Artem
From the mezzanine the masquerade looks like a painting come alive.
Lies in oil on canvas. Every smile down there costs something.
The Bratva families have built their empires on spectacle, and I understand why my father insists we show our faces here every year, even behind masks. Power requires witnesses.
I lean against the railing, glass in hand, watching the crowd shift like tidewater. The music keeps everything civil. Then a single note rises. A sound so pure it cleaves through the noise and goes straight to my spine.
Adagio for Strings.
The bow draws another trembling line through the air, and for a heartbeat I can’t move.
That piece belongs to Lev. It used to drift through our house at night while he played, taking a break from work.
He played quiet enough that I would stand in the hallway just to hear it.
Now it’s playing again, in this room, at this party, not six months after he was buried.
My grip tightens around the glass. I follow the sound until I see her.
She sits beneath the chandelier’s glow, pink silk and a silver mask, the curve of the cello pressed between her knees. I know her face even through the disguise. The girl whose brother killed mine.
My chest twists. She plays with her eyes closed, every movement unguarded, as if the music is bleeding out of her.
The crowd has fallen silent; even the waiters have stopped moving.
I tell myself it’s an act, another display of polish from a family that trades in charm and deceit.
Still, the longer I watch, the more something raw stirs beneath my ribs.
When the final note fades, she stands and nods her head in a polite bow. The applause is light but the realest thing to pass through this ballroom tonight. I finish my drink, leave the empty glass on the railing, and start down the stairs.
She’s already stepping from the stage, handing the cello back to the hired musician.
The mask hides half of her face of her face, but I see the faint tremor in her fingers, the same hesitation Lev used to have when the world asked too much of him.
For an instant the resemblance makes me dizzy. Then the anger returns, clean and cold.
She shouldn’t be allowed to play that piece. She shouldn’t dare go anywhere near the things he cherished most, much less the music that defined him.
The crowd thickens around the stage, but I know how to move through people who would rather not see me coming. A narrow corridor opens along the side of the ballroom; she takes it, probably looking for air. I follow.
The noise dulls with each step. Gilded doors, dark wood, the faint smell of roses from the arrangements near the exit. She walks with her head slightly bowed, one hand lifting the hem of her dress so it doesn’t drag. I catch up just before the last door and watch.
She bursts into the night air, dragging lungs full of it into her open mouth as though she is drowning. Then she stands, still and silent. Finally, just as the cold begins to bite, her shoulders drop a fraction and the rage swells up inside me.
My fingers close around her wrist. Warm skin, a startled breath. She turns, green eyes wide behind her silver mask.
“You shouldn’t have played that,” I say.
The words sound calm, but inside everything is breaking loose again. The music, the memory, the ghost of my brother’s voice calling my name from a lifetime ago.
She doesn’t pull away. The pulse beneath my fingers beats quick and thin, like a frightened bird.
Her skin is softer than I imagined, warmer than I have any right to notice.
I came here prepared for hatred, for the cold satisfaction of retribution, but the woman standing in front of me is not the one I pictured.
Up close, she’s smaller than I expected, delicate in a way that has nothing to do with weakness. The light from the terrace lamps spills across her face, catching on the edge of her mask. Her eyes are soft. Not defiant, but wide and lost. For a moment I forget what I meant to say next.
She looks like she’s already been living with ghosts.
The wind lifts a strand of her golden-brown hair and carries the faintest trace of perfume.
Something floral and clean. It twists the knife.
I wanted to see arrogance, guilt, a reflection of everything I’ve hated these past months.
Instead I see sorrow written into every line of her body.
She looks as if she’s been trying to disappear for a very long time.
My grip loosens a fraction, though I don’t let go.
The part of me that still remembers Lev’s laughter demands I hate her harder, crush the softness before it spreads.
But the longer I look, the harder it is to hold on to rage.
She has Lev’s quiet about her, the same way of holding pain like a secret no one deserves to hear.
“What do you want from me?” she whispers.
The question trembles in the space between us. I don’t answer. I can’t. I tell myself I’m studying her, searching for evidence, weighing how best to make her pay. But what I’m really doing is memorising the tremor in her throat, the shape of her mouth, the way her eyes glint with unshed tears.
It feels wrong, this pull. Wrong and unstoppable.
I tighten my hold again, less to restrain her than to keep myself from doing something worse. Her pulse beats against my thumb. The music from inside reaches us in faint echoes, soft and steady.
I think of Lev. Of how he would look at me if he saw what I’m doing.
But when I look at her again, I know that whatever this is, I have to ignore it. I came here for one reason.
I came here to take revenge.