Chapter Twenty Nine
Alexei
My bedroom is dark when I enter late in the evening, and this is how I know Katya is not in bed waiting for me. Always—always—she needs a light left on. Even just one, to soften the severity of the darkness that she abhors.
She is pouting. In a sulk, because of the way I sent her from my office earlier today.
Probably it should not affect me, but I saw her face when she left.
The same face she made the night she was mistaken about my refusal to take her to Moscow.
A hurt that makes my heart ache with the desire to soothe it.
If she were anyone else, I would not care about this. But I care when she hurts.
It is not difficult to find Katya again. There is just one door in the hallway that has light behind it, peeking out from under the door. All these doors have been unlocked since I first took her out, since she stayed when she had the chance, however briefly, to run from me.
Tonight is the first night since that she chooses a bed other than mine. Anatoli would have something derogatory to say of this...lovers’ tiff, I think this is called. She takes offense at my refusal of her requests, chooses to sleep elsewhere.
The bedside lamp is on when I enter. Katya is not asleep. She lays on her side, her back to me. In her hand she holds her mother’s picture, the one I had Anatoli rescue from her cheap motel in Minneapolis along with the rest of her things. Her face, in profile, is blank. Expressionless.
Maybe she hurts more even than I knew.
She knows I am here with her, but she does not acknowledge this, does not look at me. She evinces no reaction when I sit at the edge of the bed.
I do not explain myself to others. This is not something I have to do, ever.
And now I realize—because I do not have to do this, I also don’t know how to do this.
Only Katya receives this privilege from me, and explaining her mistaken impression of the Moscow trip was easier by far than explaining my fucking feelings.
There is nothing I fear. I have not feared anything since I was a child.
Today, I felt fear that she would leave me. That if I give her these things she asks for, she will use them to run from me. That I will always want her more than she wants me.
My hand falls onto her hip. My voice is rough when I lift my chin to indicate the picture she holds and say, “She was pretty, your mother.”
“Yeah,” Katya says softly, though still she does not look at me. “She was.”
“You look like her.” They have the same blue eyes. The same smile.
“I know.” She rubs her thumb over her mother’s face in this picture, where their cheeks are squeezed together as they wear matching grins.
Katya’s mother’s hair is short; only a couple of inches.
But it is the same blonde as Katya’s. She is her mother’s miniature; the part of her mother that remains in the world after death.
So much more her mother’s child than her father’s. “She was a teacher,” I say, and this is not a question. I already know this. Katya wants to be a teacher—like her mother.
“Yeah. She taught elementary school. Fifth grade,” she says.
“She loved it. She loved her kids; all of them. She didn’t make a ton of money or anything, but she loved her job so much.
” She makes a small sound. A sniffle. “She was always there to pick me up after school. She was home during the summer. It was really perfect. She gave me that. A perfect childhood.”
I’m not jealous of this motherly thing I have never experienced. It is not possible to miss what I never had. But I am jealous of her mother. To have had so much of Katya’s love, when she does not truly offer it to me. After today, perhaps she wants to do that even less.
A rough sound ekes out of my mouth. I kick off my shoes. Pull my shirt off over my head.
“What are you doing?” Katya asks, her brows drawn as I stand up.
“You want to sleep elsewhere?” I yank down the fly of my jeans, strip off the last of my clothes.
“Fine. This is your choice. Mine is to sleep with you.” I crawl over her, over the shrimp-like curl she has made of her body, her legs pulled up toward her chest. The light is obnoxious.
Too fucking close to the bed. It burns behind my eyes even when I close them.
But she needs the light. So this is a concession I make for her, for her comfort.
She does not resist when I pull her into the circle of my arms. But she does sigh. It sounds sad. Resigned. She stretches out one arm, gently sets her mother’s picture back on the nightstand. “She would be…so disappointed in me.”
That fucking twinge in my chest. “Why do you say this?”
“She wouldn’t let herself be kept,” she says.
“She didn’t let herself be kept.” Her breath snarls in her lungs.
“She didn’t know that Papa was married when they started dating.
Didn’t know he had a family. And when she found out, she walked away from him.
He wanted her to stay, to be his mistress.
But she knew she deserved better than that.
And then, when she found out she was pregnant… she knew I deserved better.”
Of course Katya deserves better than a fucking piece of shit father like Giulio Russo.
“She worked so hard to give me a good life,” Katya says. “Because she loved me so much more than she ever hated Papa. And I—I’m not a fighter like she was. I’m not as strong as she was.”
How can she think this of herself? She is so much stronger than she knows. So much stronger than she believes herself to be. Can she not recall how fiercely she fought me the night I took her from Minneapolis? The constant battles she waged against me in the following weeks? She is a fighter.
But she does not feel like one. She feels like a daughter who has disappointed her mother’s hopes for her. And I wish I could have met this woman who raised her. Who gave to her the sweet smile and the softness I love.
She says, so softly, already near to falling asleep, “I can’t keep living like this, Alexei.”
I do not chide her for this. Not tonight.
