I lived for two months like a corpse walking among the living.
I breathed, I spoke, I signed documents, gave orders, boarded planes and stepped off them, but inside there was nothing. A cold, sterile emptiness, without echo. I had no air, though my lungs worked. I had no heart, though my pulse beat steadily in my temples.
Because she had torn it from my chest and left with it.
At first, I told myself it was only wounded pride, only habit, only the refusal to lose what I had once considered mine. But it wasn't that. It was something more primitive, more brutal. A need.
In the first weeks, I gave in.
I followed her. Just to see her. If I no longer had the right to touch her, at least I could look.
An obsession.
I would sit in my car at a distance, the engine running, and watch her as she came out of her building, adjusting her jacket over her shoulders, gathering her hair into a careless ponytail. I followed her to the park, to the store, to the corner of the street.
One afternoon, I saw her with her sister.
They were sitting on a bench in the park, eating ice cream, laughing with their heads close together, the sun lighting their faces in a way that was almost indecently simple and beautiful. Alla was laughing with her whole heart, eyes squeezed shut, shoulders relaxed.
And in that moment, I felt two things that tore me in opposite directions—two states that should not have been able to coexist, yet inside me they detonated at once, fusing into a painful knot I did not know how to untangle.
I was happy—truly and deeply happy—because I saw her smiling, because she laughed with her head thrown back and her eyes closed, because she could still be light even without me beside her.
And in the same breath, I felt betrayed—not by her, but by the fact that the world dared to move forward without me in her equation, that she could live, breathe, and laugh without needing my arms around her.
The fact that she was capable of light in my absence should have calmed me, and in some perverse and silent way, it did, because it confirmed that I had not destroyed her, that I had not broken her beyond repair. But at the same time it killed me little by little, because in every one of her smiles without me I saw proof that my place beside her could remain empty.
That day, I decided to stop following her, to swallow my obsession and do the only thing that still carried a shred of dignity.
I let her be.
I gave her the real chance to be happy without me, even though I knew, with a cruel certainty, that I would never again manage to feel complete happiness without her in my arms.
I buried my longing in work.
Business ran like clockwork, and I was needed everywhere. Ivar had been hunted down, and the pursuit meant sleepless nights, dirty negotiations, fragile alliances, and repeated trips to Moscow. In the past two months, I slept only on planes—between takeoff and landing—my head resting against the window, my mind still tangled in strategies.
Exhaustion kept me functional.
Pain kept me alive.
I didn't know Alla was working at the club.
Tonight we had gathered for Mikhail's engagement—a man I had come to respect and care for like a brother. He was hard, but fair. He never made gratuitous gestures, never cruel for pleasure. He thought coldly, analyzed everything, and his loyalty was unmistakable.
Anna was a good girl.
Beautiful, calm, intelligent. Their marriage was arranged, but between them there was the beginning of an understanding that could, in time, become something solid.
Yelena, on the other hand—like the snake she was—caught me that evening the moment I arrived from Moscow and coiled herself around my arm with a sweet, calculated smile.
"Be my partner tonight," she said, as if it were a favor she was doing me.
I wanted to refuse, because I knew exactly where any public appearance beside Yelena led. I knew how easily she could turn any gesture into a declaration, how quickly she claimed territories that did not belong to her.
I wanted to leave, to get back into the car and disappear, to let the engagement unfold without me and tend to the exhaustion I had accumulated over the past months.
But I was tired—irritated, drained by travel and negotiations—and the thought of listening for hours to her complain that I was humiliating her in front of everyone, making a fool of her, disrespecting her, felt more exhausting than any direct confrontation.
So, more out of disgust and a desire to close the matter quickly—without scenes and without pointless explanations—I agreed to accompany her.
And, cynical as it may sound, it's a good thing I did.
Because if I had chosen my pride or my peace, I would not be here now—at this point where everything I believed I had lost was returning to my arms.
At the hospital.
With Alla in my arms—pale and fragile, as if she were made of light instead of flesh.
When I saw her collapse, I didn't have time to think, to analyze, or to wonder who was watching and what conclusions they might draw. I reacted on instinct. I caught her before she could hit the floor and lifted her without caring about stained dresses, festive engagements, or alliances that could be misinterpreted.
At the hospital, beneath the cold, merciless glare of fluorescent lights, I brushed her pale cheeks with fingers that usually never tremble. I pushed her hair back—her wild, unruly hair, just like the heart now pounding madly and unevenly in my chest, as if trying to make up for two months of silence.
The doctor spoke calmly, using clear, professional terms. I listened, my eyes fixed on her, but for a few seconds I understood nothing he said, because my mind refused to process anything except the fact that Alla was lying in a hospital bed.
Then the words settled, one by one—heavy and irreversible.
She's pregnant. Two months.
And for a moment I felt the world split open again—not into painful fragments, but as if a door had suddenly been flung wide to something I had never dared to imagine.
Her belly, which I now touched possessively with my palm in an almost protective gesture, was sheltering my child.
Our child.
I closed my eyes for a second, and behind my eyelids flickered every night we had spent together, every silent separation, every word I had swallowed out of pride or fear.
I, who believed I no longer had a heart, that I could function without her.
It seems she didn't just take it when she left.
She took it, carried it with her, and without my knowing, made it beat again—this time for something far greater than myself.
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