Katerina
Moscow is gray when we land.
Not ugly gray. Not the tired, dirty gray of rainwater on concrete. This is something colder, sharper, and almost silver. It sits beyond the airplane window in a pale morning haze, coating the runway, the service vehicles, the distant terminal lights.
For a few seconds, I forget everything else.
Then Roman reaches up to take my bag from the overhead compartment, and my body remembers him before my mind has the chance to behave.
I look away quickly.
He notices, of course. But he has the decency not to say anything.
The airport is warmer than I expect when we step off the plane, but the cold still finds me somehow. It slips in through the glass walls, through the seams of my coat, through the part of me that has never been this far from home.
Sheremetyevo is busy even at this hour. Signs in Russian and English hang above us. People move briskly through the terminal with coats folded over their arms and sleep still on their faces. There’s the smell of coffee, perfume, and aircraft fuel lingering somewhere beneath everything.
I’m here. I’m in Russia.
Not as Lev’s fiancée. Not as my father’s obedient daughter.
Just as me.
The thought is so overwhelming that I almost miss the way Roman watches me. Not openly. Never that. But I feel his attention the way I felt his hand on my waist last night. Quiet, constant, impossible to ignore.
At immigration, he stands close enough to make me feel steadier but not close enough to crowd me. My passport is stamped. My heart gives one strange, stupid leap at the sound.
After baggage claim, my phone finally finds service.
It begins vibrating so violently in my hand that I nearly drop it.
Papa. Mama. Papa again.
Unknown number.
Mama. Irina. Papa.
A string of messages pile onto the screen before I can read them properly. Missed calls, texts, voice notes, all arriving at once like my life has chased me across the world and finally caught up.
My stomach turns. Roman’s gaze drops to the phone.
A message from Papa appears at the top.
Call me immediately.
Then another.
Katerina, do not force me to come after you.
My fingers go numb.
Roman’s voice is quiet. “Problem?”
I switch the phone off. Immediately.
The screen goes black.
“No problem,” I say.
He studies me.
I lift my chin, daring him to challenge the lie.
He does not.
Outside customs, the doors slide open, and Moscow hits me properly. The cold punches the breath out of my lungs.
It’s not cold like an over-air-conditioned room. Not cold like a rainy evening. This is a living thing. It rushes under my coat, bites my cheeks, fills my nose and chest until I gasp.
“Oh my God.”
Roman looks amused.
I glare at him through the shock. “Don’t laugh.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“You’re always not laughing.”
“Your coat is insufficient.”
“My coat is wool.”
“Your coat is decorative.”
“You said that already.”
“And it remains true.”
I wrap my arms around myself, trying not to shiver too obviously. The air smells different here. Clean in a brutal way, with exhaust, frost, and something else underneath. People walk past us as if this weather is normal, as if their bones are made of better material than mine.
Roman removes his jacket.
Before I can object, he places it around my shoulders.
It’s heavy and warm from his body.
The scent of him rises around me at once. Smoke, cedar, expensive cologne, and something that’s simply Roman.
I go still inside it.
“You’ll freeze,” I say, though he’s wearing a shirt and waistcoat as if this temperature is merely a suggestion.
“No.”
“You’re not human.”
“That has been suggested.”
His jacket swallows me. The sleeves hang too long, the shoulders too broad, the hem brushing my thighs. I should look ridiculous. I probably do look ridiculous.
I don’t care because it’s warm.
A black car waits near the curb. A sleek, low, expensive machine that looks like it was built for men who do not stand in taxi lines.
The driver steps out before we reach it.
Another man appears from somewhere near the rear door, dressed in a dark coat, earpiece visible for half a second before he turns his head.
My steps slow.
The driver says something in Russian. Roman replies in the same language, low and effortless. The men take our luggage before I can reach for mine. Efficiently, like this has all been arranged long before I agreed to any of it.
I look at the car. Then at the men. Then at Roman.
“What are you,” I ask, trying for humor because something under my ribs has begun to tighten, “a mafia boss?”
Roman opens the rear door for me. He doesn’t answer. He only smirks.
My smile falters.
It’s a small thing, that smirk. Almost nothing. But something about it moves through me wrong.
I tell myself I’m being dramatic.
Rich men have drivers. Rich men have assistants. Rich men fly first class and have people take luggage and make arrangements without asking.
That does not mean anything.
I slide into the car.
The inside smells like leather and winter. The seats are warm beneath me. Roman joins me a moment later, and the door closes with a soft, expensive thud that seals us away from the airport noise.
As we pull away, I watch Moscow appear in pieces.
