The room was too still, the air too thick. Zoya could taste the sterile bitterness in the air, thick and suffocating. Her body felt heavy, like a stranger's, tangled in the thin sheets that barely covered her. She blinked a few times, but her vision swam, the haze of sleep lingering, unwilling to fade. The quiet was unbearable, pressing against her chest, as if the world itself had forgotten how to move.
But then, a presence.
A low, familiar voice threaded through the silence, like a thread pulling her back from the edge.
"Zoya."
Her breath hitched in her throat. She didn't want to turn around, didn't want to face the cold truth she had tried to bury. The words felt like a weight, pressing against her chest, forcing her to breathe them in. She closed her eyes tightly, hoping it would stop, praying the voice would go away.
"Zoya," he said again, softer this time, but there was no mistaking the authority in it. The man. The mysterious man who had been haunting her thoughts for longer than she could remember. She had never asked for him to speak to her, never wanted him to have a part in her life. But here he was, as always, lingering in the shadows.
Zoya's hand clenched into a fist against the sheets, her fingers digging into the fabric. It felt like the walls of the room were closing in on her, trapping her in this prison of silence and truth. She didn't want to hear it. Not now. Not when everything in her was already broken.
"You should have known," he whispered, his voice almost tender, but still biting. "You've always known. You've just refused to see it. You've refused to face it."
Her throat tightened. She didn't want to listen. She didn't want to hear the cruel weight of his words, but they crawled under her skin, burrowing into her like parasites.
"You thought he would come for you," he continued, his voice like ice, cutting through her. "But he's never coming back. Your father is gone, Zoya. He's dead and that's the first truth on the list."
She shook her head, the words scraping against her mind. No. She couldn't believe it. Not him. Not my father.
But the truth was already there, pulling at the edges of her reality. She tried to push it away, but it clung to her like a second skin.
"No," she whispered, her voice barely audible, cracking under the weight of the denial. "No, you're lying. This isn't true. It can't be."
But the man's words only grew colder, harder.
"It's true, Zoya. He died in prison, a long time ago. And you didn't even know. You couldn't even be bothered to find out."
Zoya's hands were shaking now. The realization came slowly, like the pull of a tidal wave just before it crashes. Her father, gone. Dead. And she had never even known.
"You didn't want to know, did you?" he continued, his voice a low whisper that seemed to fill the room. "It was easier to pretend. Easier to believe the lie that one day he'd come for you. But he won't. He never will."
The crumpled envelope slid across the floor, stopping just at her feet. She could feel its weight even before she looked at it, the paper slick and cold beneath her fingers. She reached for it, her hand trembling as she picked it up. The faint, sharp scent of paper mixed with the sterile air around her.
Trembling, she opened it.
Inside, the death certificate lay—official, cold, final. Her father's name. The date of death. The cause. Her eyes blurred as the words danced in front of her, but they were unmistakable. They were real.
Her body trembled, unable to stop the tears that began to well up in her eyes. She dropped the paper, watching it flutter to the floor, but she didn't move. She couldn't move. The weight of the truth was pressing against her chest, suffocating her. Her father, gone. Not just gone, but dead.
The breath in her chest hitched painfully, as if something sharp had wedged itself there, stealing the air from her lungs. The tears fell, unstoppable, and she didn't try to hide them. Didn't try to push them away. She let them come.
"No…" she whispered, the word cracking, unraveling her. She couldn't stop it. "No, this isn't real. You're lying. Please, you have to be lying."
But the man's voice, cold and unsympathetic, only responded with the brutal truth.
"I'm not lying, Zoya. He died a long time ago. And you never knew. You never bothered to ask. You were too busy hiding behind your shame to see what was right in front of you."
The words stabbed deeper, and Zoya doubled over, her body wracked with sobs she couldn't control. It was like all the walls inside her—everything she had built to keep herself together—had just crumbled into dust.
I'm a fool.
She slammed her fists into the floor, desperate to find something, anything to hold on to. I should've known. I should've cared more. I should've asked more questions. I should've been there.
She was shaking, her body trembling violently as if every cell in her body was rebelling against the truth, trying to crawl out of her skin. Her breath came in ragged gasps, her chest rising and falling in a frantic rhythm, but she could barely catch it. Her heart was beating in a frantic, erratic rhythm, as if it were trying to escape her ribcage.
And then she collapsed, her face in her hands, sobbing into the cold floor as her body shook with the weight of it. I was ashamed of him. The thought hit her like a slap. She had been ashamed of him. Ashamed of the very man who had given her life. The very man who had tried, in his own broken way, to protect her.
But she hadn't cared. She hadn't wanted to see him, to admit the truth. And now, here she was, alone in this room, with no father, no safety. No one.
"Please," she gasped between sobs, her voice broken, desperate. "Please, make it stop. Make it go away. I can't take it. I can't."
But the man only whispered, his voice soft and soothing, but with a cruel edge beneath it.
"There's no escaping it, Zoya. You never had the chance. You were always too busy running from the truth."
Zoya's mind reeled, the weight of her guilt crushing her. She thought she had time. She thought there would be time to fix it, to make things right. But there was no more time. She had run out of it. Her father was gone, and now the only thing left was the empty space he had left behind.
And she had wasted it.
Her hands trembled as she wiped her tears away, but they kept coming. The grief was so raw, so fresh, it felt like she was being torn apart from the inside out.
Her father was gone, and she would never be able to apologize. She would never get the chance to make things right.