Chapter 17
Ivan
The SUV's leather seats creaked as I shifted for the hundredth time, trying to find a position that didn't make my chest feel like it was caving in.
Brighton Beach stretched out beyond the tinted windows—Russian bakeries and nail salons and check-cashing places, the familiar ecosystem of my world that suddenly felt alien because I was about to lose the only part of it that mattered.
Anya sat beside me, hands folded in her lap with the kind of stillness that only came from complete emotional shutdown.
She hadn't spoken since we'd left the church basement two hours ago.
Hadn't cried. Hadn't raged. Just sat there in that horrible black dress, my grandmother's cross still resting in the hollow of her throat because no one had thought to demand its return.
The Council had given us two hours. Two hours to deliver my wife to her father like returning a defective purchase.
Two hours with Volkov security required as escorts—Dmitry driving, one of our lieutenants in the passenger seat—to ensure "safe transfer.
" The euphemism made bile rise in my throat.
This wasn't a transfer. This was imprisonment.
This was me handing the woman I loved back to the man who'd spent twenty-six years destroying her.
"We can run," I said, the words escaping for what had to be the tenth time. My voice came out raw, desperate, nothing like the controlled strategist everyone expected. "Right now. I have safehouses in six countries. New identities ready. We could be on a plane in forty minutes."
Anya's head moved slightly—not quite a shake, just enough movement to say no without actually forming the word.
Her eyes stayed fixed on her folded hands, but I saw the calculation happening behind them.
That brilliant mind running probability scenarios, weighing outcomes, reaching the same conclusion every time.
"They'd kill your brothers," she said quietly, her first words in an hour. "Viktor would demand retribution for the insult. The Council would side with him. Alexei and Dmitry would die for our selfishness."
She was right. I knew she was right. But knowing didn't stop me from wanting to tell Dmitry to keep driving, to head for the airport, to save her even if it meant burning everything else to ash.
"There has to be another way," I said, though we'd exhausted every option in those two hours. Legal challenges that would take months. Appeals that required evidence we didn't have yet. Negotiations that Viktor had already refused.
"Ivan." Just my name, but the way she said it—gentle, final, resigned—made something crack in my chest. "We both know how this goes. You deliver me. Viktor keeps me during his 'investigation.' Maybe weeks. Maybe months. Maybe—" She stopped, swallowed. "The Council has spoken."
The democracy of tyrants. The votes of men who'd never been owned, deciding the fate of a woman they saw as property.
Clara reached back from the front passenger seat, her hand finding Anya's briefly. "We'll get you back," she said with fierce certainty. "Alexei's already working on it. This isn't over."
The estate's gates appeared through the windshield, and my body went rigid.
I knew this place—had been here three weeks ago to negotiate the marriage terms. The same iron gates.
The same security cameras. The same Gothic Revival mansion rising behind manicured gardens like something out of a Russian fairy tale gone wrong.
Except now there were twelve guards visible just inside the gates. Armed. Body armor under their suits. This wasn't security—this was a show of force. Viktor making sure everyone understood that his daughter was being returned to his complete control.
"Fucking theatrical bastard," Dmitry muttered, but he pulled up to the intercom as required.
The gates swung open with a mechanical groan that sounded like screaming metal.
We rolled up the circular drive, gravel crunching under the tires with finality.
Each rotation of the wheels took us closer to the moment I'd have to let her go, and my hands started shaking—actually shaking, like some kind of withdrawal.
Viktor appeared on the front steps before we'd even fully stopped. Charcoal suit, silver tie—the same fucking outfit from the Council meeting. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, radiating the particular satisfaction of a man who'd won everything.
Behind him, more guards. His lawyer. Someone with a medical bag who made my stomach turn—the doctor for that examination he'd threatened, probably. All of them arranged like a reception committee for a prisoner transfer.
Because that's what this was.
"Two minutes," I told Anya, my voice breaking on the words. "Two minutes and then we have to—"
"I know." She was already reaching for her bag, the one Clara had packed with a few essentials. Her movements were mechanical, practiced. She'd done this before, I realized. Packed for captivity. Prepared for a return to prison.
