11. Zoya
ZOYA
I wake to gray light filtering through the hotel room's single window.
My body aches in places I forgot existed, and for a moment I lie still, parsing through what happened last night.
Maksim's mouth on my throat. His hands mapping my skin.
The way he looked at me afterward—focused, hungry, almost reverent.
The sheets smell like him, but he left before the sun rose. Cedar and cigarettes and something darker underneath. I bury my face in the pillow and inhale, then immediately hate myself for it. This is how women lose themselves. This is how they disappear.
The room feels too small now. The walls press closer than they did yesterday, and I can't shake the feeling that everything has shifted while I slept.
My reflection in the bathroom mirror shows the evidence—a faint bruise on my collarbone where his teeth grazed, hair still tangled from his fingers, lips swollen and dark.
I touch the mark on my throat and feel heat coil low in my stomach. The memory of his hands on my skin, the way he whispered my name against my ear. The way he held me afterward, careful and deliberate, like I was breakable.
I splash cold water on my face and try to wash away the wanting. It doesn't work.
I pull on my clothes and step into the Moscow morning, needing air that doesn't carry his scent. The city sprawls before me, gray and endless, but I feel disconnected from it all. Every step I take feels deliberate, planned, like I'm walking toward something I can't name.
The city moves around me in its usual rhythm.
Vendors setting up their stalls, commuters hurrying toward the metro, the ever-present hum of traffic.
A woman sells flowers from a cart near the corner, her weathered hands arranging roses and carnations.
Two men in business suits argue over coffee outside a café.
But I feel disconnected from it all, replaying every word he said, every touch, every promise he made without actually promising anything.
The way he looked at me when I opened the door.
The way his eyes tracked my movements as I poured wine. The way he spoke my name...
Even thinking it makes my pulse quicken.
He wants me. That much was clear. But want and safety are different things, and I've learned not to confuse them.
Men want many things. They rarely protect what they claim to desire.
And I know he's sucking me in, wanting me to give my brother up.
Because that's the next move, right? Say he wants to marry me, then ask if my brother is coming to the wedding to give me away.
And then what happens? They kill Damir, who blames me for drawing him out, and what do they do to me next? Am I really so foolish as to go along with this?
But then I wonder if saying yes might just be what I need. I give in to him, do what he wants, then ask him to protect Damir...
I walk past the old church on Sokolnicheskaya, its golden domes gleaming in the weak sunlight. An elderly woman crosses herself as she passes, her lips moving in silent prayer. I wonder what she's asking for. Protection, maybe. Or forgiveness.
Damir's phone stays silent in my pocket. He hasn’t reached out. The absence gnaws at me as I walk the familiar streets toward the track. Twelve days now since he vanished, and each hour that passes makes his warning echo louder in my head.
You need to walk away from this. Now.
But walking away means abandoning him, and I can't do that. Not when he's the only family I have left. Not when he's the only person who's ever tried to protect me from the world we were born into.
I think about the night our father disappeared.
I was twelve, Damir was seventeen. We waited for him to come home from work, dinner growing cold on the table.
He never came. Mother spent three days calling hospitals, police stations, anyone who would listen.
Then she stopped calling. She stopped everything.
Damir stepped up. He always stepped up. He got work at the track, started bringing home money. He never told me where it came from, but I knew. I've always known. The world we live in doesn't offer many choices, and we've made ours.
I stop at a payphone two blocks from work. The number from his notebook is burned into my memory—one of the drop contacts he made me memorize when I was sixteen. Back then, it felt like a game. Secret codes and hidden messages. Now it feels like survival.
The phone booth smells like urine and the glass is cracked, spider-webbing across the surface like ice. I dial with steady fingers, though my heart hammers against my ribs.
One ring. Two. Three.
"Da?"
The voice is unfamiliar, but the response tells me everything. Someone is still watching. Someone is still listening. The network is intact.
"Tell him his sister needs to talk," I say, using the code phrase Damir taught me years ago. "Tell him the books don't balance."
The line goes dead.
I hang up and continue walking, my pulse hammering in my throat. If the message gets through, Damir will know I'm looking for him. If it doesn't... then I'll have to push Maksim harder. I'll have to trust that whatever he's offering is real.
