Let’s Keep It RealThe bedroom door opened. Masha stood there, pale, phone in hand.
“Get away from my mother,” she said. “I called the police. They’re on their way.”
Dmitry turned. When he saw his daughter, something changed in his face. The fury gave way to confusion.
“Masha… you’re here?”
“Yes, Dad. I’m here. And I heard everything.”
“Masha, you don’t understand. Your mother—”
“My mother is the only honest person in this family.” Her voice shook, but not from fear—from anger. “You’re a thief and a liar. And I don’t want anything to do with you anymore.”
Dmitry released Vera. Took a step toward his daughter.
“Sweetheart, listen to me…”
“No. You listen to me.” Masha held up the phone. “I recorded all of it. Everything you said about the schemes, the judge, how ‘everybody does it’—it’s all here. If you don’t leave right now, this goes straight to the investigator.”
Vera looked at her daughter and hardly recognized her. The frightened girl who had once yelled at her mother over the phone was gone. In her place stood a grown woman—steady, fierce, ready to defend her family. Dmitry froze. He looked at his daughter, then at his ex-wife, then at his own hands, as if he couldn’t quite understand how he had ended up here. In the distance, sirens began to sound. They were getting closer. Blue light flashed against the window and across the walls of the little apartment.
Dmitry stood in the hallway looking dazed, beaten, as if he couldn’t make sense of how his life had come to this.
“Dad,” Masha said quietly. “Please go.”
He looked at her for a long time. Something flickered in his eyes—not anger, not hatred, but something like regret. Brief and almost impossible to read.
“I loved you,” he whispered. “I really did. You and your mother. In my own way.”
“Your own way isn’t love,” Masha said. “Love doesn’t betray people.”
Dmitry lowered his head. Then he turned and left—not toward the stairs, but toward the fire exit at the end of the hall. A few seconds later, his footsteps were gone. Vera rushed to Pavel, who was still unconscious in the doorway. His pulse was weak but steady. Alive. Just knocked out.
The police came charging into the building a minute later. A young lieutenant with his weapon drawn, two more officers behind him in body armor.
“Where is he?”
“Fire exit. He just left.”
The lieutenant motioned, and two officers took off after him. The others stayed to question them, check the apartment, and help Pavel.
Dmitry was caught forty minutes later on the edge of town in an abandoned garage where he had been hiding for the previous two weeks. He didn’t resist. He was just sitting on the dirty floor staring into space. Vera learned that the next morning from Gromov.
“We got him,” he said over the phone. “And this time he’s not going anywhere. With the charges he’s facing, he’s looking at ten years easy. Maybe fifteen.”
Vera set down the phone and went to the window. Dawn was breaking outside—the first dawn in weeks without fear. Pink sky. White snow. A few people walking down the street. An ordinary winter morning. But for her, it felt different. Final. It was over.
Masha came up behind her and wrapped her arms around her mother’s shoulders.
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