Katerina #2
Then I sit on the edge of the bed.
At first, I wait for heartbreak.
I wait for the dramatic, devastating ache of losing the man I was supposed to marry.
I wait for grief to split me open. For love to rise up, wounded and loyal, begging me to remember the good parts.
His hand at the small of my back. His mouth on my cheek in front of our families.
The night he proposed beneath white flowers and chandeliers while everyone clapped.
But it does not come.
Not the way it should.
All I can taste is the embarrassment.
It coats my tongue. It sits at the back of my throat until I feel like I might be sick. He did not just leave me…
He chose Vika.
Vika, who used to stand in my doorway when we were teenagers and ask to borrow my lipstick.
Vika, who smiled when people told us we looked nothing alike.
Vika, who once said, with that soft little laugh of hers, that some women were made to be adored and some were made to be respected.
My eyes sting again.
I look away from the door and my gaze lands on my passport.
It sits on the vanity beside my ticket folder and a small velvet pouch of jewelry my mother helped me choose. My name gleams on the cover in gold letters.
Katerina Sergeevna Markova.
Tomorrow morning, that passport is supposed to take me to Moscow.
I had been so excited.
And I hate myself for that, too.
I had pretended not to be, of course. I had rolled my eyes when Mama fussed over my coats. I had told Lev I was not nervous about meeting the Morozovs properly, not all of them at once. I had acted like it was just another trip, another dinner, another performance.
But the truth?
I wanted to see Russia.
I wanted to step into the cold and feel something older than all of us. I wanted the golden churches, the wide streets, the language around me, the winter light on stone. I wanted to stand beside Lev and know I had crossed some invisible threshold.
A sensible woman would stay home.
A humiliated woman would hide.
A daughter from a good family would wait for instructions.
But every time I imagine unpacking that suitcase, something inside me recoils.
I go to the bathroom, splash cold water on my face, and look at myself in the mirror.
My eyes are red, despite there being no tears. My dark hair falls loose around my shoulders, a little wild now.
I wipe my face with a towel.
Then I go downstairs, slipping quietly into the dining room.
Mama sits at the long table with a bowl of soup in front of her and a book open beside it, though she’s not reading. She looks up when I enter, and whatever she sees on my face makes her expression change instantly.
“Katyusha?”
I hate that her voice is gentle. It almost undoes me.
I sit across from her because if I stand, I may break.
She reaches for my hand. “What happened?”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
Mama rises so quickly her chair scrapes against the floor. She comes around the table and cups my face, searching me with frightened eyes.
“Katerina. Tell me.”
“Lev ended it.”
For one second, she does not understand. Then her face goes still. “What?”
I laugh under my breath, though it hurts. “He ended our engagement.”
“No.” She says it like she can reject the sentence by refusing it. “No, that’s not possible. The flight is tomorrow.”
“He knows, but that doesn’t change anything.”
“His family is expecting you.”
“He knows that, too.”
Her hands fall from my face. She looks suddenly pale. “Why?”
I stare at the bowl of soup cooling in front of her. “He’s in love with Vika.”
The silence that follows is so complete I hear the clock ticking in the hall.
Mama takes a step back. “Vika?” she whispers.
I look up. Her shock is real. That’s almost enough to make me cry again.
I force the word out. “Yes.”
Mama’s mouth opens, then closes. A flush rises slowly in her cheeks, not embarrassment. Rage. “That little snake.”
The words are so unlike her that I blink.
She turns toward the doorway as if she might march out of the house and drag Vika back by the hair herself.
Then the front door opens.
Both of us freeze.
Familiar male voices murmur in the entryway, and Mama’s expression changes before he appears.
My father walks into the dining room as if he still owns it.
In many ways, I guess he still does.
Sergei Markov is not a loud man. He does not need to be.
He wears a charcoal suit beneath a black overcoat, his silver-streaked hair brushed back from his face. Two of his men remain in the hall, visible only as dark shapes near the entryway.
His gaze moves first to my mother.
Then to me.
