ELENA
It’s one of my allowed weekly outings. Escorted, but I have another reason for needing this one today. I keep that reason folded small and tight inside me.
The black SUV stops outside a bakery row off Tverskaya, and the guards get out before I do. One man steps ahead to clear the short walk, and two close in beside me, shaved heads, dark coats, wires at their collars, faces set in that dead-house way I’m starting to hate.
I’m wearing a cream sweaterdress under a camel coat, brown heels, and oversized sunglasses because I didn’t sleep again and my eyes show it.
My hair is pinned into a knot that took effort I resented, and my mouth still knows how to look calm when I need it to.
From a distance, I probably look composed. Up close, I’m tired enough to snap.
“Bakery first,” I say, heading for the short steps before they redirect me.
“Bakery first,” one repeats into his mic. I roll my eyes and keep walking. People look twice because they always have, and today they look a third time because armed men are walking beside me.
Two steps from the bakery, I change course and head for the dress shop at the corner because a lavender floral dress on the mannequin catches me right in the chest. The guards stop with me, murmur into their mics, then shift as one and follow.
One drops half a step behind my left shoulder.
One moves ahead and checks the door. The third hangs off to my right, close enough to block and far enough to pretend he isn’t.
We go in like a small tactical unit assigned to neutralize knitwear.
Inside, a lone saleswoman looks up from behind the counter. Her face does a quick, human thing, concern first, then calculation, then the smile she puts on for rent and survival. A tall woman in sunglasses with three goons behind her isn’t normal morning traffic.
“Dobry den’, Madam,” she says.
I nod once and slide my sunglasses up into my hair. “The lavender dress on the mannequin,” I say, then glance at my escorts. “Before they scare off your morning business.”
She blinks once, then nods quickly and comes around the counter, smoothing her apron with both hands. A younger assistant lifts the dress off the mannequin and brings it over carefully.
“It’ll suit your skin tone beautifully,” the owner says, putting on her sales voice now that she’s found it.
Soft fabric, small faded flowers, a fitted waist, sleeves with room to move, a skirt that would let me breathe and still feel like myself. I run my fingers over the fabric once, then hand it back.
“Pack it.”
Then she shows me another one. Dark silk, expensive without shouting, the kind of deep blue-black that throws color into my eyes when I hold it up. I stare at it longer than I mean to.
“Pack this one.”
She wraps it in crisp tissue, slides it into a heavy paper bag with ribbon handles.
“Matching earrings, perhaps?”
“No.”
I leave annoyed, because the guard by the door has checked his watch twice and the one near the mirrors keeps tracking every hand that comes within three feet of me.
I don’t get to linger near the silks or hold colors against my skin.
I don’t get to drift through the racks until something feels right.
I point, pay, and walk out with armed men.
I step back onto the pavement with the dress bag in my hand, and the clinic sign catches my eye across the lane. I saw it last time, pretended I hadn’t, and remembered every word. Women’s health. Basic scans. Blood work.
The guard nearest me turns at once. “What is it?”
I press one hand to my head and stop near the curb.
“Headache,” I say, pressing my fingers to my temple. “That shop smelled of mothballs and perfume. I feel sick.”
His eyes move over my face. “We can take you back to the car.”
“No.” I swallow hard and make myself look embarrassed instead of scared. “There’s a clinic right there. I need five minutes.”
The men exchange looks, and one murmurs into his mic without using Maksim’s name. I hear “clinic” and “nausea,” then the smallest pause.
“Five minutes,” the guard says.
“Fine.”
He escorts me across the lane and up the narrow stairwell while the other two stay near the entrance with my dress bags.
A woman behind the desk looks from me to the man at my shoulder, and her face tightens.
“I need a doctor,” I say. “I’m dizzy and nauseous.”
The guard steps in. “Quick check.”
The receptionist looks at him, then me. “He waits outside.”
His eyes cut to the receptionist, then he steps back.
A nurse takes me inside, and the door shuts between us.
The doctor is a woman in her fifties with clipped gray hair and tired eyes. She asks when my last cycle was, and I answer with my hands locked together in my lap. She runs the test first, then orders a quick ultrasound because my dates put me close to seven weeks.
I lie back on the paper-covered table and stare at the ceiling while she works. The room is hot, my mouth is dry, and the guard is somewhere outside.
She presses the probe low on my stomach and turns the screen toward herself first.
Then she turns the screen toward me and points to a tiny flicker.
“You’re measuring close to seven weeks,” she says.
The doctor says something gently, but I don’t catch all of it. My eyes stay on the screen, and my hand curls around the edge of the paper beneath me.
“Heartbeat,” the doctor says, pointing with one careful finger.
I ask for a printout.
“A keepsake,” I say, and I laugh once because it sounds foolish and dangerous with a guard waiting outside the door.
The doctor looks at me for a second, then prints the scan with basic instructions beneath it. Folic acid, food warnings, call for bleeding, severe pain, fever, fainting, or anything that feels wrong. She hands it over without comment.
“If anyone asks,” I say, “this was a routine check. Fatigue and nausea. Nothing urgent.”
Her eyes flick once toward the door.
“Please.”
She nods, once. I open the clinic paper. It has week-by-week baby-size images printed down one side.
I look at the tiny scan. “It looks like a pea.”
The doctor’s mouth softens. She reaches for a pen and holds it out. “Write that down.”
I take the pen and add one line under the scan.
Seven weeks. A sweet pea.
Then I fold the printout and slide it into my bag. I pull my sweater down, then run a hand over my face and fix my mouth before I stand.
When I step back into the hallway, my shoulders are set, my voice is level.
“Just something for the nausea,” I say and start for the stairs before the guard can ask more.
