45. Tayana
45
TAYANA
T he door to the bedroom at the back of the plane closes with a soft click, but it feels like the slam of a prison gate. I lean against it, closing my eyes as the low hum of the engines vibrates through me. My breath hitches, and I press my palms flat against the cold wood, trying to steady the swirling storm inside me.
I left them there. Anton and Igor, sitting side by side like old comrades, their voices low, conspiratorial. It doesn’t make sense. It can’t make sense. They’ve spent years hating each other, glaring across family dinners, exchanging venomous barbs like it was a sport. Now, they’re huddled together, allies in some secret war they refuse to let me see.
My mind spins as I sink onto the bed, curling my knees to my chest. My fingers trace the seams of the comforter, but the motion does nothing to calm me. Every time I try to piece together their behavior, the fragments of memory clash and shatter.
Anton—my father. The word feels foreign, bitter, like poison on my tongue. He cast me out after my mother died, shoving me away when I needed him most. I’ve spent years convincing myself that it was for my own good, that his grief made him cold. But now…
Now I don’t know what to think.
I’ve spent my entire life believing Igor was the enemy, the monster lurking in the shadows. My mother had told me to stay away from him, painted him as a wolf circling our family, waiting for a moment of weakness. But today, when Igor stepped between me and the chaos, when he defended me with a fierceness that seemed almost paternal, it didn’t add up. The way he so ruthlessly shot Daniel Russo as he waved his gun around; even that didn’t make sense.
My fists clench around the comforter. The cabin feels too small, too stifling. I push off the bed and start pacing, my steps short and restless as my frustration boils over. I yank open the wardrobe built into the wall, slamming it shut again when I find nothing but pristine hangers. The sound echoes around the small room, but it does nothing to soothe the roaring ache inside me.
I stop in front of the mirror, gripping the edge of the vanity as I glare at my reflection. My eyes are shadowed, my face pale, but the anger burning beneath the surface is all too familiar.
“What do they want from me?” I ask the girl in the mirror.
The memory of Rafi’s face rises unbidden, his steady gaze and quiet strength cutting through the fog. I imagine him in the mirror, standing behind me, looking over my shoulder. In anger. Rafi . His name is a whisper in my mind, a thread of hope I shouldn’t cling to. But I do. Even knowing that he is probably so angry at me for what I’ve done. I didn’t even say goodbye; didn’t even give us a chance before I got on the plane and left with the two men who will probably be my undoing.
I think of his family—their warmth, their acceptance. They gave me something I hadn’t realized I was missing; a place to belong. With them, I wasn’t the Bratva princess, wasn’t a pawn in a game I didn’t want to play. I was just Tayana.
I wrap my arms around myself as the tears sting my eyes, though I refuse to let them fall. I traded that family for this—whatever this is. Secrets. Lies. Shadows. A past shrouded in secrecy.
The plane hums around me, and I press my fists to my temples, trying to block out the noise. But it’s not the engines I want to escape—it’s the two men who have controlled my life for far too long now.
As soon as the plane touches down, I give them an ultimatum, but they call my bluff. They refuse to answer my questions, and they will not clarify the allegations that have been thrown around so loosely since we all came to be standing in the same space. I can’t even remember the last time we all stood together like this. My mother’s funeral, perhaps?
I’m so stunned, so furious, I can barely see straight. The moment their silence settles in the air between us, I turn on them.
“I’m leaving,” I spit, my voice trembling with rage. “Don’t follow me. Don’t call me. Don’t even think about me. I’m catching the next flight back, and I swear to God, I will never speak to either of you again.”
Anton’s face crumples, guilt etched into every line of his expression. Igor, on the other hand, looks like he’s been carved from stone, his jaw tight, his eyes burning with some mix of anger and pride. Neither of them tries to stop me as I storm past them. Maybe they know they can’t. Maybe they think I need time. Or maybe, deep down, they’re just as tired of fighting as I am.
The cold air bites at my skin as I step outside the terminal, my breath fogging in front of me. I clutch my bag tightly, my hands shaking—not from the chill, but from the storm raging inside me. For twenty-two years, I’ve lived in the wreckage of their choices. And for the first time, I’m starting to wonder if I have the strength to step out of it. To leave it all behind.
But as I stand there, frozen on the curb, a voice whispers in the back of my mind. What if leaving doesn’t set you free? What if it only makes you another casualty in their endless war?
I close my eyes, my heart pounding. I don’t know the answer. But I do know one thing: I need to decide where I belong. And I’m not running anymore.
Everything they’ve buried for years suddenly comes spilling out. The truth, the lies, the tangled mess of my family history.
Some would call me lucky. I have two fathers. Or so it seems. The truth? I don’t actually know who my father is. It could be either one of them—Anton or Igor—something only a DNA test can confirm. But the thought of that test feels like an unbearable weight pressing down on my chest. I’m not sure I’m ready for the answer, and apparently, neither are they.
In twenty-two years, neither Anton nor Igor has made a move to resolve the mystery. So, whose daughter am I? Both, apparently. The daughter of two men who’ve spent decades circling each other in silent, seething competition over a woman who no longer exists to love or to choose.
It turns out they are a twisted version of the usual fairy tale princes. They are the bedtime story my mother used to tell me. Two brothers, both vying for the heart of a beautiful, tragic woman. My mother, Elana. Except in their story, there are no villains—only victims, clawing at each other and tearing everything apart in the process. Including me.
