Yosyp Kazakov could not sleep. He could never sleep when it was hot in his room, and it was the middle of one of the biggest heat waves in British history.
Cold weather suited him; the sharp bitterness of it gave his mind clarity, and it was nights like this when Kazakov most wished he was back in the harsh cold climate of northern Ukraine.
That night he had tossed and turned, tried everything from counting sheep to reciting the nine times table, but nothing could turn his brain off while he lay in that humid, stuffy room.
After 4 hours of trying to sleep he gave up and sat at his desk, opening his laptop to play some online poker.
Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of a photo propped up against his window sill.
It was a photo that took Yosyp Kazakov way back, before he joined Cherub as a training instructor, before he was in the Russian special forces, before he earned 2 medals for valiant conduct fighting during the soviet invasion of Ukraine.
In the photo he was a young man, dressed in a navy suit. He was almost unrecognisable as the Yosyp Kazakov who sat at his desk today, with signifigant facial scarring, short grey hair and a chest bulging with muscle.
The biggest difference between the two Yosyps was that the one in the photo was smiling. Yosyp never smiled now.
Also in the photo stood a stunning tall Russian woman, with elegant features and long blonde hair. She wore a white lace dress, as brides usually wear on their wedding day.
Kazakov grabbed the photo and tore it into tiny, tiny shreads. He didn't want to be reminded of that day, his wedding day, the day he gave his heart to the most beautiful woman in the world, only for her to crush it into a million pieces.
Suddenly, to his horror, Kazakov realised he had hot salty years running down his face. This was the first time he had cried in 20 years; he hadn't even shed a tear when in Afghanistan a man slit his face open with a machete, leaving a long ugly ridge running diagonally down his face.
On the outside Yosyp Kazakov looked like your adverage tough ex-special forces military training instructor but inside, he had copious amounts of deep feelings and emotions. And he kept thembottled up so nobody but he could see them.