Chapter 16 Daria
Daria
I wake up on the couch, covered with a blanket I don’t remember pulling over myself.
Gray morning seeps through the curtains. My dress is still unbuttoned, and the fabric is twisted around my waist where Pyotr must have arranged it to cover me before he—
Before he… what? Left? Stayed?
I drag myself upright and look around, and there he is, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a phone glued to his ear. When he glances up and sees me watching, he ends the call without another word.
“How long was I asleep?” I ask as I rub my eyes.
“Six hours. You needed it.”
I pull the blanket tighter, suddenly too aware of myself.
Not my body; he’s seen that.
It’s the rest of me.
He’s still here. I don’t know what to do with that.
“Kira…” I look around.
“Natasha texted an hour ago. She’s fine. They’re making pancakes.”
I nod and glance at my hands. The skin around my wrists is pink from the ribbon, but there’s no bruising. He was careful. He’s always careful.
“Last night,” he begins. “You told me Bogdan wants you to betray me. To get information about Dmitri and the family.”
“I remember what I told you.”
“You didn’t tell me everything.” He rises from the table and walks to the couch before lowering himself onto the coffee table across from me.
“I know about the accounts, the shell companies, and all the money moving through your name. What I don’t know is how it started.
How he got his hooks into you in the first place. ”
I stare at him for so long that my eyes burn. My throat feels like I’ve swallowed sand.
“Does it matter?”
“It matters to me.”
I let out a long breath, and my shoulders sag. I’ve been carrying this alone for three years. Running. Hiding. Pretending that if I just stayed small enough and quiet enough, Bogdan would eventually lose interest and move on.
But he never loses interest. He just finds new ways to tighten the leash.
And now, there’s a man sitting across from me who already knows the worst of it. He knows I’ve been feeding information to someone working against his organization, and he’s still here, waiting for me to trust him with the rest.
“The accounts started before I even knew what he was,” I tell him. “Before I understood what kind of man I’d married.”
Bogdan’s cufflinks catch the light as he signs my name like it’s nothing.
“It’s paperwork, Daria. Smile.”
Pyotr listens with his hands resting on his knees and his eyes not leaving my face.
“He set all those things up during our engagement.” I pick at a loose thread on the blanket. “By the time I realized what was happening, he had years of evidence that made me look like his willing partner. Every account and transaction had my signature that I never put there.”
He kisses my temple and whispers, “Trust me.”
“They were forgeries,” Pyotr surmises.
“Good ones. The kind that would hold up in court. That’s what he showed me the first time I tried to leave.”
A muscle feathers along Pyotr’s jaw.
“Kira was two. I’d been planning for months, hiding cash and memorizing bus schedules. He found out, and he sat me down at the kitchen table, spread out every document, and explained what would happen if I ever tried to leave him.”
Pyotr’s knuckles are white from how hard he’s squeezing his knees. “But you left anyway.”
“Not then. It took me another few months to work up the courage again. I had nothing except the cash I’d hidden in a tampon box because it was the only place he never looked. I grabbed Kira in the middle of the night and ran.”
“And that’s when the threats started.”
“Not right away. He let me think I’d escaped. Let me find an apartment, enroll Kira in daycare, and start building a life. Then, the first photo arrived. It was of Kira on the playground at her daycare.”
My phone buzzes while I wash a cup.
One picture. Kira on the slide, her cheeks pink from the cold.
In the corner, my building. My window.
My hands go slick. I drop the cup into the sink and don’t hear it break.
Pyotr curls his hands into fists. “The demands for information. That’s when those started?”
“Yes. Small things at first, but then it grew. Documents, account numbers, and details about Kozlov operations I had no way of accessing. He expected me to find them anyway.”
“And when you couldn’t deliver?”
“More photos. More threats.”
Pyotr looks like a man trying very hard not to kill someone.
“I gave him scraps. Whatever I could find to buy another week.” I swallow. “I told myself it was survival.”
I wait for the disgust, disappointment, or realization that I’m not just a victim but a collaborator who’s been working against his organization for years.