The guards surrounded our SUV before we could exit. One of them knocked on Anya's window with false politeness, indicating she should get out. I reached for her hand, needing one last moment of contact, but she was already opening the door.
The inspection happened right there in the driveway. Viktor's men went through her bag with clinical efficiency while we all watched. Clothes. Toiletries. Her laptop, which they confiscated immediately—"For the investigation," the guard said with a smile that made me want to break his teeth.
Then they found Marina and Peanut.
The guard held up the stuffed whale first, eyebrows raised in mock surprise. "What's this?"
"Personal items," Anya said quietly, reaching for Marina.
But Viktor had descended the steps, and his smile when he saw the stuffed animals made my hands clench into fists.
"Still playing with toys, detka?" His voice carried that particular blend of affection and condescension that only parents could achieve. "At twenty-six? This is what the Volkovs reduced you to?"
He took Marina from the guard, examining the whale like it was evidence of a crime. Which to him, it probably was. Evidence that his daughter had found comfort outside his control. Evidence that she'd been allowed to be vulnerable with someone else.
"These are mine," Anya said, and there was a tremor in her voice now. "They're—please, Papa. They're important to me."
Viktor studied her for a long moment, then handed Marina back with exaggerated care. "Of course, detka. We'll discuss your . . . regression issues . . . once you're settled."
The threat in those words was clear. Her vulnerability would be weaponized. Everything she'd found with us turned into evidence of instability.
The documentation came next. Transfer of custody papers. Witness statements. All of it handled by Viktor's lawyer with the efficiency of someone who'd done this before. I signed where required, each signature feeling like signing her death warrant.
"This is temporary," I said, loud enough for everyone to hear. "The investigation will prove the marriage is legitimate. You'll have to return her."
Viktor's smile widened. "Of course. As soon as the investigation concludes. These things do take time, naturally. Months. Sometimes years. But I'm sure you understand—thoroughness is essential."
Years. He was telling me to my face that he planned to keep her for years.
I moved toward Anya, needing to hold her one more time, to tell her I'd fight for her, that this wasn't over. But Viktor's guards stepped between us with practiced precision.
"No contact during the investigation," one of them said. "Council orders."
"One goodbye," I demanded. "I'm her husband. One fucking goodbye."
Viktor tilted his head, considering, then nodded magnanimously. "Thirty seconds. Supervised."
The guards parted just enough for me to reach her, but stayed close enough to intervene. I pulled Anya against me, trying to memorize everything—the way she fit against my chest, the scent of her hair, the tremor in her shoulders that said she was fighting not to break down.
"I'll get you back," I whispered against her hair. "I swear to god, Anya, I'll get you back."
She pressed something into my hand—small, metal. Her wedding ring, I realized. She was giving it to me for safekeeping.
"I know," she whispered back, but her voice said she didn't believe it.
The guards pulled us apart before I could say anything else. Viktor's hand landed on Anya's shoulder, possessive and controlling, and she flinched—barely visible, but I saw it.
"Come, detka," he said, guiding her toward the house. "Your room is exactly as you left it. We have much to discuss about your recent experiences."
I watched her walk up those steps, her spine straight but her shoulders curling inward with each step. Making herself smaller. Disappearing into herself. She didn't look back—I think because she couldn't. One look back and she might have run.
The door closed behind them with the finality of a coffin lid.
"We need to go," Dmitry said quietly. "Now, before someone decides we're violating the supervision order."
But I stood frozen, staring at that closed door, her wedding ring burning in my clenched fist. Through one of the upper windows, I thought I saw movement—maybe Anya looking down, maybe just a curtain shifting.
It didn't matter. She was gone.
Our penthouse felt like a crime scene where the body had been removed but the chalk outline remained.
Everywhere I looked, I saw the shape of her absence.
The Eames chair held the ghost of her curled up with those comparative literature books she'd checked out from the library.
The sofa cushions still bore the slight indentation from where she'd sit cross-legged, coloring with the focused intensity of a child who'd never been allowed to be one.