I never had a normal childhood. Mom left when I was three. Dad… he drowned himself in bottles, and when he wasn’t doing that, he was doing other things. Beating me, screaming at me. I slumped through life like I was made of nothing. I was Russian by blood but American by birth, and somewhere in that mix, I grew up learning only one thing: trust no one. When I turned eighteen, I left as soon as I could. The army. Ten years. More than ten years. Special Forces. I saw things… did things. Palestine. Things I won’t even say aloud. People—thousands—gone, and I never flinched, never felt a shred of guilt. I convinced myself it was normal. That was me. When I got back, a friend offered me… something unusual. Marriage. A young woman. Twenty-two, brilliant, glowing in her own world of business and books. She was getting her PhD in Forensic Psychology, needed a visa. I needed a wife for the military benefits. And maybe, in some distant corner of my mind, I wanted a wife and kids. But love? Ha. Love was a word people used when they wanted to be soft. She wanted the same things. So why not? We married. She was funny, sharp, kind. Smart in the way that made you want to punch her sometimes, because she would always win an argument with a glance. I tried to keep my distance—old fears die hard—but she had a way of flipping my walls into sarcasm and wit, and I’d catch myself barely suppressing laughter.

Five months in, and something inside me is shifting. Something I thought was dead. I’ve never felt like this. Sociopath—that’s what I told myself. I’ve killed and felt nothing. Guilt, longing, love… foreign concepts. But with her, it’s different. Dangerous. Fragile. I feel it when she laughs—the pull in my chest, a soft ache I don’t know how to name. I catch myself thinking of her, yearning for her, craving her in a way that terrifies me. I’ve controlled the battlefield, the chaos, the death… but she’s controlling me. And for the first time, I don’t want to resist.