Chapter Twenty
Katerina
The studio is warm with bodies and music; half the company stretches before afternoon rehearsal.
I’m folded over my leg, breathing through the burn in my hamstring, when I feel a prick of something.
A ripple moves through the dancers nearest the door.
Not fear… but utter confusion of someone standing in the door.
I look up, and my heart stops.
A man I don’t recognize steps in first. Broad shoulders. Thick neck. Suit stretched across a body that looked military-trained. His hands are clasped in front of him, but only barely. As if he’s one command away from grabbing someone by the throat.
And behind him—my grandmother.
My breath stutters out of me in one sharp, cold exhale.
Maxim was right. She’s here.
“Kat?” one girl murmurs beside me. “Do you… know them?”
“Yes,” I whisper, pushing to my feet so fast my vision sparks black around the edges. “I know them.”
I smooth a trembling hand down my leotard and grab my wrap sweater, tugging it on as if fabric will help me brace for impact. I nod once to the ballet master, who steps back without question—because even he knows when royalty walks into a room.
My grandmother doesn’t shout. She doesn’t make a scene.
She simply exists, and the room bends around her.
“Babushka,” I say quietly, stepping past the other dancers, and then she turns and leads me into the hallway.
She turns back to me in the lonely hallways, her eyes sweep over me—the same gray-blue eyes that Luka and I inherited, only hers have seen things I can’t imagine. She assesses me quickly, far too shrewd for a woman in her seventies.
“Door,” she says to the bodyguard, flicking two fingers sharply with a Russian accent.
He pivots, scanning the hallway before closing the studio door behind us so that the other dancers can’t hear us.
Then, my grandmother lifts her chin and smiles. It’s small, but it’s better than most get. My grandmother doesn’t have warm thoughts about many. I know I’m one of a small group.
“Katerina,” she says. “Look at you.”
I swallow, unsure what version of her I’m about to get.
The warm one—the one who used to braid my hair before school, humming old Russian lullabies when I was a little girl.
Or the cold one—the one who taught me how to stand still in front of powerful men and lie with my eyes when the truth was too dangerous?
Both live inside her. Both helped to shape me into the mob princess I was supposed to be.
“Babushka,” I murmur again, softer now.
She steps closer, and I have to stop myself from retreating.
“So,” she says, not bothering with pleasantries. “Your father is very disappointed.”
The words hit hard, but I knew they would. Still, it’s hard to say I was prepared for them.
I straighten my spine. “That’s nothing new.”
Her mouth twitches. Just barely amused. “No. Perhaps not.”
Her gaze flicks to my left hand.
To my ring.
“He is disappointed,” she continues, “because you have not returned to Russia. You have not fulfilled your duties and instead have married without his consent to a hockey player instead of the man he has chosen for you. You have embarrassed him.”
The old me, the girl raised to please, to obey, shrinks instinctively.
But the woman I’ve become…The one who wakes up tangled in Scottie’s arms, who dances because she loves it, not because someone demanded perfection…That woman stands straighter.
“I didn’t marry for my father’s approval,” I say. “I married because I fell in love.”
My grandmother blinks once.
That’s it. She doesn’t fake a gasp or outrage. Instead, she studies me with curious yet well-trained eyes to be able to see a person’s “tell”, the racing of their pulse, the sudden licking of lips and shaking of their head when they tell a false truth but give it away.
“We will see,” she says calmly. “That is what I am here to determine.”
Fear lodges under my ribs, sharp and immediate. “Determine?”
She moves past me, inspecting the empty gray, boring hallway with a faint look of distaste, as if the floors aren’t polished enough for her, and the air not refined enough.
Then she turns back.
“You will meet me for tea tomorrow,” she says. “In the morning. The Fairmont. They still serve proper service,” she adds with a sniff. “Your American hotels are… lacking.”
Of course.
Tea time is something my grandmother has always taken seriously, but she developed a particular fondness for English tea time when she lived in England under special assignment for the Russian government, back before she married my grandfather.
Something my family never discusses, but we all quietly know what she was trained to do.
Tea time for me is a formal interrogation dressed up in porcelain cups and scones, crossed ankles and fabric napkins.
“I hope you are ready,” she says, adjusting her gloves with elegant precision. “To defend your vows.”
A shiver slices down my spine.
“Babushka—”
“That is all.” She steps back toward the staircase of the studio, her bodyguard rushing ahead of her. “Tomorrow. I’ll pick you up. Don’t keep me waiting.”
“Don’t you need my address?”