The track comes into view, its concrete facade as unwelcoming as always. Gray walls, small windows, the kind of building designed to keep people in rather than welcome them. I've worked here for four years, and it still feels like a prison.
I slip through the employee entrance and head for the break room, needing coffee before I face the day's numbers. The hallways are narrow, painted institutional beige, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. My footsteps echo in the empty corridors.
Yana Volkova intercepts me before I reach the machine.
She's younger than me, maybe twenty-three, with bleached hair and too much makeup.
Her lipstick is the color of fresh blood, her nails filed to sharp points.
We've worked together for two years, but we're not friends.
We're not enemies, either. We're just two women trying to survive in a world that doesn't particularly care if we do.
"Zoya." She glances around the empty break room and steps closer. Her perfume is too sweet, cloying. "We need to talk."
I pour coffee into a chipped mug and add sugar. The liquid is bitter, burnt from sitting too long on the burner. "About what?"
"About the man who's been sniffing around you."
My hand freezes on the sugar dispenser. The granules scatter across the counter, white against the stained surface. "What man?"
"Tall. Dark hair. Expensive suit. Looks like he could break someone's neck with his bare hands." She leans against the counter, her voice dropping to a whisper. "I've seen him before, Zoya. He's not some ordinary suitor looking to take you to dinner."
I sip my coffee and meet her eyes. The taste is harsh, familiar. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't play stupid. It doesn't suit you." She crosses her arms, her bangles jangling. "That's Maksim Vetrov. Rolan's brother. He's Bratva, and he's dangerous."
The name punches me in the chest, but I keep my expression neutral. "You're imagining things."
"Am I? Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you're in way over your head.
" She straightens, her tone softening slightly.
"Look, I don't know what kind of trouble you're in, but whatever it is, he's not going to help you out of it.
Men like him don't rescue girls like us. They collect them."
The words ring true, but I push them away. "Thanks for the warning."
"That's it? That's all you're going to say?"
"What else do you want me to say?"
She shakes her head, disappointment flickering across her features. "Nothing. Forget I said anything."
She leaves me alone in the break room, but her words cling to my thoughts as I make my way to my desk, which sits in the corner of the main office, partially hidden behind a filing cabinet. The chair is uncomfortable, the desk surface scratched and worn.
I settle into my chair and open the first ledger of the day. Numbers have always been my refuge—clean, logical, predictable. They tell stories without lies, reveal truths without emotion. But today they blur together as my mind wanders to last night.
To the way Maksim's hands felt on my skin. To the way he looked at me afterward, possessive and focused and almost reverent.
The numbers swim before my eyes. Bets placed, money exchanged, percentages calculated. All of it illegal, all of it dangerous. But it's the world I know. The world I understand.
Damir's warning echoes in my head. You need to walk away from this. Now.
But then I remember the heat of Maksim's mouth on my throat. The way his fingers traced my spine. The way he held me afterward, like I was breakable.
I've never felt safe with any man in my life. Not really. Not completely. My father vanished when I needed him most. The men who came after were users, takers, men who saw opportunity in a young girl's desperation.
But with Maksim, for those few hours, I felt protected. Wanted. Cherished, even.
The idea of marrying him should terrify me. It should send me running in the opposite direction. Marriage in our world isn't about love. It's about power, control, ownership. But instead, it settles somewhere low in my stomach, warm and secret and unnamed.
Maybe he's lying about his intentions. Maybe I'm lying to myself about mine. But part of me wants to see how far he'll go to keep me close. Part of me wants to find out what happens when a man like him decides he wants a woman like me.
Part of me wants to let him try.
I close the ledger and stare out the window at the city beyond.
Gray buildings rise toward a gray sky, endless and unchanging.
Somewhere out there, Damir is hiding. Somewhere out there, Maksim is planning his next move.
And somewhere in between, I'm trying to figure out which one of them is going to save me.
Or destroy me.
The phone in my pocket stays silent, but I keep checking it anyway. Waiting for a message that might never come. Waiting for answers that might not exist.
Waiting for a choice that might already be made.
But as I sit here, surrounded by the evidence of other people's risks and losses, I realize I've already decided. I've already chosen. The moment I let Maksim into my apartment, into my bed, into my thoughts, I chose him.
Now I just have to live with the consequences.