Part 4 — At night, the bride dragged an unconscious woman across the floor, but when she heard my one question, the smile vanished from her face

Voices could be heard from the police radio, but my ears repeated only one phrase: “Maria is gone.”

Everyone in the greenhouse began moving at once.

One police officer put handcuffs on Andrei.

The other took Victoria’s bag away from her.

I went to Nazar.

“Are you afraid?”

The child nodded.

“Where is Mother?”

I could not answer that question.

Andrei stood among the police officers and for the first time no longer resembled the man whose return the whole family had awaited for years. His face had fallen, his lips trembled, but he still tried to give orders.

“Call my lawyer.”

Irakli took out his phone.

“I already called.”

“And what does he say?”

“He says he will no longer take the case.”

Andrei rolled his eyes.

“You are my lawyer.”

“I was, until I learned that you planned to kill Maria and were using the child as a hostage.”

Victoria looked at him.

“You wanted this property too, didn’t you?”

Irakli answered calmly:

“I wanted to protect the property. You hid your own crime inside it.”

The police took both of them away. I took Nazar’s hand and we left the greenhouse. Outside, the morning air was cold. Light barely reached through the clouds, as though even the city still did not dare to see all this.

Maria’s trail was found half an hour later.

In the hospital’s reserve corridor, behind the old elevator, one of the orderlies found a door handle on which a drop of blood had dried. We checked the camera footage. Maria had not left by herself. A security guard whom Victoria paid monthly had taken her out in a wheelchair.

Irakli discovered the number of his car in the highway cameras.

Two hours later Maria was found outside the city, in an abandoned workshop. She was tied to a chair but conscious. The bandage on her head had become wet, and her hands had been rubbed raw by the rope.

“Nazar?” That was her first question.

“He is with me,” I said.

Maria began to cry then. Not from pain. From relief.

“I knew you would manage.”

“Why didn’t you tell me from the beginning?”

“Because Andrei was afraid. He told me that if I spoke up, they would take Nazar away from me. Then they would also accuse you of my disappearance.”

“And what was in the last file?”

Maria was silent for a while. Then she took a small memory card from the bag.

“Your father gave this to me a year before he died. He told me to give it to you only when I was sure that you not only trusted Victoria, but suspected her.”

There was a video message from Father in the file.

His voice was tired but clear.

“Danilo, if you are watching this, Andrei has returned. He never regretted running away. He will return not for the family, but for what he thinks belongs to him. I protected you, but perhaps I hid the truth from you for too long.”

In the video Father also said that several years earlier Andrei had stolen money from the employees and staged the boat accident so that he would not be held accountable.

But the hardest was the last sentence:

“Victoria helped him from the very beginning. Their relationship existed before your engagement began.”

I looked at the screen and felt a strange emptiness. It was as though pain had occupied the whole place, but there was no space left even for tears.

Nazar was drawing with pencils in the next room.

That same evening the police recorded Victoria’s and Andrei’s statements again. There was a camera in a separate room. I watched from behind the glass.

Victoria denied everything at first.

“I did not hurt Maria.”

The investigator turned on the recording.

Her own voice sounded in the room: “The mirror is the easiest way.”

For the first time I saw on Victoria’s face a woman frightened by her own words. She looked at the screen, then at her hands, as though she could not understand how such a sentence could have come from her mouth.

“I did not say that,” she said quietly.

“It is your voice,” the investigator answered.

“No… I was only trying to frighten her.”

“Was kidnapping the child also intimidation?”

Victoria could not answer.

Andrei spent the whole time in silence. When the recording was played in his room, he buried his head in his hands. The voice that years earlier had said, “Then Maria will disappear,” was now being heard by him himself.

“I did not want it this way,” he said.

The investigator placed his signed documents on the table.

“But you did it this way.”

It was the first time Andrei could not blame anyone for his own life.

Several weeks later Victoria and Andrei appeared before the court. They were charged with causing serious injury to Maria, attempted kidnapping, forgery of documents, and extortion. The defense tried to present everything as my family conflict.

But the camera footage, audio files, letter, and doctor’s report fitted together exactly.

In the courtroom Maria carefully held her left hand. Two of her fingers could no longer straighten completely. When she finished testifying, Nazar was sitting beside me and twirling a small pencil.

“Mother, are we going home now?”

“We are,” Maria told him.

I offered them the temporary use of my house outside the city. Maria immediately shook her head.

“I can accept help in the form of work, but not charity.”

“This is not charity.”

“Then make a contract with me.”

For the first time that night I smiled.

“All right. You will be the house-care manager.”

“And you will pay me my salary on time.”

“Every month.”

“Then we have an agreement.”

I changed the house in a way I had never dared before. I did not restore my grandmother’s shattered mirror. I did not keep its shards as though in a museum. I simply kept the frame and made a large window in its place, through which the garden could be seen.

I took all of Victoria’s things out of the house.

I put her pearl clasp, which had been found on the corridor floor, into an envelope and gave it to the investigator. I no longer wanted an object to remain in the house that had once looked like love but in reality concealed danger.

Nazar slowly grew closer to me.

In the first weeks he spoke to me only when his mother was in the room. Then one morning he came into the kitchen and placed a drawing on the table.

There was a large house in the drawing. Four people could be seen in the windows: Maria, Nazar, me, and a small dog that we did not actually have.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“Our dog.”

“We don’t have a dog.”

“Not yet,” he replied.

That same day we brought a small golden dog from a shelter. Nazar named him Hope.

Three months later I began managing my company again, but I no longer worked as before. Every evening at six I went home. I turned off my phone at dinner. On Sundays I walked Nazar to school and helped Maria in the garden.

When the first snow came to the city, Nazar put his hand against the window.

“Does snow cover houses too?”

“It does.”

“Then can it hide bad things too?”

I thought for several seconds.

“It can. But the time will come when the snow melts.”

He nodded, as though the answer was enough.

Four months later I received a letter from Victoria. The lawyer sent it to me. The letter said that she wanted to meet me and explain everything.

The next day another message arrived.

“You understood it incorrectly. I loved you.”

I stared at the screen for a long time.

Then I sent only one sentence:

“I no longer need your love at the price of my fear.”

I deleted the number.

I did not answer the third call.

That evening Nazar sat in the living room and drew. Maria watered the flowers by the window. And I put a new photograph into the frame left from my grandmother’s mirror: Maria, Nazar, me, and the small dog in a snowy garden.

Below the photograph, on the shelf, lay the small copper pendant, shaped like a house and covered with red enamel. Maria told me it should remain with Nazar, but the child reached his hand toward me.

“You keep it, Uncle. Now it belongs to our house.”

I hung the pendant on the window handle.

The wind lightly swayed it.

This time its tinkling no longer meant danger.

For the first time, the house was no longer a fortress.

It became a home.