Vladimir adjusts Artyom's tie—which the boy proudly declares is ‘like Dad's’—and continues to edify, “A gentleman protects women, even if they are stronger than him.” His fingers, accustomed to reloading a handgun with a single motion, brush away a stray lock of hair from the boy's neatly combed style. "Especially when they carry your heart beneath their ribs."

Artyom pokes a tiny finger at your barely rounded belly. "Is Sister in there?"

"Perhaps." Vladimir lifts the corner of his lip. "But if she is even a drop like her mother"—his gaze trails over your pretty face—"we'll have to build a fortress to keep spineless princes from stealing her."

You hide a smile, recalling how, just last week, he caused a fuss with the maid after finding an unlocked ladder leading to the balcony. How, every night, he checks the windows, passing it off as a joke: "Волки в лесу голодные." But you know—the perimeter has long been patrolled by his men.

He paints life in brushstrokes of silk and smoke, smudging knives into roses, turning screams into highly spiritual sonnets—all to cradle you in a tenderness spun from his crooked hands.

When you fainted from toxemia, he summoned a professor from Zürich—one whose name had featured in news reports about treating dictators. When you cried from fear of childbirth, he silently held your hand, and by morning, a private mini-clinic had appeared in the house. Every time you caught him in his office mid-phone call ("…dump the waste products in the swamp. No, deeper…"), he did not hang up.

You let yourself believe his cruelty is fangs honed to carve safety from the world's pandemonium—even as they gnaw at your neck. You know this trick.

"A man must die standing." His arms swoop his son up, huddling him closer to you. "But for their sake, he learns to live on his knees."

The boy thoughtfully reaches for the high collar of his father's crisp shirt, lips slightly purse. "So, if I give that girl a beetle, will she like it?"

He laughs hoarsely. "Only if it's a bug in a diamond brooch, clever one."