shared trauma, but by total, absolute absorption.
She needs to be so close to me that an assassin can’t tell where I end and she begins.
If I’m losing my mind to this—to them—then I’ll make sure the rest of the world is too terrified to even look in their direction.
I walk toward the door, but I don’t look back. My mind is already moving past pancakes and nursery rhymes. I’m thinking about the security perimeter. I’m thinking about the men I need to kill before the sun is fully up, just to remind the city who I am.
I thought I was winning because the fever broke.
But as I descend the stairs into the shadows of my empire, I realize the real war has just begun. I’m not just fighting my enemies anymore. I’m fighting the fact that I would burn the entire world to ash just to keep that one small room warm.
And I’ve never been more terrified of what I’m capable of doing to keep them.