6. Ana
ANA
It’s been hours. The windows are covered and the lights are dimmed. I sit on the edge of the kitchen counter, knees drawn up, a mug in my hand more for heat than for the tea inside.
We're in my apartment, and Dominik ordered pelmeni over the phone a while back. Delivery came without question. The courier dropped the bags on the doorstep and didn’t wait around. We ate in silence. Half the food is still in the brown paper bags on the table.
I glance at the street through a crack in the blinds. The street holds still. Just parked cars and shuttered stores.
Dominik stands near the door, back straight, arms crossed. His voice is calm when he speaks, but not relaxed.
“We need to lie low for a few days,” he says. “Until I see where this is heading, who’s actually moving pieces, and who’s just making noise.”
I tilt my head. “You think someone’s bluffing?” I throw up my hands, face scrunched. “Maybe it’s fallout. Rage. Even jealousy.”
“Not jealousy,” Dominik quickly says with a certainty that heats my face, but I don’t comment.
“And not bluffing,” he continues. “They’re testing us. Measuring reactions. I need to know who’s still playing before I commit us to a direction.”
I set the mug down. “You have something in mind?”
He nods once. “A few places. There’s a safehouse in Ligovsky Prospekt. Above a defunct dentist’s office. Nobody asks questions there. I know the guy who keeps the keys.”
“It’s inside the city.”
“There’s a dacha past Sestroretsk,” he says. “Abandoned by a friend of a friend when he got out. Still has power. Secluded, one road in. Easier to defend. We might try that one too.”
“So we keep moving?”
“That seems safe, for now.”
Too many thoughts crowd in at once. “Anyone watching those places?”
“No one with a badge or a motive,” he says. “I’ve got people who’ll sweep the perimeter. The kind who don’t announce themselves. They owe me, and they know better than to talk.”
I search his face. “You trust them?”
“I trust what they want,” he says. “That’s usually safer.”
He walks to the table, opens a folded map, and lays it flat. His finger taps a few key points. The city, the roads, the cracks between things.
We choose the first location and start packing before the sun rises.
I stop thinking in terms of days once we move into the safehouse above the dentist’s office. A week later, we shift again, this time to the dacha in the country.
It settles into routine. Time now moves in windows. How long we can stay. How fast we have to leave. How much we say before someone hears too much.
The beds change almost every week. Some are stiff. Some warm. Some barely more than a cot with a clean sheet. No two kitchens smell the same. No neighborhood feels familiar long enough to trust.
Dominik picks the places. He knows how to make things look lived in just enough to pass. And with him, time seems to slow down just enough to be bearable.
When it’s just us, it doesn’t matter where we are.
He fucks me like the world’s ending. Always controlled at first, hands roaming slow and heavy, mouth dragging down my spine as he pulls my hips up and spreads me open across unfamiliar sheets.
Then it changes—his grip tightens, his voice drops, and he fucks me hard, the kind of hard that makes me claw at the mattress and bite my own arm to keep from making a sound.
Some nights, I ride him slowly until he groans my name like it’s breaking him open, and other times, he flips me over and holds me down with one hand between my shoulder blades while he drives into me from behind, deep and ruthless, until I come shaking, teeth clenched around his name.
There’s a condom in his wallet. A lock on the door. Always the rough growl against my throat when he finishes. And no matter how many places we pass through, I never forget how it feels when he looks down at me and says, “We’re not done.”
Outside, the world keeps moving like we’re not hiding inside it.
New faces every morning. Kids kicking balls in alleyways.
Maids hustling for side work. They look at me once, then look away like they don’t care.
But people always notice. They notice when the pattern breaks. And we’ve become the break.
Dominik doesn’t stay with me in every safehouse. But someone always brings groceries, no matter where we land. Milk, bread, sometimes paper bags with newspapers or magazines. Tissue rolls and soap.
They drop it outside and vanish. I’ve tried to keep a tab on who comes and goes, but they’re very clever with being careful.
Sometimes, I see closed faces around me, silent, watching. I force myself not to run with it. But the next time Dominik shows up, I ask.
“Who are they?” I say, not letting it sound like a question.
“My people,” he says as he looks at me.
I frown at him. “Your people?”
“They’re my responsibility.” He pauses at the door handle, fingers still on the panel. “All of them. That includes you.”