He sees everything—the red eyes, trembling hands, and the empty finger. His face does not change.
And that tells me he already knows.
The last fragile piece of me goes cold.
“Katerina,” he says.
Mama looks between us. “Sergei. Did you know?”
My father removes his gloves slowly and lets out a heavy breath. Mama’s hand flies to her mouth.
I sit very still, but then the humiliation changes shape inside me. It becomes something harder.
“You knew,” I seethe.
Papa glares at me.
There was a time when that look could silence me.
When I was a child, I believed my father’s calm was the same thing as safety.
He maintained us after the divorce, paid for the house, the staff, the cars, my mother’s comforts, my entire life.
He appeared at birthdays with diamonds and bodyguards.
He kissed my forehead, called me his little tsarevna, and returned to the darker half of his world before dessert.
I always knew what he was.
Everyone knew what Sergei Markov was.
Head of the Markov family.
A man with warehouses, ports, politicians, judges, and graves in his history.
A man who arranged my engagement to Lev Morozov as if he were moving a piece across a chessboard. Still, I thought I was his daughter before I was an asset.
Tonight, I’m not sure.
“How long did you know?” I ask.
His jaw works once. “I heard rumors.”
Mama makes a sound of disbelief. “Rumors?”
“I didn’t know what Lev was going to do.”
“But you knew he wanted Vika,” I say.
Papa’s gaze settles on me. “Yes.”
Mama turns away from him, pressing her hand against the back of a chair. “My God.”
I stare at him. “And you said nothing?”
“I was handling it.”
I almost smile.
Handling it.
For a second, I can’t even breathe, as another realization comes to me. I look at him. “You don’t care which daughter he marries,” I say. “So long as you have your alliance.”
Mama’s face changes.
Papa stills.
The words hang there, ugly and honest.
I wait for him to deny it. I wait for outrage. For one flicker of fatherly injury.
Instead, he looks away.
My laugh comes out soft and broken. “God.”
“Katerina,” he says sternly.
“No.” I shake my head. “No, don’t use my name like that. Don’t make it sound like I’m being dramatic.”
“I had a lapse in judgment.”
I stare at him. A lapse? Seriously?
He’s treating this as if he misplaced a file. As if he misread a contract. As if I’m not standing here with a bare finger and a ruined engagement because the men in my life weighed me against convenience and found me flexible.
“A lapse in judgment?” Mama says, her voice thin with disbelief. “Your daughter has been betrayed under your nose, and that’s what you call it?”
Papa’s mouth tightens. “I was trying to contain the situation.”
“You mean me?” I say drily.
His gaze returns to mine.
For the first time, something like pain crosses his face. It’s brief. Controlled. And almost insulting in how quickly he buries it.
“You’re my daughter.”
“Then you should have acted like it before tonight.”
He takes that without flinching, which somehow makes it worse.
Mama moves toward me. “Katyusha, please take a deep breath. Please. You’re shaking.”
My gaze drops. My hands are trembling at my sides, but the rest of me feels strangely still. Too still. Like the part that should be crying has gone somewhere quiet and locked the door.
Papa watches me carefully. “What are your plans now?”
Mama whips toward him. “Sergei.”
But I understand why he asks.
In his world, grief has no space unless it affects movement. Territory. Marriage. Power. If Lev has stepped out of one arrangement and into another, Papa needs to know where I stand on the board.
I almost hate him.
I almost hate myself for understanding him.
My gaze drops to the table. The soup has gone untouched. The silver spoon beside it reflects the chandelier in warped little streaks of light.
Upstairs, my suitcase is still open.
My passport is still on the vanity.
Russia is still waiting.
I think of the way I had hidden my excitement from everyone. How I had imagined the cold air. The old streets. The churches with golden domes. The language around me. A country I had wanted to see before it became part of a marriage contract.
Lev took enough from me tonight.
Vika took enough.
I will not let them take that too.
I lift my head. “I’m going.”
Mama blinks. “Going where?”
“To Russia.”