Her bodyguard snickers at my question as they continue walking. Duh, of course she doesn’t; she’s probably known every step I’ve taken since I moved here at fourteen.
She’s almost gone when she pauses.
Turns.
Looks me over with eyes that see too much and forgive very little.
But then… so softly as if I almost think I imagined it—she says, “Your father and our family name aside. Your mother… would be proud of the ballerina you have become.” A beat. “And the woman.”
My throat closes.
She doesn’t wait for a response. She never does. And then she’s gone, down the staircase to the next level and out the door into Seattle’s bustling city.
I stand there, with my heart pounding against my ribs, my stomach twisting, sweat prickling my back. It feels as if the entire floor of this second story just shifted under my feet.
Tomorrow decides everything.
My marriage.
My future.
My freedom… and Scottie.
I press a trembling hand to my ring, to the warm metal that feels more like home every day.
“I fell in love,” I whisper, more to myself than anyone else.
And now I have to prove it to the only woman in my family who has ever told me the truth.
I pace the penthouse while I wait for him to get home, still in my robe, still shaking from the conversation with my grandmother.
I texted him that she had come to the studio. I told him she’s here because she wants proof. Real proof. The kind of proof you cannot fake with photographs, or hand-holding, or rings, or staged wedding videos.
And Scottie…God. He doesn’t understand.
I cannot lie to that woman.
She will see through me the way she saw through everyone my entire life — politicians, businessmen, diplomats, bodyguards. She was raised to detect weakness and deception with a single inhale.
If I sit across from her tomorrow and she asks, “Are you married in truth or only in name?”
I won’t be able to look her in the eye and lie.
I need truth to stand on.
So, I take off my robe. Put on the pale lingerie I’ve never worn for anyone. And sit on the edge of his bed, waiting.
When the door finally opens, my heart lurches.
“Kat?” he calls, footsteps heavy with concern. “Where are you?”
“In here,” I say, though my voice barely carries.
He pushes open the door and freezes.
“Katerina…” His voice drops, scrapes low.
He looks wrecked, a little stunned, but the part I need to see is that his vision takes in every inch of me. “You’re staring…” I say. “It’s hard not to… you’re gorgeous. But what… what are you doing?”
“It has to be real,” I say. “All of it. Not the almost. Not the pretending. Not the pieces of us we keep stopping before they go too far.”
I stand and take a step towards him.
He swallows hard, his eyes roaming over every inch of see-through lace. “Kat—”
“You said that if we take it any further, then this marriage isn’t temporary for you,” I say quietly. “What if it’s not for me either? Tomorrow she’ll ask me if I’m married in truth. And I can’t look her in the eye unless—”
“Unless we sleep together,” he finishes, voice breaking.
I nod.
His chest rises and falls in sharp, uneven breaths. “I don’t want to take something from you I can’t give back.”
I lift my chin. “You’re not taking anything. I’m choosing you. And I want the night before I have to defend us to be ours.”
He closes his eyes, pained. “Don’t do this because you’re scared.”
“I’m doing this because I’m in love with you, too.”
His eyes snap open.
“You are?” he breathes.
I nod because the emotions that clog my throat are too thick to speak through. I needed to hear him confess it first, and once he did… I knew I couldn’t continue to pretend that I don’t want him too. It feels terrifying and freeing to say it aloud.
He stares at me as if the universe just tilted, taking a step closer to me. “Say it again.”
“I’m in love with you,” I whisper. “And tomorrow… if she asks me, I want to answer her truthfully.”
Scottie moves toward me as if he’s being pulled, as if gravity itself just shifted.
He cups my face with both hands. His palms are warm, steady, grounding.
“Katerina,” he murmurs, forehead pressing to mine, “I love you. God, I love you.”
The air leaves my lungs.
“I’ve been gone for you for weeks. Fighting it. Losing. You won.” He whispers.
A tear rolls hotly down my cheek. He catches it with his thumb.
“Tell me you’re sure,” he whispers. “Tell me you want this because you want me, not because you’re afraid of tomorrow.”
I exhale a shaky breath. “I want you.”
He reaches out, wrapping an arm around me, his eyes hooded and locked on mine.
Not hungry. Not rushed. Not like the alley behind the roadhouse, where we were both drowning in adrenaline and fear and need.
His lips press against mine. The kiss is slow and deep, a devastating feeling of finally being on the same page. A vow sealed mouth to mouth. I pull at his shirt, and he takes it off in one fluid motion, his pants, until he’s only in his boxer briefs.