Chapter 2 The Petrov King #2
I find them easily—YouTube is full of ballet performances, and Sonya Morozova was famous enough that people recorded her. I click on the first one: Swan Lake, filmed three months before the accident. She's in white, playing Odette, moving across the stage like gravity is optional.
She's extraordinary.
Not like Elena—Elena was fire and passion, all dramatic lines and powerful movements. Sonya is something else. Ethereal. Delicate. Like she might disappear if you breathe too hard, but also like she's stronger than steel beneath the illusion.
I watch her dance with Anton Kozlov. His hands on her waist, her ribs, lifting her like she weighs nothing. Watch the way they move together, the trust it requires to let someone hold your life in their hands.
But my focus is on the way he looks at her when she's not looking at him.
Possession. Obsession. Ownership.
I've seen that look before. In the mirror, when I used to look at Elena. In the faces of men who collect beautiful things and call it love instead of captivity.
Anton Kozlov didn't drop her by accident.
He did it because she tried to leave.
The video keeps playing—another lift, another moment of perfect trust, her body suspended in his hands while two thousand people watch and applaud and have no idea they're witnessing the setup for her destruction.
I click on another video.
This one is from a gala performance, Giselle, two weeks before the accident. She's in the mad scene—the moment when Giselle realizes her lover betrayed her and dances herself to death. It's supposed to be tragic, beautiful and heartbreaking.
But Sonya makes it devastating.
She moves through the choreography like she's actually dying, like her heart is actually breaking, and somewhere around minute three, I realize I'm hard.
What the hell is wrong with me?
I'm watching a twenty-four-year-old woman dance herself to death on a screen, and my body is responding like she's here, and her pain and beauty and broken grace are somehow the most erotic thing I've ever seen.
I haven't been aroused in fifteen years.
Fifteen years of nothing. No desire, no interest, no physical response to any woman who's tried. I've had offers—plenty of offers. Beautiful women, experienced women, women who understand the Bratva world and wouldn't expect anything beyond a night with me.
I turned them all down.
Because the last time I wanted someone, the last time I felt desire and possession and the need to claim, she died carrying our child on our bedroom floor while I held her and failed her and promised her I'd never be weak again.
But here I am, wanting this former ballerina with a desperation that feels like drowning.
I consider closing the laptop right now, but I can't.
I search for more videos and find her performing Don Quixote, La Bayadère, Sleeping Beauty. Watch her move and turn and fly across stages in cities I've never been to, partnered by men whose hands on her body make me want to break things.
Watch her smile during curtain calls, watch her bow to thunderous applause, watch her be whole and perfect and everything she'll never be again because Anton Kozlov decided to destroy her.
By the time Sergei returns at nine-thirty, I've watched maybe a dozen videos and I'm adjusting myself at my desk like a teenager.
"Background check on Anton Kozlov came back," Sergei says quietly. "Preliminary results only, but you need to see this."
He hands me the tablet. I scan the report, my jaw tightening with every line.
Anton Kozlov. Thirty-eight years old. Born in Moscow, trained at the Bolshoi Academy. Started his career at the Bolshoi alongside more senior dancers before transferring to the Mariinsky at twenty-eight. Was Sonya Morozova's primary partner for two years before the accident.
Current location: unknown. Last confirmed activity: credit card usage in the New York area approximately six weeks ago, then nothing.
He left Russia three years ago—two years after destroying Sonya's career. Trail went cold until these recent NYC sightings. Why?
"Your invitation to Saturday's exhibition is confirmed," Sergei adds. "Seven PM opening, private viewing."
"Good." I force myself to focus. "What else?"
"The shipping contracts need your signature. Dmitri wants to discuss the Boston territory dispute. And—" He pauses, reading something on his tablet. "There's been increased federal activity around the Manhattan art market. Nothing concrete, but worth monitoring given your new interest in the area."
"Keep an eye on it. If the feds are sniffing around galleries, I want to know why."
Sergei makes a note, but he's watching me with that expression that means he's about to say something I won't like. "Permission to speak freely?"
"When have you ever needed permission?"
"This sudden interest in Sonya Morozova and her gallery—"
"It's not sudden. It's business. Alexei's cousin running a gallery that moves high-value Russian artifacts through Manhattan? That's our concern."
"Of course." He doesn't believe me. I don't blame him. "And the videos you've been watching for the past ninety minutes?"
I could lie. Could tell him it was research, investigation, due diligence.
Instead, I tell him the truth.
"She reminds me of Elena."
The words hang in the air between us, heavy and sharp and more honest than I've been in fifteen years.
Sergei doesn't respond immediately. Just watches me with those steady eyes that have seen me at my worst and stayed anyway. Finally: "She's not Elena."
"I know."
"Elena is gone."
"I know." My hand is moving again, tracing on the desk without conscious thought. E-L-E-N-A. The pattern worn so deep I could do it blind, drunk, dying.
"Then why—"
"Because she's a former ballerina, Sergei. Because her career ended in a fall that was ruled an accident but wasn't." I pause, choosing words carefully. "Because she survived something that should have destroyed her, and I want to understand how."
It's not the whole truth. Not even close. But it's all I can admit right now.
"Saturday night," Sergei says quietly. "Gallery opening. We'll assess the situation with the stolen artifacts and determine if she poses any risk to Philadelphia interests."
Lie.
"Just you and me," I confirm. "Low profile. We're attending an art exhibition, not starting a war."
"Yet," Sergei mutters, but he's already making arrangements.
I turn back to the window, watching Philadelphia wake up beneath me. The compound is secure, the operations are running smoothly, the money keeps flowing. Everything is exactly as it should be.
Except me.
Except this thing in my chest that feels like awakening after fifteen years of sleep, and I don't know if that's hope or horror.
I look down at my desk, at the contract I've unconsciously traced all over with Elena's name. The letters overlap and blur together, frantic and desperate and exactly like the pattern I wore into the carpet the night she died.
But there, in the corner, almost hidden among the E-L-E-N-As, is something new.
S.
Just one letter. Added to the end of Elena's name without conscious thought.
E-L-E-N-A-S.
I stare at it. At the letter that appeared while I was thinking about midnight dancing and broken ankles and a woman I've never met who somehow crawled inside my chest and made a home in the ruins.
I should be furious.
Should erase it, pretend it never happened, recommit myself to the promise I made Elena.
Instead, I'm going to Manhattan because I need to see her in person, and that terrifies me more than any enemy I've ever faced.
Saturday can't come fast enough.
And that's how I know I'm in trouble.