25. Renat
RENAT
T he vodka burns down my throat, but not enough to kill the memory of her face when she looked at me today.
Not enough to erase the way Mira recoiled when I stepped toward the fence, as if I carried plague instead of protection.
The bottle sits half-empty on the rickety table beside my cot, and I stare at it through the dim light filtering through cracked windows.
The bunkhouse has seen better days. Mice scurry through the walls at night, their claws scratching against insulation that hasn't been replaced since the Soviet era. This place is dying, room by room, board by board. Everything here is dying.
Including whatever was growing between Mira and me.
I take another drink and let the alcohol pool in my stomach, a familiar warmth that promises to dull the edges of thoughts I can't afford to have.
The punching bag hangs from the central rafter, swaying slightly following my intense workout.
I installed it three days ago, needing something to hit that wouldn't bleed or beg or crumple to the dirt with eyes that stopped seeing.
She'd only hate me more if I took my anger out on someone instead of this bag.
And the energy I've already spent doesn't feel like enough. I rise, setting my glass aside, and take another swing at it.
The bag takes my first punch without complaint, leather groaning under knuckles that have split too many other things.
I hit it again, harder, feeling the chain creak against the beam above.
Again. The sound echoes through the empty space—thud, creak, thud, creak—a rhythm that matches the pulse hammering behind my temples.
She used to watch me work with the horse. Used to stand close enough that I could smell the soap in her hair, the earth on her clothes. Now she keeps fifty meters between us, minimum. As if proximity might contaminate her with whatever darkness lives in my bones.
But I'm not a monster.
I hit the bag until my shoulders ache and my hands start bleeding through the tape. Until the vodka and violence combine into something that resembles numbness. But when I stop, when the bag settles into stillness, her voice comes back to me.
The horse senses violence.
As if I'm some rabid animal that needs to be contained. As if the blood on my hands marks me as permanently unfit for anything clean or good or worth saving. But it was there before I touched her, before she told me she was falling for me. Before I fell in love with her.
But maybe she's right.
The thought sits in my chest. Maybe I am exactly the monster she sees when she looks at me now. Maybe there's no washing off fifteen years of Vetrov business, no coming back from the things I've done in service to a name that was never really mine.
I drink until the bottle empties and the room tilts sideways. Then I stumble outside, needing air that doesn't taste of failure and self-pity.
The ranch spreads out under a moonless sky that prophesies dark, ominous things. The main house sits dark except for a single light burning in what must be Mira's room. I can see her silhouette moving behind thin curtains, and the sight hits me with a longing so fierce it makes my knees weak.
When did I start wanting things I can't have? When did I stop being satisfied with orders and violence and the simple certainty of knowing my place in the world's ugliness?
The paddock draws me forward, my feet finding the path without conscious thought. Rusalka stands near the water trough, her coat silver in the starlight. She lifts her head when I approach, ears forward, alert but not afraid. At least one female on this ranch doesn't see me as a threat.
"Easy, girl," I murmur, letting her catch my scent. "Just me."
She allows me to stroke her neck, muscle shifting under my palm. She's beautiful—all power and grace and potential wrapped in dark hide. The kind of creature that deserves better than being used as currency in other people's wars.
Footsteps crunch across gravel, and I turn to see Mira approaching with a bucket of fresh water. She freezes when she spots me, her whole body going rigid with tension.
"I told you to stay away from her." Her voice cuts through the night air, sharp enough to draw blood.
"I'm not hurting her."
"You hurt everything you touch." She sets the bucket down with unnecessary force, water sloshing over the rim. "That's what you do. That's what you are."
I grit my teeth at her words but I don't react. "You think I wanted this? You think I chose to become what I am?"
"I don't know what you chose." She moves to Rusalka's other side, putting the horse between us. "I don't know anything about you anymore."
"You know everything that's important."
"Do I?" She snorts and her laugh sounds bitter, broken. "Because the man I thought I knew wouldn't have killed someone that easily. Wouldn't have stood there afterward looking bored."
"That man was going to sabotage the race. He was going to make sure you lost."
"So you executed him." She's crying now, tears tracking silver down her cheeks. "Without trial, without question. You pulled the trigger."
"Yes." The word comes out flat, honest. "Because that's what needed to happen."
