Katerina
It has been three days since the shooting, and the house feels wrong.
Not louder. If anything, quieter. That’s what makes it unbearable.
The gates stay shut. More men patrol the grounds.
I hear boots on gravel at all hours now, low voices outside windows, radios crackling in the dark.
Papa doubled security before dinner that same night and added another layer by morning.
New cars at the front. New men at the side entrance.
New rules about where the children can go and when.
Everyone is pretending that means we are safer.
I’m not stupid enough to believe that.
Because if someone could fire into our lunch from inside the compound, then the problem is not outside the gates.
It’s already here.
That thought has not left me once in three days.
Neither has Roman.
I hate that just as much.
Because the fear should have burned everything else out of me. It should have made the whole mess simple. Dangerous man, dangerous life, dangerous consequences. Keep away. Lock the door. Protect the children. End of story.
Instead, my mind keeps returning to stupid things.
The way he protected the children, not thinking twice about himself. The way he looked at me.
The fact that he could have died on our lawn, and I cannot think about it for longer than five seconds without my chest tightening like a fist.
I sit at my vanity table in the late afternoon light and stare at my own reflection without really seeing it.
My hair is half-pinned, because I started brushing it ten minutes ago and then forgot what I was doing.
The room is warm. The curtains are half-drawn.
Somewhere down the hall, Sofia is laughing at something, which means she has recovered fully and is once again a threat to order.
I should be comforted by that.
Instead, I’m thinking about my father.
Papa barely looked rattled that day.
Angry, yes. Offended, certainly. But not surprised enough. Not shocked enough for a man whose grandchildren were nearly shot in his own garden. He was too quick to rage at the security team, too quick to issue orders, too quick to control the scene.
As if he had expected something. Not this exact thing, maybe. But something close enough that his body did not need time to catch up.
The thought has been sitting in me like poison.
Today it finally curdles into action.
I stand, cross the room, and grab my coat.
If I stay here another hour, I will start thinking in circles again.
I need to speak to Roman. Not in this house.
Not with Vika listening at doors and Papa reading faces at dinner.
Somewhere outside. Somewhere I can ask the questions that have been gnawing at me without feeling every wall answer back.
I make it as far as the side corridor before one of the new guards steps in front of me.
“Miss Markova.”
I stop.
He’s broad-shouldered, younger than the others, with the expression of a man trying too hard to look respectful.
“I’m going out.”
He doesn’t move. “Your father said no one leaves without clearance.”
I stare at him. “I’m not no one.”
He almost smiles, then thinks better of it. “I still need the clearance.”
“I’m going to the pharmacy.”
“We can send someone.”
“I don’t want someone sent. I want to go.”
He glances down the corridor, then back at me. “Not today.”
Something in the way he says it makes my skin tighten.
I look at him more carefully. I have not seen him before.
That by itself is not impossible. Papa has brought in extra men. But most of them carry themselves like house security, old network, family payroll. This one feels newer. Less rooted. Like he learned the house layout too quickly and has not yet learned how to wear it like it belongs to him.
“I don’t know you,” I say.
His face stays blank. “I started Tuesday.”
“That was quick.”
“We all adapt.” He shifts his arm slightly as he speaks, and I catch it then. Just under the cuff, where his sleeve pulls back an inch too far.
Ink.
A tattoo on the inside of his forearm. Black lines. Not enough to read fully, just enough to know it’s not the kind of thing Papa’s older men usually wear where it can be seen.
My pulse picks up.
I make myself smile. “All right,” I say. “Fine. If I can’t leave, I can at least go back and suffer indoors.”
He nods and steps aside.
I turn away slowly, then pull my phone from my pocket as if I’m checking a message.
One quick motion.
One blurred photograph over my shoulder.
It catches the edge of his arm and enough of the tattoo to matter.
I don’t breathe properly until I’m back in my room with the door shut.
I stare at the picture.
It’s not perfect. But the mark is there, dark against skin, and my instinct screams at it before my mind has any proof to offer.
I need Roman. Which is a sentence I hate for at least six different reasons.
Unfortunately, I need his number first.
I do not have it. Because I’m an idiot.
