Page 62 of Crimson Curse
She stirs, not as a response, but as existence. I keep going because I don’t want to leave anything unsaid.
“You will never know my mother,” I whisper, “and I don’t think that is a loss you need to carry. She taught me to survive a world that chews through the soft places in a man. Your mother taught me to build a home instead of a fortress. You taught me to open the door to a room I did not know I had.”
I tell her about the moon mobile that hangs over her crib. I tell her about the chair in the corner that rocks so smoothly it could lull a hurricane to sleep. I tell her about the garden where wewill walk when spring decides to be generous. I tell her that I will show her paintings, maps, engines, coastlines, and the inside of a book that saved me when I was too proud to admit I needed saving. I tell her that I will show her how a hand can be a shield and a promise, not just a weapon.
When I finish, I look down and see that she has opened her eyes. They are dark, that newborn slate that will decide itself later, and they are impossibly intent. She studies me with an expression that feels ancient. I know she can’t see clearly. I know the focus is an illusion of a new vision. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I feel seen by someone who has been on this earth for less than an hour.
Naomi wakes with a small start and reaches out, instinct lightning-quick even in sleep. I am already turning, placing the baby back in her arms, and smoothing the blanket in a motion that makes me feel like a magician who was born to perform only this one trick. Naomi sighs and leans back.
“Tell me,” she says, her voice velvety with exhaustion. “What did you say to her?”
“I introduced myself,” I answer.
“As what?” she probes, a small smile tugging at her mouth.
“As the man who belongs to both of you,” I say, and it is so simple I am almost embarrassed by the ease of it.
She reaches for my hand and laces our fingers. “Then that is what you are.”
Naomi rests her head against mine while our daughter sleeps in the curve of her arm. The corridor outside fades to a distanthum. For the first time in a very long time, the future is not something I prepare to fight. It is something I am ready to live.
23
NAOMI
The museum is still asleep when I arrive. The doors ease shut behind us with a quiet click that feels almost respectful, a promise that nothing harsh will intrude on this hour. The air inside carries the faint scent of paper, old wood, and lemon oil. At this time of morning the building holds itself in a kind of peaceful stillness.
My daughter, Liliya, rests in the curve of my arm, her cheek warm against my chest. She makes a tiny sound, a soft question without words, then settles again with the slow rhythm newborns know by instinct. I adjust the blanket around her and press a kiss to her crown. Two months ago, she was a heartbeat beneath my own. Now she is here, a small and fearless thing who has already reordered our lives with every sigh, stretch, and stubborn demand to be fed at three in the morning.
I walk the long corridor toward the eastern gallery, the one that always felt like a sanctuary even before I had the right to call it part of my work. The skylights above hold the first suggestion of dawn. The light is gentle, pale as milk, and the marble floor brightens by degrees with each step we take. The sound of myfootsteps is a muted rhythm that seems to match the steady beat of Liliya’s breath against my collarbone.
There is a canvas waiting for me with a veil of linen resting over it. I stop a few feet away and listen to the quiet. Somewhere in the distance a compressor hums to life in a climate control case.
Liliya’s small hand opens and closes near her cheek as if she is practicing the art of reaching for the world. I whisper that she will have all the time she needs to learn how. Then I slide the cloth free, careful not to jostle the frame.
Color wakes. Greens deep enough to feel like a forest after rain. Strokes that move like thought. Veils of dark and light layered so patiently that the surface seems to hold a pulse. It is abstract, but it doesn’t feel distant. It carries warmth, a presence that invites rather than challenges. In the bottom corner, a signature anchors everything in place. Sasha Sokolova.
I breathe in. For a long time, this painting lived in silence behind a locked door. For a long time, it carried the private ache of a memory that belonged only to one man and the life he could not save. It shouldn’t have remained hidden. Some beauty is meant to be witnessed so it can become part of something larger than grief.
Footsteps move toward me with the unhurried certainty of someone who belongs wherever he stands. I don’t have to turn to know who it is. Daniil stops beside me and holds out a paper cup. He does it like a man offering more than coffee, like a man who has learned that small kindnesses are their own kind of strength.
“Thank you,” I say, and my voice sounds calm even though my heart is not.
“Of course.” His tone has that quiet I hear only when we are alone. He looks at the canvas for a long moment, and the muscle at his jaw eases the way it does when he lets go of something he has been holding too tightly.
“She painted that for me,” he says at last. “I kept it locked away for years.”
My daughter stirs, a soft gurgle that would make anyone smile if they had a heart in their chest. I touch her back and feel the tiny rise and fall. Then I look up at the painting again and say the answer that feels truest to this morning.
“And now it is part of the story.”
Daniil breathes out through his nose, a small release of air that carries something larger underneath. We stand without talking, and the silence does what language cannot. It holds both of our histories at once without asking them to compete. I reach out and smooth the corner of the frame, a simple gesture that feels like a benediction.
“She would have liked you,” he says softly.
I turn to him. The light finds the lines of his face and softens them. He is still the man who survived a childhood built inside a machine of power, and still the man who knows what it costs to protect a city from the kind of enemies most people pretend do not exist. But there is something else that is new. Fatherhood has altered his gravity. It has turned him toward us in a way that changes the air around him.
“You made room for both of us,” I respond, and it’s not something I say for comfort. It’s a fact we worked for, day by hard day, through nights that stretched too long and mornings that began before our bodies felt ready.
