Chapter 15 #3
Clara navigated the compound's corridors with practiced grace, leading me away from the violence into something that felt like stepping through a mirror into another world entirely.
The industrial gray walls gave way to softer colors—pale yellow, mint green, the kind of pastels that belonged in nurseries or fairy tales.
Even the air felt different here, lavender and vanilla replacing gun oil and blood.
"Alexei had this wing built for me a few months ago," Clara explained, her whole posture relaxing as we moved deeper into this softer space. "He wanted somewhere I could be little without worrying about business intrusions. The other men aren’t allowed here.”
She opened a door painted soft purple, and my chest went tight with want so immediate it stole my breath.
The room was everything my childhood never gave me.
Soft couches in cream and pink, bookshelves lined with picture books and young adult novels, bins of stuffed animals organized by size and species.
One wall held art supplies—colored pencils, markers, paints, glitter that caught the light like scattered stars.
Another corner had a reading nook built into the wall, fairy lights strung across the ceiling, pillows piled high enough to disappear into.
"Oh," I breathed, the sound escaping without permission.
"Sometimes other Littles come here," Clara said, moving to the art supply wall with the confidence of ownership. "We have a small community. Women who understand this life, this choice."
She pulled out coloring books and boxes of pencils, setting them on a low table clearly meant for sitting on the floor rather than chairs. The casual domesticity of it—this soft room hidden in a compound where men lost ears—made my brain struggle to reconcile the contradictions.
"Pick one," Clara said, spreading out several coloring books. "I find it helps to have something to focus on while processing the heavy stuff."
I chose a book of fairy tale scenes because of course I did, settling cross-legged on the floor in my green silk dress that was definitely not meant for this. Clara sat beside me, choosing her own book—mandalas and geometric patterns that required precision.
The first few minutes, we colored in silence.
The repetitive motion of filling in Sleeping Beauty's dress with careful strokes of purple quieted the chaos in my head.
My hands stopped shaking. My breathing evened out.
That floating feeling I associated with little space started creeping in at the edges, soft and welcome.
"I was leverage," Clara said suddenly, not looking up from her mandala. "That's how I met Alexei. My father owed the Bratva money—a lot of money. And Alexei kidnapped me."
My pencil stopped moving. "He took you?"
"Essentially. Dressed it up pretty, called it 'keeping me safe' while he blackmailed my father. But, yes. I was kidnapped." She switched from blue to purple, filling in geometric shapes with practiced precision. "I hated him at first. Alexei, not my father. I already hated my father."
I thought about my own parents—mom dead when I was eight, father vanished even before that. At least they'd never sold me. Abandoned me to the system, sure, but never literally traded me for debt forgiveness.
"What changed?" I asked, returning to my coloring because looking at her felt too intimate for this conversation.
"He never touched me. For months, I lived in his penthouse like a ghost he was boarding. He gave me rules, structure, consequences for breaking them, but never hurt me. Never tried to . . . you know. Just kept me safe and fed and slowly taught me what it meant to be cared for by someone."
The parallel to my own situation wasn't lost on me—Dmitry taking me in, giving me structure, teaching me to trust through consistent care rather than grand gestures.
"And things between us grew. Now my father’s in prison, and I’m free. Bit of a turnaround!”
She pulled out a purple journal from seemingly nowhere, decorated with stickers and doodles like a teenager's diary. Inside, I could see pages of neat handwriting, lists and rules and what looked like reward charts.
"These are my rules," she said, showing me pages written in purple ink. "Alexei updates them based on what I need. Structure helps when the world feels too big or too violent."
I found myself sharing my own contract details, the rules Dmitry had established, the punishments and rewards we'd negotiated.
Clara listened without judgment, occasionally making approving sounds or asking clarifying questions.
It felt like the most normal conversation I'd ever had about the absolutely abnormal life I'd chosen.
"Want to build a fort?" Clara asked suddenly, the question so unexpected I laughed.
"Seriously?"
"Completely seriously. There's a whole closet of blankets and pillows specifically for fort construction." She was already standing, moving toward said closet with purpose. "It's the best way to drop fully into little space."