Not when I think she sees herself losing the last part of her mother that remains in the world, the part of her mother she has carried on like a torch.
It is a different sort of death, but no less painful for her.
“We will figure these things out, koshechka,” I tell her.
I cannot have her love while she suffers this loss.
Somehow, I am going to have to find a way for Katya to achieve her dream of teaching.
Without this, she cannot be happy, and I will lose her to her resentment.
And this—this is unacceptable to me. As she relaxes into sleep, I murmur into her hair, “I will never let you go.”
∞∞∞
The mall is just as crowded as it was the last time we came.
It is not a weekend, but it is still summer, and so families and children weave through the space in chaotic patterns.
Katya and I have to fight the flow of a crowd to reach our destination.
This is not so much a problem so long as my men, who trail behind us at a discreet distance, can see us clearly.
The presence of them makes Katya uncomfortable still.
But her complaints—if she has them—she keeps to herself. This in itself concerns me. I would prefer her anger to her complacence. Her disrespect to her silence. There is an apathy that hangs about her shoulders, pushing them down into a disconsolate slump that aggravates that twinge in my chest.
The sigh that drifts from her lungs is the echo of the one she made last night. Resigned. Reconciled. Fucking sad. She does not have to tell me this. She has already told me—what she needs. What she cannot be happy without.
I can’t keep living like this, she said, and she thinks I do not listen to this. So she does not bother to tell me again. She does not waste her energy on something she thinks she cannot make me understand.
She flicks another glance over her shoulder.
“You don’t need to do this, Katya,” I tell her. “They are for your protection.”
“Are they?” she asks, and the words are dispirited. And she adds, in a listless monotone, “Because I feel like a dog on a leash.”
She feels like this because she is permitted so little freedom.
And I think—if she had not been so much a secret, if her father had truly embraced her and made her part of his family, she would understand this better.
If I had shielded her less from the realities of my life, she would understand this better.
She startles as I grab her hand and pull her out of the crowd, into the shadow of an awning. This is not the time or the place to explain these things to her, but maybe I can make her understand a little.
Maybe I should have made her understand yesterday instead.
“Yesterday,” I tell her, “when you interrupted me with Piotr. I was—”
She gives a humorless laugh. “You were kind of a dick.” Her voice is scratchy. For a moment her eyes are misty, as if she is recalling this wound.
“Da,” I tell her. “I was dick, because I was angry. My men waste too much of my time on bullshit things.” Stealing my time away from Katya, who deserves more of it than she is given presently.
“And then you ask to go out. You want to teach. And I know that when this happens, eventually it will become impossible to keep you secret.”
Katya’s shoulders stiffen. “What?”
“This is not insult to you,” I tell her brusquely. “This is precaution.”
“I don’t want to be anyone’s secret,” she says slowly. Softly, as if the words are painful to utter.
I don’t want this, either, but some things are unavoidable.
“I need you to understand this,” I tell her.
“Powerful men have powerful enemies. When I keep you secret, also I keep you safe. There are many who might think to use you to hurt me.” I jerk my head toward my men, who linger twenty feet or so away, waiting upon us.
“They are for your protection, koshechka.” Because she is the most precious thing in my life.
Her eyes glisten. “How long were you going to keep me a secret?” she asks. “Was I just…supposed to stay hidden for the rest of my life?”
“Nyet.” My fingers squeeze hers. Her hand is cold in mine, even in the unrelenting heat of summer.
“But I do not know how to do this yet.” I have never had to do this before now.
It is a logistical problem I have never had to solve.
The problem of keeping her safe while permitting her this freedom she needs from me.
She looks down at my hand on hers. “I can’t go on being a prisoner,” she says.
“I need time for this, koshechka. This is not no, you understand?” But her safety is in my hands. “You trust me with this. In return, I will trust you. Okay?” I dig into my pocket for my wallet. Withdraw a stack of hundreds and stuff them into her hand.
She stares down at the money without comprehension. “What is this for?”
“Your books,” I tell her. “You need more, yes?”
“I guess.” This does not pacify her. She is beyond being satisfied with such things.
“Then go. You meet me back here in half hour.”
She blinks, startled again, when I release her hand. “You’re—not coming?”
“For what purpose? You know where bookstore is. You don’t need my help to buy your books.
” I cup the back of her neck, press a kiss to the top of her head.
“I don’t carry bags,” I tell her. “You need help, you tell them.” I jerk my head toward my men.
“Important people have bodyguards, koshechka. You are this important to me.”
It does not mollify her in the way that I had hoped. But her face is less strained than it was. Her listlessness less pronounced. “Okay,” she says. “Half an hour.”
“Be a good girl,” I say, and I let her go.
“When you come back, I will have gifts for you.” The phone and computer she asked for.
Both of these things can be obtained easily here.
If I want her to trust in me, I must offer this to her in return.
These things, I think, will ease the sting she still feels, ease the hurt I caused her yesterday.
A small concession to earn her trust. It is not so much to sacrifice.