"God." She presses her face against Rusalka's neck, shoulders shaking. "Listen to yourself. Listen to how you talk about taking a life."
I want to tell her about the first man I killed.
How I threw up afterward, shaking so hard I couldn't hold a cup of water.
How I didn't sleep for weeks, seeing his face every time I closed my eyes.
I want to explain how the second kill was easier, and the third easier still, until death became just another tool in my arsenal—efficient, reliable, necessary.
I want to tell her how killing that saboteur felt different.
Not easier, but more urgent. How the thought of his destroying her chance, her hope, her future filled me with a rage so pure it scared me.
How if not for me he'd have continued to go on harming other people, and that I put a stop to that.
Instead, I say nothing. Because the truth is worse than her assumptions. The truth is that I didn't kill him to protect the race or follow orders or maintain family honor. I killed him because he threatened her, and somewhere along the way, her safety became more important to me than my own soul.
"You're right," I tell her instead. "I am what you think I am. I'm exactly the monster you see."
She looks up at me then, her face streaked with tears and moonlight. "I don't want you to be a monster, Renat. I want—" She stops herself, shaking her head. "It doesn't matter what I want."
"It matters to me," I tell her, reaching for her.
"No." She backs away, putting more distance between us. "It can't matter. Because in forty hours we race, and win or lose, you'll go back to your family. Back to being their weapon. And I'll either be dead or wishing I were."
The truth of it sits between us as cold and final as a gravestone. There's no future here, no happy ending for an enforcer and the woman whose life he holds in his hands. There's only the race and whatever comes after—blood or freedom, but never both.
"Mira—"
"Don't." She holds up a hand, stopping me mid-sentence. "Just don't. I can't—I won't let you make this harder than it already is."
She walks away, leaving me alone with the horse and the weight of everything I've destroyed by being born into the wrong family, trained in the wrong skills, marked by the wrong name.
Rusalka nuzzles my shoulder, and I rest my forehead against her neck, breathing in the clean smells of horse and hay and innocence I'll never possess.
"She's right, you know," I whisper to the animal. "I am a monster. But I'm her monster now, and that has to count for something."
Hours pass. Rusalka heads into the barn and I watch Mira lock her stall's outward facing door and flick the lights off.
The track in the distance settles deeper into darkness, windows going black one by one until only the security lights remain.
I should go back to the bunkhouse, should try to sleep before tomorrow's chaos begins.
Instead, I find myself walking toward the main barn, drawn by instincts I don't fully understand.
I slip through the side door, moving quietly through the corridor between stalls. Most of the horses are dozing, but a few lift their heads to track my movement.
I find Mira's boots outside Rusalka's stall—leather worn smooth by years of hard use, still holding the shape of her feet. Inside the stall, she lies curled against the horse's flank, one arm draped over the animal's neck. Both of them sleep, woman and beast breathing in perfect synchronization.
Mira is so peaceful there, probably thinking she is protecting the mare by being present. She doesn't realize they’d just kill her too if they came for Rusalka tonight.
Rusalka's eyes open when she senses my presence, but she doesn't move. Doesn't shift away from the fragile human using her as a pillow. The horse's gaze meets mine across the stall, intelligent and questioning.
"You love her too, don't you?" I whisper to the animal. "You can feel how good she is. How pure."
The horse's ear flicks forward, listening.
"I love her." The words come out raw, torn from someplace deep in my chest that I thought had died years ago. "I love her, and I'm going to lose her. Because love isn't enough when you're what I am."
Mira shifts in her sleep, murmuring something too soft to hear. Rusalka adjusts slightly, careful not to disturb her rest.
"You have to win tomorrow," I tell the horse. "You have to run faster than you've ever run, because if you don't, I lose both of you. And I can't—" My voice breaks, and I have to swallow hard before continuing. "I can't live in a world where she doesn't exist."
I grit my teeth and my jaw locks. The horse watches me with dark, knowing eyes. As if she understands the weight of what I'm asking. As if she knows that tomorrow's race will determine whether love or violence wins in the end.
I stay there until dawn begins to creep across the horizon, watching Mira sleep beside the creature that might be our salvation. Memorizing the peaceful expression on her face, the way her hair falls across her cheek, the gentle rise and fall of her breathing.
Because after tomorrow, I might never see her this peaceful again.
After tomorrow, everything changes.