We worked together with the focused intensity of children, stringing blankets between furniture, creating walls and ceilings and secret entrances.
Within twenty minutes, we'd constructed something magnificent—a sprawling fort that took up half the room, fairy lights threaded through the blanket ceiling because Clara had those too, apparently.
Inside our fort, the outside world ceased to exist. There was no blood on plastic, no USB full of dangerous secrets, no Morozov threat hanging over my head.
There was just soft blankets and gentle light and Clara braiding my hair while telling me stories about other Littles who came here—a senator's daughter who called her Dom "Sir" in public and "Daddy" in private, a lawyer who spent weekends in onesies coloring Disney princesses, a doctor who needed rules and bedtimes to counter the life-and-death decisions she made daily.
"We're not broken," Clara said, finishing my braid with a purple ribbon she produced from somewhere. "We're just people who need structure to feel safe. Who find freedom in surrender. Who discovered that being little doesn't make us weak—it makes us brave enough to trust completely."
"The violence still bothers me," I admitted, quiet enough that I could pretend I hadn't said it if she judged.
"Good," Clara said firmly. "If it ever stops bothering you, that's when you know you've lost yourself. We accept it, we understand it, we even rely on it for protection. But we don't become it. That's what makes us different from them—we can see the necessity without losing our humanity."
She was right. Dmitry needed someone who could accept his violence without becoming violent herself. Someone to be soft for, to protect, to come home to after the blood was washed away. That was my role—not to participate in the darkness but to be the light that made it worthwhile.
"Thank you," I said, meaning for more than just the fort or the braids or the understanding.
"We take care of each other," Clara said simply. "That's what family does."
Family. Such a loaded word in this context—a family built on blood both spilled and shared, violence and tenderness in equal measure. But sitting in our fort with Clara and Bear, fairy lights painting shadows on blanket walls, I felt more at home than I had in years.
Maybe that's what family really was—not about blood or law or conventional bonds, but about choosing each other despite the sharp edges, building soft spaces in hard worlds, and protecting that softness with necessary violence.
Dmitry—and Bear—found us an hour later, and the expression that crossed his face when he peered into our pillow fort made my heart squeeze with something too big for words.
We must have looked ridiculous—two grown women sitting cross-legged in a blanket castle, coloring books spread between us, my hair in braids with purple ribbons, Clara wearing a tiara she'd found somewhere.
"Look who's made herself at home," Dmitry said, but his voice held only warmth, maybe even pride at seeing me relaxed after what I'd witnessed earlier.
"We built a castle," I informed him, still feeling floaty and young from our time in little space. "Bear can be the dragon guarding it."
"A very fierce dragon," he agreed, crouching down to our level. His hand found my face, thumb brushing over my cheek with gentleness that seemed impossible from the same hands that delivered violence. "You doing okay, little one?"
The pet name in front of Clara should have embarrassed me, but it didn't. She understood this dynamic, lived it herself with Alexei. There was no judgment here, only recognition.
"Better," I said honestly. "Clara helped."
The two exchanged a look I couldn't interpret—something that might have been gratitude from Dmitry, acknowledgment from Clara. These connections ran deeper than I'd realized, bonds forged in blood and maintained through care.
"Alexei needs to speak with you," Dmitry said, apology clear in his tone. "Business that can't wait."
The floating feeling evaporated, reality crashing back. Right. The Morozovs. The USB. The fact that I was now a target in a war I'd never meant to join.
Clara squeezed my hand as I stood, silk dress wrinkled beyond salvation from sitting on the floor. "Remember what I said. You're not alone in this."
The walk back to the meeting room felt like traveling between dimensions—soft pastels to industrial gray, fairy lights to fluorescent, safety to danger.
The blood had been cleaned up, the plastic sheeting gone, but I could still smell copper underneath the disinfectant. Some stains never really left.
Alexei stood at his wall of windows, Ivan still at his monitors, both turning as we entered. The surveillance photos were already spread across Alexei's desk, and seeing them hit like cold water to the face.