He lets out a breath that sounds older than him.
“Our father moved her upstate. Kept her hidden. Safe, I guess, in his own twisted way. I visited when I could. Brought books. We’d play chess like we used to.”
He pauses. His jaw works once, twice.
“The baby wasn’t due yet when the storm hit.”
He rises without warning, retreating to the window like he needs the glass between him and the memory he’s about to excavate.
“It was February. Early. The worst blizzard I’ve seen in my life. Three feet of snow overnight. Roads gone. Phones useless.” His voice has shifted, thinner, not quieter. Like he’s speaking through the echo chamber of his own past. “She woke me at four in the morning. Labor had started. “
He doesn’t look at me as he speaks. Just stares out as if he can still see it—the snow, the panic, the helplessness.
“I called the doctor. He tried, but he couldn’t get through. Roads were closed, trees down, power lines everywhere. He stayed on the line, told me what to do. But the connection kept cutting out. It was just…me.”
I keep still. This is the story he’s never told—maybe not even to himself—and I won’t risk breaking it open before he’s ready.
“She was calm. Too calm. I think…I think she knew. She kept saying it would be okay. That she trusted me. That I’d get her through it.” His knuckles press white against the windowsill. “And I did. The baby came. Screaming. Healthy. Perfect.”
He turns, finally, and the look on his face stops my breath. All those layers of control and calculation are gone. He looks hollowed out.
“But Ana kept bleeding. Wouldn’t stop. The doctor said a piece of the placenta probably hadn’t come out, that it was causing the bleeding. I did everything he told me, applied pressure, even tried to reach in and pull it out like he said. But I didn’t know what I was feeling for. My hands were shaking so bad I could barely hold on to her, let alone help her. I tried…but it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t save her.”
The room is silent. The weight of what he’s said—what he’s carried alone—settles like a second atmosphere.
“She held him. Kissed his forehead. Told me to protect him. Said she loved him. Her lips were pale by then, her hands cold. And then…she was gone.”
He doesn’t need to describe it further. I can see it in the way his posture folds inward, in the way his voice refuses to rise above a whisper. A man kneeling in the ruins of what he couldn’t save.
“You held it together,” I say quietly. “You saved Damien.”
“I failed her.” His gaze finds mine, sharp and hollow all at once. “I should’ve taken her to a hospital sooner. Should’ve fought harder, done more. There’s always more you should’ve done when someone dies in front of you.”
“There’s not,” I reply, carefully. “You did the impossible. You delivered her son and held her hand while she died. You did everything.”
He shakes his head, not in denial, but in disbelief. “And afterward, I turned all of it, every drop of grief, guilt, rage, into one purpose. Punish Igor. Make him pay for her death.”
“And that’s why Damien matters,” I say. “Because he’s more than your nephew. He’s your redemption.”
His mouth tightens at the word. It lands like something too sharp, too exposed.
“He’s the only thing I’ve done right,” Yakov says. “And if I can’t protect him now, then Ana died for nothing.”
The silence that follows isn’t just heavy with grief, it’s charged with something else. The awareness that he’s just given me a piece of himself no one else has ever seen. That this sharing is as much seduction as it is therapy.
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask softly.
His eyes meet mine, direct and unashamed. “Because you wanted honesty. Because you’ve earned it.” A pause. “Because Iwant you to understand who I am when I’m not trying to be what everyone else needs me to be.”
The last part is barely whispered, but it hits me like a physical touch. This isn’t just confession, it’s courtship. And it’s working.
I want to reach for him, to say something that makes it better. But there’s nothing that will. So I sit with him in the silence instead, holding space for the pieces of him he’s never shown before.
And for the first time, I understand what makes Yakov dangerous. It’s not the violence or the control. It’s how fiercely he loves, how much he still bleeds beneath the armor.
And how much he’s willing to destroy to keep that one last promise.
Something shifts in his expression. The grief doesn’t fade, but it steadies, settles into something weightier. “Every time I look at him, I see her. But I also see what she never had. What I never had.” His voice is quieter now, more reverent. “Possibility. He’s not marked by this world yet. Not branded by blood or duty. He’s…clean.”
