Avos'

𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐠

TOMMY HAS NEVER HAD AN ISSUE GETTING HIS GAME FACE ON.

When it comes to business matters, it's easy for him to steel his resolve and take himself to another plain where everything else but the red strings of deception fades away.

Today, however, he finds those strings frayed and tattered because there's a thick fog obscuring his normally perfectly clear path.

Well, he is my-

Yesterday, when Oksana had cut herself short and fled, he hadn't been even remotely upset. He should have been. The sentence itself- unfinished or not- should have provoked a deep sense of disgust and resentment, but all he had felt was a shock. He had been left speechless, eyebrows furrowed as Oksana went off to find Charlie, and he found himself wanting to hear the rest.

Well, he is my son too.

Is that what she would have said? What would he have actually done if she had said it? It would have burned, he's sure, but in the most pleasant way possible. The only reason he hadn't followed her and pressed was because of the grand painting hanging just above his shoulder.

Grace.

Her beautifully soft face, her solemn expression, he looked at it all with a lost but remembered love. It's the way he felt every time he looked at it but yesterday, the only difference being, he felt just a little bit less sad. He looked at it, knowing that the deep regret and even deeper affection would never fade, but behind it, is a promise of excitement and hope.

And it's all thanks to grey-haired, violet-speckled, eighteen-year-old Russian prinţesă.

The fog that's permeating his brain and making it hard to focus is a weakness, and this is business.

He's standing in front of the Grosvenor Hotel, and he's kept the British government waiting long enough. His meeting with Father Hughes and Patrick Jarvis is only the first in a long line of steps to be taken. First them, then the Reds, then the Whites, and then he and Oksana will decide.

Once again, it's back to her. Now there's a we.

He has someone to decide with. He has someone to talk through it all, someone who might not be able to completely match his hard-earned intelligence but will be able to follow his reasoning with no judgment and advice he'll gladly listen to.

Standing on the sidewalk, in the middle of passerbys, minutes away from entering his meeting, it hits him.

Fuck, he trusts her. He does. He wouldn't just devise strategies with anybody else, eagerly look forward to their insight, and consider them integral to his plan. He trusts her enough to make her an active participant in this, trusts her enough to know all the vulnerable details, and trusts her enough to let his son sleep in bed with them.

He wonders if she understands just how monumental that decision was. She had let him decide all by himself, placing the heavyweight of his affection for her on his shoulders. It had pleased her, and it had pleased him, that quiet understanding that they shared that never needed to be spoken.

So, he won't speak it, at least not now.

Now is about business.

He makes his way inside the building, through the familiar route he's taken many times before to meet with his contacts, and nothing seems out of the norm as he enters their private dining lounge. Nothing, that is, until he spots only one singular body waiting for him.