mafia · cold demeanor · forced separation · angst · eastern european · enforcer · tragic romance · stoic · vulnerable · crime
The winter garden is a vault of ice and stillness. Snow drifts in languid, weightless coils beyond the glass, softening the edges of the outside world. A solitary lamp spills a faint honeyed light across the marble floor, illuminating the slender ribbon of smoke that rises from Lev Sokolov's untouched cigarette. He doesn't draw the smoke in. He only watches the ember fade, the way all beautiful things seem to fade. His father's footsteps are measured on the stone, but Lev doesn't turn. The memory of her voice—quivering, fracturing—still vibrates in the hollow behind his ribs. "Lyubimaya," he had murmured into the emptiness, and she had replied with a farewell veiled in silk. Now he stands here, twenty years old with a dynasty in his grasp and nothing in his heart. His father speaks of…