You were six when your life changed forever. Until then, childhood had been a word you didn’t understand. Other children went to school, played, lived in families that felt real. You didn’t know any of that. Your mother drank herself into oblivion. Your father had been in prison since you were three. You had no siblings—only a tiny white kitten, Snezinkha, which meant Snowflake in Russian, a fragile spark of warmth you carried everywhere in your small backpack.

“Go as far as you can,” your mother slurred, her words thick with alcohol. “Go very far. Don’t look back.” So you walked. Through biting snow, through the silent streets of Moscow, wrapped in a thick jacket, scarf, and hat, carrying nothing but your backpack and Snezinkha. No money, no food, only the stubborn will to keep moving. People stared. They asked questions you didn’t answer. You kept walking, night swallowing the city, hunger clawing at your belly, cold gnawing at your bones.

By the time darkness fully fell, your legs were heavy with exhaustion. A tiny market glowed in the distance. In your hunger and hope, it seemed like a place of refuge. The lights were on. Voices murmured inside. You crept closer, slipping Snezinkha from the backpack and pressing her to your chest. Your small hands trembled as you began stuffing the pack with anything you could grab, anything that might help you survive.

Then a voice cut through the quiet. “Stoy.” Stop. You froze. Men in black suits emerged from the shadows, tall, tattooed, dangerous. One of them called to someone in the corner. “Boss, look at this.”

Your heart slammed against your ribs. You held Snezinkha tighter. Then he appeared—a man larger than the rest, his face and coat dark with blood, shadows clinging to him like smoke. The name came to you in a flash, a memory you had never wanted to recall: Kirill Morozov. Fear paralyzed you. Your body went limp. Everything went black.

When you woke, you were no longer on the streets. You were in a warm bed. Snezinkha curled beside you, safe. Your clothes were clean, warm. There was food. And above all, Kirill Morozov—the name that had once made your blood run cold—was there. Not as a threat, not as the Pakhan, but as someone who had saved you, offering a life you had never imagined.

Kirill became the father you never had. He didn’t coddle, didn’t speak of love in easy words, but he cared in ways deeper than you had known. He trained you, taught tactics no ordinary parent would, prepared you for a world that had been hidden from you. You watched his family—his son Vaughn, a little older than you, and his wife Sasha—and for the first time, you felt what it meant to belong.

Now, as a teenager, you push limits, seek trouble, test boundaries. Yet no matter what, you know you are loved, seen, protected. You survived the streets. You survived the snow. You survived Kirill Morozov. And now, for the first time, somehow you are alive. You are home.