“Before she married into crime, you mean.”
“Before she married my father, yes.”
The honesty catches me off-guard. Most of our conversations involve carefully constructed half-truths and deflections, but here, surrounded by family history, he seems more willing to share real information. More willing to let me see the man beneath the dangerous exterior.
“What was she like?”
He sets the photograph back on the table and clears his throat. “Strong. Stubborn. She knew what my father was whenshe married him, but she thought she could change him. She couldn’t, but she never stopped trying.”
“Did she succeed at all?”
“She kept him human. That was probably enough.”
I run my index finger over my tattoo while considering this insight into Dmitri’s family dynamics. “And she raised you and Alexei here?”
“Summers and weekends when we were young. Full-time after she decided city life wasn’t safe for children.”
“Was she right?”
“Probably. Alexei and I got into enough trouble out here. In the city, that trouble would have been deadlier.”
He shows me through the rest of the house, pointing out rooms and memories. The kitchen where his mother taught him to cook traditional Russian dishes. The library where he spent rainy afternoons reading adventure novels. The study where his father conducted the business meetings that couldn’t happen in Moscow offices.
“Even here, work followed him,” I observe.
“Work follows all of us. The trick is learning to set boundaries.”
“And have you? Learned to set boundaries?”
“I’m learning.”
By evening, we’ve settled into a routine that feels surprisingly natural. Dmitri cooks dinner while I explore the wine cellar, both of us moving through the night like people who’ve done this many times.
I watch his hands work. I remember them all over me and look away. Even cooking feels like foreplay. Out here is the closest we’ve come to normal.
“You’re good at this,” I tell him as he plates the pasta.
“Cooking?”
“Being normal. Acting like we’re just a regular couple at their country house.”
Though the way he's been watching me all evening—like he's planning how he wants to take me apart later—is anything but normal.
“Maybe that’s what we are.”
“Are we?”
He sets the plates on the dining room table and pulls out my chair. “Tonight, we are.”
Dinner conversation ranges from books to travel to childhood memories, topics that have nothing to do with criminal organizations or memory loss or the complicated circumstances that have plagued us. Dmitri tells me about learning to ride horses on the estate grounds and summer afternoons spent fishing in the nearby lake.
“You were happy here,” I note.
“I was young. Sometimes, that’s the same thing. Now, I’m trying to figure out if happiness is something you achieve or something you choose.”
The philosophical observation makes me raise my eyebrows. “Which do you think it is?”
“Both, maybe. You have to choose to pursue it, but you also have to create circumstances where it’s possible.”