Wide roads. Low sky. Bare trees with black branches. Snow gathered in dirty white piles along the edges of the street. Buildings I do not recognize, signs I cannot read quickly enough, people wrapped in dark coats moving with their heads bent against the wind.
Just a real city waking beneath a cold sky.
Still, I press closer to the window.
Roman sees. “You expected it to be prettier.”
“No,” I say. “I expected not to feel anything.”
“And?”
I watch a woman in a red scarf cross the street, one hand holding her hat against the wind. “I feel too much.”
He says nothing.
My phone is dead and black in my handbag, but I can feel it anyway. Like a stone. Like a threat.
Papa knows I’m here. Or he will soon.
Lev is here too. Vika with him. Maybe already on their way to whatever beautiful hotel his family arranged. Maybe laughing about me. Maybe not thinking about me at all, which is worse.
I look at Roman’s reflection in the window.
His face is turned slightly away, expression unreadable, one hand resting on his thigh. He looks different in Moscow. Not more relaxed. The opposite, in fact. As if the city has recognized him and he has recognized it back.
I glance at him. “Roman?”
“Yes?”
“What do you do?”
He turns his head slowly. There’s a pause. Not long enough to accuse him of hiding something, but long enough for my skin to notice.
“Investments,” he says.
I stare at him, my gut twisting. “That’s what men say when they do something illegal.”
This time, he does smile.
A real one. Brief, devastating, and entirely unhelpful.
“Sometimes it’s what men say when they dislike explaining themselves in cars.”
“That’s also suspicious.”
“You’re very suspicious for a woman who followed me into an airplane washroom.”
My face goes hot. “Don’t use that against me,” I say, making a face.
“I have many better uses for it.”
The heat in my face drops lower. I turn back to the window before he can see too much.
The car leaves the wider airport road and enters the city gradually. Traffic thickens. The buildings grow taller, older, grander. Snow clings to ledges and railings. The sky remains pale and heavy.
By the time we reach his building, I have stopped pretending I’m not nervous.
It’s not a hotel.
It’s not even simply an apartment building.
It’s something of dark stone with tall windows.
A private entrance set back from the street.
Two men outside who look like they’ve never smiled in their lives.
The lobby beyond the glass doors glows with amber light and marble, elegant enough to make me aware of my messy hair, my overnight bag, and Roman’s jacket hanging off my shoulders like evidence.
“Roman,” I say quietly.
He pauses beside the open car door. “Yes?”
“I thought you were showing me Moscow.”
“I am.”
“This does not look like Red Square.”
“No. This is where you will shower, change, and eat something that’s not chocolate cake.”
“I liked the chocolate cake.”
“I know.”
As we climb out of the car, one of the men opens the building door for us. I step inside because refusing now would be more embarrassing than going in, and apparently that’s how most of my worst decisions begin.
The lobby smells faintly of flowers and polished wood. A chandelier hangs overhead, subtle rather than grand. The floors shine. Somewhere, hidden speakers play low classical music. It’s quiet in a way that has been purchased.
A woman waits near the elevators.
She’s tall, blonde, and impeccably dressed in a charcoal suit that fits her like armor. Her hair is pulled back into a smooth knot. She holds a tablet in one hand and wears an expression that belongs on someone who already knows I’m a problem.
Her eyes move over me.
Roman’s jacket. My swollen mouth. My wrinkled clothes. She dislikes me instantly.
I feel it like cold water down my back.
“Good morning, Mr. Sokolov,” she says in English, though her accent is Russian. “Your apartment is ready. I moved your first meeting to noon, but Mikhail called twice and the documents from St. Petersburg are waiting for your review.”
Roman’s face gives nothing away. “Later, Elena.”
Elena. Of course, her name is elegant too.
Her gaze flicks to me again. “And your guest?”
There is the smallest pause before guest. Enough to make it insulting while still technically polite.
Roman looks at me. “This is Katerina,” he says. “She will be staying for now.”
For now.
Elena’s smile appears. It’s worse than no smile at all. “Of course.”
I pull Roman’s jacket tighter around myself and lift my chin, because if this woman expects shame from me, she will have to wait in line behind everyone else who wants it.
“Good morning,” I say.
Elena’s eyes hold mine. “Good morning.”
The elevator doors open behind her.
Roman places his hand at my back, and I step inside with him.
As the doors close, I catch one last glimpse of Elena in the lobby, already looking at her tablet, mouth tight with disapproval.
The bad feeling in my stomach deepens.
I came to Moscow to escape one family’s secrets.
And now, I’m beginning to suspect I have walked straight into another man’s kingdom.