Katerina #2
I glance toward the door. “Upstairs?”
“VIP level. Past the lounge rooms. If you’re with someone important, no one will stop you.” Her eyes flick over my dress, my earrings, the coat I left at the table but apparently not the invisible sign Roman has placed on me. “You are, right?”
I hesitate. “With Roman.”
Her eyebrows lift. Just slightly.
It’s gone before I can decide what it means.
“Then definitely no one will stop you,” she says. “Go up the stairs, turn left before the private rooms, then right at the end. Much better bathroom. Actual towels, no existential crisis.”
I laugh despite myself. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.”
She returns to her lipstick.
I leave before I can lose my nerve.
The man near Roman’s table is not there when I pass back through the club. Another man has taken his place, but he’s speaking to someone at the bar. I could go back to my seat and wait. I know that. Roman told me not to wander, and for once, he had sounded less arrogant than concerned.
But I’m only going to the bathroom.
Upstairs. Where Roman is.
This barely counts as disobedience.
The guard at the velvet rope looks at me. I prepare to explain, but his gaze drops to my face, then to something behind me, and he steps aside without a word.
That’s not comforting.
The upper floor is quieter. The music from below becomes a low pulse under the floorboards.
The hallway is narrow and dark, lit by brass sconces that make the walls glow amber.
Doors line one side, each marked only by a number.
Behind one, someone laughs. Behind another, a man speaks Russian in a low, angry voice.
I turn left, as instructed.
The bathroom is probably at the end of the hall.
I nearly reach it when I see Roman.
He stands inside a private room with the door not fully closed. I can see him through the narrow gap and the reflection in a mirrored panel across the hall. His back is partly turned, one hand in his pocket, shoulders broad under his suit jacket. He looks calm.
There are two other men with him.
One is older, thickset, with a shaved head and a heavy face that looks as if life has carved suspicion into every line. The other is younger, standing by the wall, silent, one hand folded over the other.
I know I should turn around. I know it before I hear the first word.
Then the older man says a name.
“Andrei Morozov.”
My blood cools. I stop moving.
Morozov.
The name does not belong here. It belongs to the family I was supposed to meet, the family I ran from by coming here.
Roman says nothing for a moment.
Then his voice cuts through the narrow opening, low and controlled.
“Don’t say his name like he still owns the room,” Roman says.
The older man gives a rough laugh. “He owns more than you want to admit.”
“Not for long, Oleg.”
A cold pressure spreads through my chest.
I should leave, but I physically can’t bring myself to.
“You want the captains first,” Oleg says. “That’s smart. Men follow money before blood. If you freeze the side accounts, half of them will panic before Andrei even understands what happened.”
Roman’s answer is flat. Practical. Nothing like the man who danced with me in the snow. “I need names, not advice.”
“You will get names.” A pause. “But you should know your father has already started rearranging the board.”
Your father.
The hallway tilts.
Roman doesn’t react.
My hand closes over the wall beside me.
His father. Andrei Morozov is Roman’s father.
No. No, that cannot be right.
The older man continues. “Lev is in Moscow. Engaged to a Markov girl, from what I hear. Sergei Markov wants the alliance. Andrei wants the money and port access. It’s a practical match.”
Roman is quiet for a beat. Then he says, “I saw them at the airport.”
The air leaves my lungs.
He saw them. He knows.
Maybe not everything, but enough.
The man across from him watches carefully. “Then you understand the timing. If Lev marries into the Markovs, Andrei buys himself room to breathe.”
“Then he does not get the marriage.”
The words are plain cold.
Nothing like the man who danced with me in the snow.
The older man’s mouth twitches. “You still think like an American sometimes. You want to cut off money, turn captains, expose accounts. That works if you want a business. If you want a family finished, there is a simpler way.”
Roman’s eyes lift. “Say it.”
“Kill them,” the man says. “Andrei. Lev. Anyone close enough to inherit. You end the line in one night and spend the next year cleaning up the mess.”
My hand flies to my mouth. The sound that almost leaves me stays trapped against my palm.
My skin goes cold under the black dress Roman bought me. For a moment, I’m not in the club anymore. I’m back home, hearing men speak behind closed doors, hearing the low, practical tone of violence dressed as strategy.
I know this language. I hate that I know it.
Roman does not reject it. He does not laugh. He stands very still, and that’s worse. “Oleg,” he says, voice low.
The older man leans back slightly. “You came for revenge. Do not pretend revenge is accounting.”
Something very close to rage moves across Roman’s face. “If it comes to that,” Roman says, “then yes.”
My heart stops.
Oleg watches him.
Roman continues, each word measured enough to frighten me more than shouting could have. “They all pay. Andrei. His sons. His loyalists. Anyone who built that house and thought they could bury my mother beneath it.”
I flatten myself against the wall. My head is still spinning from what I’ve heard.
My ex-fiancé is Roman’s brother.
Wait… No.
Half-brother, I think.
I take a step back.
The corridor sways.
Inside the room, Oleg says something else, but I cannot understand it anymore. The words blur under the rush of blood in my ears.
Roman is planning to destroy them. All of them.
Maybe Lev deserves ruin. Maybe Andrei Morozov deserves worse. Maybe this entire world is built on men who eventually turn on each other and call it justice.
But I cannot stand there and listen to the man whose bed I woke in speak of ending a family line like it’s another item on a list.
Especially when I was almost part of that family yesterday.
Especially when he never told me. And what would he do when he found out I was a Markov as well? Did he not see my passport? My last name?
I turn away. Slowly at first, because my legs feel unreliable.
Then faster.
At the stairs, the music from below rises around me, thick and hot and obscene after the coldness of that room. People are laughing. Dancing. Drinking beneath gold lights as if nothing in the world has shifted.
I grip the railing and force myself down.
One step. Another.
By the time I reach the main floor, tears are already slipping down my face.
I wipe them quickly, but more come.
A man near the bar glances at me. I look away. Roman’s table is ahead, half-hidden in its alcove, my coat still draped over the chair. One of his men stands nearby with his back turned.
For once, luck does not hate me.
I reach the table, grab my purse, and check inside with shaking fingers.
Passport. Thank God.
Some sane, terrified part of me had kept it with me all night.
I don’t let myself think about his hands on my waist, his mouth against my shoulder, the picture he took of me smiling in the snow.
By the time I reach the black door and cold air spills in from the street, I’m almost running.
Outside, Moscow hits me with wind and snow and the smell of wet pavement. The men near the entrance look at me, but I keep my head down and push past before anyone can decide whether I’m allowed to leave.
Only when I reach the corner do I break.
And I run.
My heels slip on the icy pavement. My breath tears in and out of my chest. Tears blur the streetlights until every gold lamp becomes a streak across the dark.
I don’t know where I’m going.
I only know I have to get away from that club.
From the Morozovs.
From Roman.
The man who showed me Moscow with snow in my hair.
The man who might burn the whole city down to finish his revenge.