Chapter 8: The Crayon Drawing Revealed
Leo nodded slowly, sliding a spare wooden chair out with a clumsy scrape against the floor. Viktor sat down, his broad shoulders looking absurdly large at the tiny table, yet he moved with extreme care, as if terrified that a single rough gesture might shatter the delicate reality before him. I stood frozen by the doorway, my hands clasped tightly together, watching the two of them bridge a chasm of fear, absence, and violence with a few hesitant glances.
Sarah stood near the sink, dabbing at her eyes with a corner of her apron, watching the scene unfold with a mixture of profound relief and lingering dread. She knew as well as I did that Viktor's presence here was a flare visible to every dangerous enemy who still hunted him in the underworld.
"What are you drawing, son?" Viktor asked, his voice softening into a gentle register I had never heard him use in all the months I had lived under his roof.
Leo picked up his blue crayon again and pointed down at the paper spread out before them. It was the exact same drawing Emma had tried to burn in the estate fireplace earlier that evening—the folded sheet titled "Our new family" with crude stick figures of a man, a woman, and a child holding hands under a lopsided yellow sun.
"It's us," Leo explained proudly, pointing to the figures one by one with a smudged finger. "That's Sarah, that's Mommy when she visits, and that's the tall man in my dreams."
Viktor stared down at the drawing, his jaw tightening as the realization washed over him. The stick-figure man in the crayon drawing had a ragged beard and broad shoulders—an image Leo had conjured from old photographs and the bedtime stories I used to whisper to him during our darkest nights on the run. Viktor reached out and gently picked up the paper, his calloused thumb tracing the edge of the crayon lines where the green grass met the blue sky.
"You drew this all by yourself?" Viktor asked, his voice thick with unspooled grief and sudden, fierce protection.
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"Uh-huh," Leo beamed, completely unaware of the deadly stakes surrounding the piece of paper in his father's hand. "I wanted to make sure you didn't forget what we look like."
Viktor folded the paper with immense care, sliding it into the interior pocket of his wool coat right over his heart. He looked up at me, his eyes dark and resolute, stripped of all pretense and ambition. The game of high society, the galas, the rumors, and the empire didn't matter anymore.
