Chapter Two
KATERINA
The lights on the stage are so bright that I can’t even see the crowd in front of me.
I know that's the point—they're supposed to blind you just enough that you can't see the faces in the audience, can't see their judgment or their boredom or their expectations. But tonight, I feel every single one of them watching.
I stand in the wings, pointe shoes laced tight, my costume—a cascade of white tulle and silk—rustling with every shallow breath. My hands are steady as I adjust the bodice, but my heart is racing.
One last time.
The thought whispers through my mind like a prayer, or maybe it’s a curse?
This is my final performance with the New York Ballet Company. My final bow on this stage. After tonight, everything changes.
I close my eyes and let the familiar pre-show ritual ground me: breathe in for four counts, hold for four, release for eight.
Again. Again. My muscles know what to do—they've done this a thousand times.
My body is a weapon I've honed since I was six years old, and tonight, I will wield it perfectly.
I have to.
The stage manager touches my shoulder—two minutes.
I nod, rolling my ankles, feeling the tape beneath my toes, the slight ache in my left hip that never quite goes away. It’s an old injury and a small sacrifice. It’s “the price of perfection,” my professor used to tell me at Juilliard, my first year.
The orchestra begins, and my cue approaches.
I step into the light.
The first movement is muscle memory. I could do it half-consciously if I needed to, but somewhere in the second act, I stop thinking entirely.
My body takes over, and for a few precious moments, I am not Katerina Popovich, daughter of a powerful man, sister to a defector, prisoner of my own bloodline.
I am just… free.
The music carries me, and I let it. Let my arms float, let my legs extend into lines so sharp they could cut glass. The audience fades. The stage fades. And now there is only movement, and breathing, and this.
It's the only place I've ever felt like I could fly.
When the final note echoes and I sink into my closing bow, the applause of the audience echoes around me like thunder.
So loud that the vibration can be felt from my toes to the tips of my nose.
Roses land at my feet—red, white, pink—and I gather them with trembling hands, my chest heaving, my legs shaking beneath me.
Not from nerves but from the sweet feeling of adrenaline.
I smile.
It's the smile I've perfected over years of curtain calls—gracious, serene, yet completely untouchable.
But inside, I am screaming.
Backstage, the other dancers swarm me with congratulations, their voices warm and genuine… or at least most of them.
"You were incredible, Kat!"
"That final fouetté sequence—I've never seen you land it so clean!"
"We're going to miss you so much."
I nod, murmur thank-yous, accept their hugs with the same polite distance I've kept for years. They're kind. They're talented. But none of them really knows me.
None of them know my family name. None of them know what awaits me outside this building.
I slip into my dressing room and close the door, leaning against it for a long moment before I move to the mirror.
My reflection stares back—pale skin, dark hair slicked into a severe bun, eyes the color of a winter sky. I look composed. A mask I’ve been perfecting for years.
I look like my mother.
The thought makes me miss her terribly, but I try not to let myself think of her until I’m back in my tiny apartment with my two other roommates.
Luckily, our schedules never match up, and I barely see them besides as ships in the night, just passing by on our way to our next audition or our next show.
I miss her more than anything on nights like tonight. I wish she could see that I followed in her footsteps. I hope she’d be proud.
"Posture is power,” she'd say. "If you stand tall, no one can see you're afraid."
I've been standing tall ever since.
She died when I was fourteen. Kidney failure stemmed from a past childhood disease that robbed her body.
Her years as a ballerina and bearing two children didn’t help matters, and she was sickly most of my life, but never without a smile.
No matter how many specialists my father hired, or how much he threw at trying different treatments, her body just didn’t respond the way the doctors hoped.
I start removing my stage makeup, wiping away the false lashes, the sculpted cheekbones, the red lips. Underneath, I am smaller. Quieter. More afraid than I'll ever let anyone see.
A sharp knock interrupts my thoughts.
"Come in," I call, expecting one of the other dancers.
But it's not.
It's my father.
He's dressed in a charcoal suit, perfectly tailored, his silver hair combed back in the same severe style he's worn for as long as I can remember.