It’d be reasonable after all that’s passed between us, and yet, something in me snaps tight.
“You’re watching me?” I say, and the words scrape on the way out. “Me in a cage isn’t enough?”
He turns to the panel by the door, checking the feeds and locks.
I stand there for a long second, breathing slow and steady, because if I move, I’ll break something.
“What would you have done, were you in my place?” he finally murmurs, and I don’t have a reply to that.
That night, he holds me close. “The council’s split,” he says, stroking my hair as he leans me back against the kitchen counter. “One faction wants you quickly. They think you’re holding something they need. The other wants to wait.”
“For what?” I ask, lifting my face to kiss him lightly on the lips.
He looks at me for a long second. “To see who reaches for you first.”
I don’t like the way that lands in my body.
“And you?”
“I’m already accounted for,” he replies. He traces a finger down my neck.
That’s not an answer. I get up from the counter.
I see now that widowhood doesn’t mean what I thought it did. It’s not a shield. It’s an excuse. A temporary condition for men to decide how to share what’s left.
I ask him about going back to the mansion. “I want to go back. Just for a few things. The mansion—” I say.
“No.”
“It’s mine too,” I insist.
“Not anymore,” Dominik replies. “You think going back there gives you control, but it doesn’t. It makes you visible, predictable. The council will use it against you.”
He says it like he’s defending a choice, and he doesn’t explain further. “And Markov’s phone?” I ask.
Dominik doesn’t answer right away. Then, he says flatly, “If you have it, turn it off. If you don’t, forget it ever rang.”
We do all this to stay ahead of the council. To buy time.
The visit happens on a gray afternoon when the rain comes down hard and sudden, soaking the streets before anyone has time to react. Wind drives it sideways, scattering leaves and grit, and the cold turns biting.
I wait for Dominik in a small cafe, tucked behind a column and a dying plant, out of sight unless you’re looking. The owner keeps a back room for us. We don’t share a roof anymore. We rotate instead in places like this. He says two targets are harder to track than one.
Across the street, the park’s thinning out. Mothers rush their kids home, coats pulled tight, hands locked around small wrists. They move toward warmth. Toward kitchens and radiators and a door that’ll always open for them.
I’ve forgotten what that feels like.
Dominik is late, late enough that it makes me nervous. The cafe is unremarkable, with glass walls and narrow tables, clinging to the sidewalk edge where few people pass and fewer bother to look. I thought that would make it safer.
Now I’m not so sure. The door opens and closes more often than I like.
Wet coats driven inside by the storm brush past each other.
Cups clink. Someone laughs too loudly near the counter.
I keep my face neutral and my posture relaxed, but I track reflections in the glass, movements outside, the rhythm of footsteps.
I’m already reaching for the burner when the door opens again. My face lifts. Dominik, finally. But it’s not him. The man who enters is older, coat damp, his bony face all angles in the wrong way.
He spots me, and I stare into eyes that are glassy, unreadable, set deep under thinning brows. He looks away, unhurried, then turns back. His mouth spreads into a smile that never touches his eyes. He locks his gaze on me like he always knew where I’d be.
And I realize, too late, that the table I chose doesn’t hide me. It makes me easy to trap.
He walks in slowly and carefully, then sits across from me without introducing himself. He doesn’t need to. His suit is expensive without being flashy. His hands are clean. His eyes don’t wander.
An elder. I know him. He’s Mikhail Petrovich Orlov, old power, the traditional kind.
From where he sits, he lifts a finger. A waitress appears almost immediately.
“One tea,” he says without raising his voice, “and one syrniki for madam.”
I flush red despite myself.
He doesn’t reach for his tea when it arrives and takes his time. Then he lifts the cup and sips slowly. His eyes never leave mine while he drinks.
“You’ve been difficult to reach,” he finally says.
“I’ve been busy.”
“Grieving,” he says as he studies me like I’m a document he’s already read. “Relocating. Reconsidering.”
“I’m not sure what you want,” I say, straining to keep my expression flat.
“Oh, I think you are.” He laughs humorlessly.
He folds his hands on the table. “Tradition allows a widow time, but not independence. Your husband’s position left gaps and debts, and there are expectations attached to both.”
“My husband is dead,” I say.
“Yes.” He stirs his tea and places the spoon on the saucer.
He measures his words before he adds, “And that makes you relevant.”
There it is.