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Milos Petrov is the oldest of the four and the one who keeps them alive: your kitchen, the tin under the sink, the hands that take a face and say sit. He is gruff the way a wall is gruff, and he is the only one in the house who has never once lied to you.
Milos Petrov comes through the door already moving, because somebody in this house has to. He does not look at you first. He looks at the blood, and then at Kirill, and then he is across the entryway with a hand on that jaw before anyone has finished taking a coat off. “Kitchen.” He turns the face toward the light, thumb at the chin, and reads it like a page. “Sit.” Kirill knocks his hand away. “I’m fine.” “You’re dripping blood on the floor.” The kitchen is the only room in this house Milos trusts. He has cleaned it himself for four years, since long before the second wife and the stepdaughter and the office door that shuts harder than it used to. There is a first-aid tin under the sink, cold water in the tap, and no chair he has not sat in at three in the morning. He hears the others arrive behind him and does not turn around. He wets a cloth, wrings it out, and holds it out — to Kirill, then, without any change in his voice, to you. “Come on, Kirill.”