He's a handsome man—cold, controlled, commanding, with the same grey-blue eyes that both my brother Luka and I inherited.
The kind of man people instinctively step aside for.
Ironically, it was those cold grey eyes that my mother said she caught staring at her while she performed on a New York stage as a young prima ballerina. She caught those same eyes returning for two straight weeks before my father finally knocked on her dressing room with roses and a proposal.
She didn’t know at the time that my father’s family influenced New York and the performing arts scene.
She had no idea that she was falling in love with the soon-to-be head of one of the biggest organized crime families in Russia, though I think she was so smitten with my father that she wouldn’t have done anything differently. She called it “love at first sight”.
She claimed he was a different man before my grandfather’s stroke, only two years later. He was softer—sweeter… more patient. Then again, he was always with her.
He became more distant with Luka and me after her death.
I stand slowly, smoothing my hands over my robe.
"Papa."
"Katerina." His voice is clipped, formal. He steps inside and closes the door behind him, his gaze sweeping over me with the same clinical assessment he'd give a business acquisition. His hands folded one over the other behind him. "Your performance was adequate."
Adequate.
I've just danced the role of my career, and he calls it adequate.
He would never have called my mother “adequate”.
I swallow the bitterness and nod. "Thank you."
"We need to talk."
Of course we do.
He doesn't sit. Doesn't soften. Just stands there, hands clasped behind his back, and delivers the blow I've been dreading for months.
"Your visa expires in six weeks."
"I know."
"Your time fluttering around is at an end. I allowed you this dream in exchange for your agreement to accept your rightful place with our family. You'll return to Moscow at the end of the month."
My stomach drops, but I keep my face neutral.
I knew this was coming, which is why tonight was my final curtain call.
"I could stay a little longer. Renew my visa if you’d just allow the New York Ballet Company to renew my sponsorship visa.
Besides, you don’t need me to take over the family name just yet. You’re doing a fine job on your own."
"A sponsored visa renewal with the Company will be denied." He says without bothering with the rest of what I said.
"You don't know that."
His gaze sharpens. "I do. Because I've ensured it. Don’t forget the pull our family has here."
The words hit me like a slap. My grandfather took an interest in New York show business before I was born.
He had a business relationship with every theater owner and promotional company in New York, and now these influential acquaintances are my father's. If he tells them to ensure that the New York Ballet Company doesn’t sponsor my renewal visa… then that’s exactly what will happen.
As my grandmother always says, “Influence works faster than money.” My grandmother is also the only person my father won’t go up against. But I have a feeling she’s on my father’s side regarding my place in the family business.
"You—" I stop, force myself to breathe. "Why would you do that?"
"Because it's time for you to come home. I’ve been generous to allow you to have your little adventure, Katerina. Living your mother’s dream for you. You've proven you can dance. But this…" He waves a hand dismissively at the dressing room, at the theater, at my entire life here. "This is over."
“I’ve worked for this for eight years—”
“And now you will work for your family.” His tone is final. “I’ve arranged a marriage for you. One I believe will be mutually beneficial. A man you already know—Maxim Volkov. He is a deputy in the Duma, well-connected and ambitious. A union between you would be… advantageous.”
For a moment, all I hear is the roar of my own pulse.
I do know Maxim.
Before I left for New York, our families often moved in the same circles.
He attended my mother’s funeral—stood beside the casket with a bouquet of white roses, murmuring condolences to me.
I remember staring at the cathedral, drowning in roses and telling him quietly that I hated the flower.
He reached for my hand in that moment, and I pulled away.
We were both younger than, and even at that age, I understood enough:
Maxim Volkov is everything my father admires and nothing I want.
He’s eight years older than me. Handsome in an effortless, polished way of Moscow’s rising politicians. His career trajectory is steep enough that people whisper he might someday sit at the top of the government.
He is also very clearly cut from the same cloth as my father—ambition first, everything else second.
“You want me to marry Maxim Volkov,” I say, my voice thin with disbelief. “A politician. Eight years older.”
“I want you to fulfill your duty.”
“I’m a ballerina, not a bargaining chip—”