No, not an idiot. Worse. A woman who spent four years avoiding a man so completely that she never once allowed herself the stupidity of keeping a way back to him.
But Vika has it.
Of course, Vika has it.
Which means I now have to steal Roman Sokolov’s number from my sister’s phone without being caught inside a house where everyone is suddenly suspicious and overprotective.
This is where my children come in.
I find them in the nursery. Sofia is dressing a stuffed rabbit in one of Nikolai’s socks. Nikolai is trying to stop her with the grave intensity of a small accountant watching embezzlement.
“I need your help,” I say.
Both of them freeze. Children love those five words.
Sofia gasps. “Is it dangerous?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes light up. “Wonderful.”
Nikolai narrows his. “What kind of help?”
“I need Vika’s phone.”
That gets silence.
Then Sofia says, reverently, “This is the best day of my life.”
Nikolai says, “Why?”
“Because I need something from it.”
That’s not enough for him. “Why can’t you ask?”
“Because your aunt would rather eat glass than help me.”
Sofia nods at once. “That’s true.”
Nikolai thinks a little longer. “So we’re stealing.”
“No,” I say. “Borrowing secretly.”
“That’s stealing,” Nikolai frowns.
“Temporarily.”
He looks unconvinced.
Sofia is already on board. “What do I do?”
I crouch in front of them.
“You do exactly what you do best.”
They both look offended.
“What I mean,” I say quickly. “is that Sofia you’ll distract her, she’ll keep the phone down and Nikolai will retrieve it.”
He blinks. “Why do I retrieve?”
“Because you’re sneaky.”
“I’m not sneaky.”
“You once took three biscuits from the kitchen and convinced everyone the dog had done it.”
“That was strategy.”
“Exactly.”
He accepts this.
The operation begins ten minutes later.
Vika is in the small blue drawing room, stretched across a chaise with her phone in one hand and a face mask on, which makes her look even more ridiculous than usual. She has one slipper hanging off her toes and the posture of a woman who believes civilization exists to keep her entertained.
Sofia goes in first.
I hear her before I see her.
“Aunt Vika! Nikolai says princesses can’t do cartwheels!”
That gets Vika upright immediately because there is nothing my sister loves more than being summoned as the highest authority on nonsense.
“What?”
Sofia launches into an explanation involving royalty, balance, and gross injustice. As planned, it’s impossible to ignore. Vika sets her phone down beside the chaise without even noticing.
At which point Nikolai, who has crawled in from the hall behind the low sofa like a tiny, deeply judgmental commando, slips forward, grabs the phone, and vanishes again.
I’m waiting in the corridor.
He passes it to me with the solemn air of a man handing over state secrets.
“I don’t approve of this,” he whispers. In answer, I kiss his forehead. He gives me a grudging smile at that, and for one second, he looks so heartbreakingly like his own father.
“What can I have for this?” he tries again.
“We’ll negotiate later,” I say, focusing on the phone.
The problem is that Vika has approximately nine hundred unread messages and thinks the best way to save contacts is by adding useless little symbols and names.
He’s saved, apparently, as R .
Of course, he is.
Of course, my sister would turn a dangerous man into an aesthetic choice.
I copy the number just as footsteps sound in the corridor.
I thrust the phone back into Nikolai’s hands.
He stares at me.
“Return it,” I hiss.
He does, moving with the speed of a child who knows he’s one second from being caught.
Vika comes out into the hall at that exact moment, face mask still on, frowning. “Have either of you seen my—”
Sofia crashes into her from the side shouting, “I CAN DO A CARTWHEEL NOW.”
Vika staggers.
The phone reappears on the chaise as if by magic.
Nikolai slips back to my side without expression.
I look at him. “You’re terrifying.”
He shrugs. “I know.”
Back in my room, I lock the door and stare at the number on my screen for a full minute.
What do I even say?
Hello, I think my father may be involved in the attack that nearly got you killed?
Hello, I stole your number from my sister with help from our children?
Hello, I still can’t stop thinking about your mouth?
No. Absolutely not.
I type, delete, type again, delete again. Finally, I settle on the only thing that matters.
I need to see you. It’s about the shooting. Don’t call.
I look at it once more.
Then I send it.