He reached into the sink and grasped a fork, his fingers clenching so tightly around the handle that his knuckles turned white. For a moment, he stood frozen there, breathing raggedly, staring at Marcus as if committing his image to memory.
Then, he moved.
Without warning. Without hesitation.
The metal glinted for an instant before vanishing between Marcus's lips. A strangled sound escaped his mouth—half gasp, half disbelief—as his body jerked violently backward. His balance gave way almost instantly; his knees buckled, and he crumpled onto the cold tiles.
Ivan did not stop.
He dropped down right after him, his arm rising and falling in a rhythmic motion. There was a heaviness in every movement—one that had nothing to do with physical strength, but rather with a pain that had been suppressed for far too long. The air grew thick, filled with the sounds of impact and strained, labored breathing.
Marcus struggled to defend himself; his hands trembled, his movements weak and erratic. His eyes were wide—filled with confusion, pleading—but Ivan did not seem to see it. Or perhaps he did, and it simply didn't matter.
The pristine floor beneath them slowly began to lose its luster, dark stains spreading outward in uneven patterns. The room, once silent, now echoed with the sound of rapid breathing and the faint scraping of metal against tile.
Ivan's face had transformed.
There was a hollowness in his expression—a disturbing stillness lying beneath the chaos of his movements. The corners of his lips curled upward—not quite a smile, not quite human. His gaze remained fixed, as if entranced—as if he were merely watching a scene unfold, rather than being the one creating it. "I've thought about this for a very long time," he said in a slow, trembling voice—though not out of fear. "From the very day you stepped into our lives."
His words came out disjointed, drawn out between gasps for breath.
"You ruined everything."
He moved even closer, his grip tightening as if he could rewrite the past through sheer force of will.
"You walked in as if you belonged here... as if no one could even touch you." His jaw clenched. "As if my father had never existed at all."
Marcus tried to speak, but only a broken, strangled sound escaped his lips.
Ivan's expression grew even more grim.
"I watched you," he said, almost whispering. "Every single day. The way you looked at her. The way you laughed with her... as if she were yours."
His voice wavered, yet its intensity did not diminish.
"Back then, I couldn't do anything. I just stood there... watching it all unfold." His grip loosened for a moment, then tightened once more. "But no longer."
He let out a heavy breath, as if unburdening himself of a heavy weight.
"I waited. I told myself that I would grow stronger. That one day, I would take it all back."
His gaze flickered away for a moment; a look of instability glinted in his eyes.
"You cannot stay here," he said now, with even greater resolve. "You cannot exist in her world."
This time, his words were colder still—devoid of any trace of the earlier tremor.
"She will forget you. She *has* to forget you."
For a moment, everything seemed to slow down. Ivan's movements were no longer quite so restless; instead, they seemed more deliberate—as if the storm within him had begun to subside—yet not into peace, but into something calmer, and far more unsettling.
"She will return," he murmured, as if speaking only to himself. "Return—just as things were before."
His gaze remained fixed on Marcus—no longer filled with anger, but with a strange, dispassionate certainty.
As if this had always been the only possible outcome.