It doesn’t come.
Instead, Pyotr reaches forward and covers my hands. His thumb drags once over the mark at my wrist, right where the ribbon bit. “This isn’t your fault.”
Four words, and something inside me that’s been wound tight for years comes undone, and I cry. Ugly, heaving sobs that shake my body and make my chest burn. He doesn’t try to stop me or tell me it’s okay or offer empty comfort. He just holds my hands and waits until the storm passes.
When I finally catch my breath, my face is swollen, and my nose is running. I am a mess, but Pyotr is still there, watching me without a trace of judgment.
“What happens now?” I ask, still expecting the worst.
“Now, we destroy him.”
“How? He has everything. His uncle runs half of St. Petersburg, and he still has evidence against me.”
“He has leverage,” Pyotr corrects. “That’s not the same as power. Leverage only works if the person you’re threatening has no other options. We’re going to give you other options.”
I draw my brows together. “What do you mean?”
“We’re going to tell Dmitri the truth.”
My stomach drops, and I whip my head from side to side. “No. Absolutely not. If Dmitri finds out about what I’ve been giving Bogdan—”
“He’s going to find out. Tony already flagged suspicious activity. That’s why I’m here, Daria. Now, we need to get ahead of this before it gets any worse.”
“What if Dmitri doesn’t believe me? What if he decides I’m guilty?”
“I’ll make him believe you.”
“And how do you plan to do that?” I sputter.
“By putting my position on the line. I’ll tell him I’ve reviewed every piece of evidence, and I’m certain you were coerced. That Bogdan set you up and used you, and that eliminating him protects the family more than punishing you ever could.”
I gawk at him with my mouth open. The words don’t fit with anything I know about how the world works, how men like him operate, and what people are willing to sacrifice for strangers.
“You’d risk everything. Your job, your standing with Dmitri… everything you’ve built with the organization. All of it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He works his jaw like he’s choosing his words carefully. Then he leans forward and locks eyes with me. His hands close around my wrists.
Not tightly. Protective. But I can feel what’s running through him. Fury held on a leash.
“Because no one touches you or Kira. Not Bogdan, not anyone. Even if protecting you costs me everything.”
He lets go and holds out his hand. “Give me your phone.”
I hand it over. He swipes through the settings, tapping and blocking.
“No more blocked calls,” he says as he gives it back. “Any number not already in your contacts goes to a folder I can monitor. If Bogdan tries to reach you, I’ll know about it first.”
The words settle into my chest, but I don’t know what to do with them. I don’t know how to accept something so freely given when I’ve spent years paying for every scrap of safety with pieces of myself.
“You barely know me,” I whisper.
“I know enough.”
“I’ve been lying to you since the day you walked through my door.”
“You did what you felt you had to do to survive.”
I’ve said those same words to myself a thousand times. In bathroom mirrors. In the dark after Kira fell asleep.
They never helped. They always tasted like ash.
But from him? From this man who knows what I’ve done and hasn't walked away?
My stomach flips. My eyes sting. Part of me wants to fold in on myself and disappear.
Instead, I hold onto his hands like they’re the only thing keeping me upright.
“Okay. I’ll tell Dmitri. Everything. The whole, ugly truth.” I take a breath that shakes on the way in. “But I want to be there when you call him. I want to explain it myself. I’m tired of other people speaking for me.”
Pyotr nods. “I’ll arrange a secure line. But Kira needs to come home first. When Bogdan finds out you’ve flipped sides, he’ll try to get to her.”
“Can you—” I stop myself, then push forward anyway. “Would you come with me to pick her up? I don’t want to be alone right now.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He says it like it’s something so obvious that it doesn’t require discussion.
I want to kiss him again. I want to climb into his lap and lose myself in his hands and forget that I have to face my cousin and confess to years of coerced betrayal.
I want to pretend that the world outside this apartment doesn’t exist, that it’s just the two of us and this fragile thing growing between us.
But a five-year-old girl across town needs her mother, and for the first time since Kira was born, I think her mother can finally give her something better than fear.