Page 131 of Sexting the Pakhan

“I am not dying,” Ruslan says.

Mila sniffles. “How do you know?”

Ruslan pauses. “Experience.”

“That is not reassuring,” I say.

Nadia says, “It was a vague answer.”

Karina mutters, “Welcome to the club, kid.”

Somehow, we get him into my apartment.

The place is small, warm, and painfully normal after the last hour. The girls’ drawings are taped to the fridge. Two schoolbags sit near the couch. A laundry basket waits by the hallway because I forgot to fold towels. There are glitter stickers on the coffee table, a half-dead basil plant near the window, and three library books stacked beside the sofa.

Ruslan takes it all in from the doorway. I see it happen. His eyes move over the shoes, the drawings, the tiny raincoats on the hooks, the framed photo of the girls at the beach last summer.

His face changes.

Not much. Enough.

He knows now.

Not everything, maybe. Not the details. Not the years. Not the pregnancy test I took alone or the night I screamed into a pillow because both babies had fevers and I was terrified.

But he knows enough to understand that this is not just my apartment.

It’s theirs. His daughters are everywhere. But the cruel irony is that he doesn’t know who they are, what they are to him. And I’m not going to let him find out.

“Sit,” I say sharply, because if I let that silence grow, it will swallow the room.

Ruslan looks at me.

I point to the kitchen chair. “Sit down before you fall down.”

For once, he does what I say.

Karina locks the door behind us, then checks the chain, then looks at me. “First aid box?”

“Bathroom. Under the sink,” I say.

Karina takes Nadia with her because Nadia refuses to let go of her hand. Mila stays glued to my side, watching Ruslan with worried eyes.

I kneel in front of him and look at the makeshift bandage around his thigh. Blood has soaked through. My stomach turns.

Karina comes back with the first aid box, towels, and the expression of a woman barely holding back questions that could set the apartment on fire. She hands me the box and says, “Zoya.”

“I know,” I say.

“No,” Karina says quietly, eyes flicking toward Ruslan, then the girls. “You don’t.”

My hands still over the bandage.

For one second, the unfinished sentence from the kindergarten returns.

There’s something you should know.

About that number.