My eyes drift down to his chest, comprehension settling in as to how extremely different his world is from mine.
“What happened to Mikhail?” I ask.
Roman is silent for a few moments and then takes a deep breath and squeezes me to him.
“My father happened.”
“Dear God. He . . . did that to him? Why?”
“It’s a long story, malysh. A long and terrible story, and definitely not something I want to talk about in our bed. You’ll have nightmares.”
“That bad?”
“No. It’s much worse than you could imagine, Nina.”
Roman
My alarm goes off at seven. I look down at Nina who is sleeping on my chest and shake my head. I remember moving her down onto the pillows last night, but she decided to climb on me again at some point.
Trying my best not to wake her, I transfer her onto the sheets aga
