A hand placed on my bicep and I looked up to see my father. “It’s okay, Luka. Go with Kisa. Get fixed up. We’ll see you soon… son.”

I nodded, feeling that word settle in my heart and wrapped my hand over Kisa’a shoulders, leading her from the cage. In the holding room, we didn’t speak, but I could feel her watching me. I threw on my old familiar gray sweatshirt, the one I’d worn since the Gulag and followed Kisa to a back door. Keeping close to the other half of my heart and, for the first time ever, keeping my hood pulled back.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Kisa

“Are you ready, lyubov moya?”

I turned to Luka, and he was stock still, staring at his mama and papa’s brownstone with an anxious look on his face.

I squeezed his hand and Luka finally looked down at me. He blinked, then blinked again. A completely lost look covered his face.

“I don’t know,” he answered in a husky voice. “I’m remembering so much, but none of it is making sense. I just get flashbacks of broken memories. None of them are in order. Just glimpses of what my life used to be like.”

He pointed to the brownstone that was as much a home to me as it was him. “Like this house. I remember sitting on these steps with you. I remember being in my bedroom, I think… with you.” Luka moved to stand in front of me and lifted my hand, the one free of a cast, and pressed it to his chest. “Every memory I seem to have has you in it.” His head was down, unable to meet my eyes.

A lump clogged my throat at how scared and lost he seemed right now. He had only a few hours ago killed the man that ruined his life. I think that goal drove him for so long that now without it, he had no idea what to do next.

The rabid killer of the cage was gone, a lost boy taking his place.

I moved forward and lifted his head with my finger under his chin. When Luka’s gaze met mine, those brown eyes, the left with a smudge of my blue, my heart soared. “That’s because we were never apart. Since we were kids, we were one. It has always been that way. We found a way back to each other, my love.”

Luka’s eyes bored into mine, a flare of possession in their glare. “And will always be that way,” he said assertively. “I’m never losing you again.”

Tears filled my eyes. “And will always be that way.”

The door of his parents’ home opened and Papa Ivan walked out onto the steps. I held up my hand sporting the cast, and Ivan smiled sadly at me.

Luka had frozen, his expressive eyes now showing every bit of his apprehension.

“Let’s go, baby,” I whispered, just for him to hear.

I pulled on Luka’s hand and led him toward the house. He had showered back at my house after we had both seen Dr. Chazov, both now patched up. One of my papa’s men had brought him some blue jeans and a white shirt.

He looked so stunning that I almost couldn’t take it. His huge muscles tested the material of both his jeans and shirt, his defined traps pronounced and his blond hair messy in the most attractive way.

I wanted him more than ever.

Luka gripped my hand, his hold like a vise as we ascended the stairs. Ivan embraced me, then awkwardly hugged his son, and I couldn’t stop the tears tumbling from my eyes.

“Your mama is desperate to see you again, son. She—” Ivan’s voice broke. “She won’t believe it until she has you in her arms. She’s climbing the walls with excitement.”

Ivan led us into the foyer, and I could feel the tension pulsing from Luka, his hand rigid in mine. With a jerk of my arm, he pulled me into his chest, almost like he was using me as a shield as we walked into the living room. Talia was sitting on a chair, bouncing her leg in nerves and chewing on her thumbnail.

Mama Tolstoi paced in front of the marble fireplace, and when she saw us enter the room, she froze and stared.

I felt Luka stiffen behind me, and when I glanced up, his eyes were clenched, his head tilted to the side, and his cut full lips were pursed.

He remembered her. I now knew what his expression looked like when a memory fixed itself in place. My chest filled with happiness. He remembered his mama.

A sob escaped Mama Tolstoi’s mouth and she reached behind her to hold on to the mantel to keep upright. “Luka? Luka… is it you…?”

Luka’s hand fell from mine and he stepped round me. “M-Mama?”

Luka’s mama rushed forward upon hearing him speak and she held him in her outstretched arms. “Luka. It’s you… my son… my boy…”

“Yes.” Luka exhaled, and his mama wrapped her arms around his waist, her small frame tiny next to his large, broad heavily-muscled body.

“You’ve come home,” she cried. “You’ve come home to us… I knew you were out there. I could feel in my heart that you were still alive.” She pulled back and lay her hand on his stubbled cheek, standing on her tip-toes to do so. “My son… my son…”

Feeling like I was an intruder in the room, I backed out into the hallway as mother and son were reunited and walked through to the kitchen and out into the backyard. As soon as the fresh air hit my face, I immediately felt better.

Walking to a white bench in the small yard, I slumped down and closed my eyes, drawing in a long, deep breath.

I couldn’t believe everything that had happened. It all seemed so unreal. Like some dream I was about to wake up from.

Feeling the gravity of everything that had gone down of late—finding out Luka was alive, that Alik was responsible, the pain Luka had been put through over the years, and now Alik dead and Luka back in my arms—all I could do was submit to conflicted feelings of grief and joy.