Igor met her first. He tells me the story, in one of his rare reflective moments of honesty. He’d been out with friends, gambling, drinking, losing track of time, when they stumbled into some underground club where women were being auctioned off like livestock. He saw her standing there under the dim, flickering lights, her shoulders bare, her face defiant, and said he fell in love with her on the spot. So, he bought her. Just like that. He called it love. He thought he was saving her. My mother called it captivity.
For a month, he kept her. Treated her well, he claims. Gave her the best food, the softest clothes, the kind of luxury that should’ve made her fall at his feet. But Elana didn’t love him. She couldn’t bring herself to love the man she considered her monster, her captor.
Then Anton entered the picture. The younger, gentler brother. Igor said he knew the moment Elana looked at Anton that she’d never look at him that way. Her guard came down, her voice softened, and for the first time, she smiled. It was inevitable. Anton and Elana fell in love. And Igor? He let her go. Or so he says.
But letting her go didn’t mean forgiving her—or Anton. The three of them became trapped in a vicious cycle of resentment. Elana couldn’t forgive Igor for buying her in the first place. Anton couldn’t forgive Igor for having her first. And Igor… Igor couldn’t forgive either of them for the way they left him behind.
I grew up in the shadow of that bitterness. It clung to our family like a curse, suffocating and inescapable. My mother’s warnings about Igor and how evil he is—all because she worried that out of spite, he might try to take me from her. Try to claim me as his own. But even she didn’t know. She liked to believe I was Anton’s, her love child, the product of the only true love she’d ever had. Maybe that’s what she needed to believe to survive.
When my mother was killed—shot down by Vasili Teskin the night he attacked me—everything unraveled. Neither Anton nor Igor had the strength or the presence of mind to raise a teenage girl. Worse, the threat of Teskin loomed over us like a dark cloud, and they decided I was safer far away. They changed my surname and sent me away, packed me off like cargo, and I let them because I thought Anton couldn’t bear to look at me on account of how closely I resembled my mother. When all along, they distanced themselves to save my soul from the purgatory they’d found themselves in.
Now, years later, I find out it wasn’t about me at all. It was about survival. The only reason Igor brought me back now is because the threat is greater with me gone. Vasili Teskin, recently allied with Victor Moreno, is out for revenge on the Gattis, my new found family, and apparently, being with my birth family in Russia is the safest place for me to be.
Igor finally comes clean about everything. How he tracked Teskin to the city and kept himself hidden from me so I wouldn’t feel the urge to run. Like I’d been doing my whole life. What he hadn’t anticipated is Rafi seeking me out and telling me about seeing Igor.
Maxine, he tells me, had been with Teskin and he was able to retrieve her from him. The objective? To use her as leverage for the Gatti’s co-operation in putting down Teskin once and for all. The pieces of the puzzle start to slip in place as the sudden realization hits me. I couldn’t have orchestrated it better myself, even if I’d tried.
“Who shot Sasha at the dock? You said you had eyes on me always. Who was that?”
Igor shrugs. “I’m assuming Teskin’s first attempt on your life – we missed it, so we became more vigilant with security.”
I remind him that Teskin somehow still managed to find me at the shelter.
Igor closes his eyes, as if he can shut out the pain of how close they came to losing me. He was at a meeting with Daniel Russo when the attack happened and caught wind of it only once it was too late and I was already gone. But at least I was safe, he points out.
“Then Rafi Gatti found you. Literally at the same time that Teskin found you. I knew Teskin was the greater threat, so I was happy to keep you in the safety of the Gattis – temporarily. While I regrouped and tried to find another ally in the city.”
“Daniel Russo.”
Igor knew the man couldn’t be trusted, but Russo knew the city better than anyone else, and that’s what Igor needed. Igor reminds me that he didn’t hurt the Gattis, which is for the most part true. He could have just taken the short cut, though, by handing Maxine over at the fight club. Which he didn’t. His main objective had been to keep me safe and get me out of the country; he smiles triumphantly as I inform him with a sour look that his mission was accomplished.
“And now here I am.”
“You’re home, malysh . Where you belong .”
The weight of the conversation with Anton and Igor clings to me like smoke as I climb the stairs to my room, each step heavier than the last. My pulse pounds in my ears, and my chest tightens as their words replay in my mind.
I place my phone on the desk, staring at it as if it holds all the answers I can’t bring myself to ask. The screen stays black, unyielding, its silence echoing the void between Rafi and me. My hand hovers over it, fingers twitching with the temptation to call him. One press, and I could hear his voice, the warmth of it breaking through the cold knot in my chest.
But I can’t. I’m frozen, paralyzed by the weight of everything that’s passed between us—and everything that hasn’t.
The last time we spoke plays in my mind like a jagged film reel: my voice flat, my words measured, as I handed him Maxine’s location and cut the call short. The way his silence stretched after, like he was waiting for me to say something more, something real. And then, nothing. No calls. No texts. Nothing but the growing chasm between us.
I drop my head into my hands, the mask I wear cracking under the pressure. For a fleeting moment, I think about calling him, hearing his voice, letting him be the anchor I’ve refused to admit I need. But I know it’s not fair. Not to him. Not to me.
I press my hands to my temples, trying to shove the memories away. But they claw their way back, relentless. Maybe he’s angry. Maybe he’s done waiting for me to figure myself out. Or maybe—just maybe—I’m not worth waiting for.