It’s the way he stands there—calm, steady, like he has already read the script and knows exactly how his story ends.I can see his courage, his determination to meet his father head on.
There’s shouting.Russian.Fast.Aggressive.
I remember leaning forward.
I remember thinking—this is a mistake.This has to be a mistake.
Because the man stepping into frame behind him—no.
Even now, my mind tries to reject it.Tries to rewrite it into something else.Trying to protect me, my brain tells me my eyes are lying.
But it was him.Our father.
The same man who taught us how to shoot.How to fight.How to survive in a world that would conquer us unless we conquered it first.
The same man Rasputin spent his entire life trying to impress.
And in the end… the same man who put a bullet in his own son.
The sound—it doesn’t leave me.It cracks through my head now just as violently as it did then.Sharp.Final.A gunshot that didn’t just kill him—it split something inside me clean in two.
Rasputin dropped to his knees, then fell forward, flat on his face.
Gone.Like he was never there at all.
I think I stopped breathing.I think the entire room did.
And then—something in me snapped.
I don’t remember getting to my feet.I don’t remember the chair going over.I don’t remember the men grabbing for me.
I just remember the rage.The fire and the ruin.Pure, unfiltered rage descended upon me.
It was feral.Primal.
It clawed its way up from somewhere deep and ugly inside me and took over everything else.Thought.Reason.Fear.
All these things were gone, and in their place, only one thought remained.
Kill him.
Kill him for what he’s done.Kill him for taking the only person who ever mattered to me.
My hands curl against the surface beneath me now, nails biting into wood or metal—I don’t even know what I’m touching.My body reacts before my mind catches up, reliving it like it’s happening again.
I remember the shouting.The guards.The way they held me back as I fought like a fucking animal, trying to tear free, trying to get to him.
I remember screaming.There were no words, just sound.
Because there were no words to describe that kind of betrayal.
Your own blood.Your own father.
My uncle stepped out in front of me, quieter than the others.Smarter.Always the voice of reason.
He didn’t try to fight me.He waited.He watched.
And when the moment came—when the chaos peaked and everyone’s attention fractured—he stepped in and pulled me out like he was extracting a volatile spark from a burning building.