I go to the bakery from the clinic because pastry gives me an excuse to buy time.
The guards follow me in, close enough to make the girl behind the counter stop chewing her gum for half a second.
I order the chocolate date square, an almond roll, honey cake, and coffee because buying too much looks less suspicious than standing around doing nothing.
While she packs everything, I keep scanning for a break.
It comes fast.
A boy in a school jacket rushes past with coffee in one hand and a paper bag in the other, then clips my shoulder hard enough to splash coffee across my sleeve.
“Sorry,” he blurts.
The guards move on him at once.
“Back off,” one snaps.
The boy blinks. “I said sorry.”
“Don’t talk.”
People turn. Perfect.
I turn toward the napkin stand, pull the clinic printout from my bag, and fold it twice. The coffee spill gives me cover. I slide the paper under the loose lining inside my handbag, then turn back wiping my sleeve.
“For God’s sake,” I say. “It was coffee, not an assassination attempt.”
Coming out of the bakery, I hear it.
A man in line asks the staff girl by the bread rack if I’m somebody famous.
Some politician’s daughter, maybe. He says it lightly, just making talk while he points at a poppyseed bun glazed enough to shine.
The girl glances toward the door where my guards are already shifting around me, catches the insignia at one man’s cuff, and lowers her voice badly.
“No,” she says. “Volkov.”
The man goes still. “That girl?”
The girl shrugs one shoulder, eager and uneasy at once. “People are saying she’s the listed key.”
I keep walking.
My escorts follow me back to the car with the same plastic faces. By the time I get in, my stomach has started rolling.
The car ride back feels too long and too close. My guards sit where they always do, one in front, one beside the driver, one half turned toward me. Nobody speaks. Good. If one of them tries, I may bite.
By the time we reach the estate, my skin feels too tight.
The SUV rolls through the open gates and up the drive without stopping until the front steps come into view.
One guard gets out first while we’re still moving slowly, then another, both of them peeling off into position before my door opens.
When I step out, the house is already watching.
Two men by the entrance. One near the side path.
Maksim standing above them all under the covered passage just past the short run of stone steps, one hand in his coat pocket.
I take the steps without hurrying.
The older guard from the bakery run falls in beside me for half a second too long. “You handled town well, Miss,” he says. “Better than most women do with this kind of arrangement.”
I stop.
He says it, then goes still like he’s stepped past his line. His face doesn’t change, but the words stick.
I turn my head. “Did I ask for your review?”
His mouth flattens.
That’s when I hear Maksim move above us.
I’m wrung out and close to coming apart, so I climb the stairs fast, let myself into my room, lock the door, and throw the shopping bags onto the bed without opening them.
The paper dress bag lands on its side. The bakery box slides into the duvet.
I kick off one shoe near the chair, the other near the wardrobe, and lie down across the coverlet fully dressed.
For a minute, I stare at the ceiling.
Then I fold in on myself.
I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around my middle, making myself smaller until there’s nowhere else to go. I hate the position. I’m a grown woman, a law student, and someone who spent years getting her act together, but none of that helps.
I want my mother so badly, I can barely breathe.
She used to buy me white dresses with gold stitching at the collar and pin flowers into my hair with careful fingers. She’d tilt my face up between her hands and smile like I was something bright. You’ll rob a prince’s heart, Solnyshko.
Wonderful.
There’s a knock.
“Go away,” I say into the blanket.
“No,” Mrs. Wentworth says through the door.
I close my eyes. Five minutes later, she knocks again.
I drag myself up, wipe at my face, and open the door with my teeth clenched.
She takes one look at me and steps inside without asking. I’m too tired to hold the line, and she’s the closest thing in this house to comfort. I grab her and cry.
Her arms come around me at once. “There, there,” she says, one hand rubbing my back in slow circles. “Let it out, then.”
I hate how much that helps.
She settles me on the bed, presses tissues into my hand, brings water from the carafe, and waits until I drink. Then she sets things right quietly, shoes paired, bag set upright, curtain drawn halfway against the sun.
“Rest,” she says.
“It’s the middle of the day.”
“Yes,” she says, as if that means nothing at all. “Rest anyway.”
After she leaves, I tell myself this is hormones, nerves, bad sleep, all the stupid physical business I’m still trying to manage without letting anyone notice. The excuse barely matters. My eyes grow heavy anyway.
I mean to lie there for a minute.
Instead, I drift off with my dress still on and my face turned toward the wall.
A dull thud jerks me awake. Then another.
Something heavier hits wood outside my room, followed by a broken cry and the scrape of shoes on polished floor.
I sit up too fast, head swimming, and stumble to the door.
I pull it open to find two members of house staff frozen at the far end of the corridor and a maid with both hands clamped over her mouth.
The guard from the drive is on all fours outside my door. Blood runs from his mouth onto the runner. One of his front teeth is gone. Maybe two. Tears stream down his face, not from shame. From pain. His hands shake so badly he can barely hold himself up.
Maksim stands over him in shirtsleeves, breathing hard, one hand flexing at his side like he’s deciding whether to hit him again.
“Beg your pardon,” he says.
The man spits blood onto the carpet. “Pakhan, I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Maksim steps closer. The guard folds in before he even touches him.
His molars set. “Then get your act together and learn faster,” he says. “You do not speak to her that way. You do not weigh her up. One outing does not make you familiar.”
The guard nods too fast. Maksim grabs his jaw, hard enough to make him choke.
“Beg your pardon,” he says again.
The words come out wet and ruined. “Beg your pardon, Miss.”
I stand there gripping the door so hard my fingers hurt.
It isn’t the blood that gets to me. It’s how clean he is with it. How close this sits to the surface. How fast he goes from controlled to this without losing his footing once.
For the next week, I shut down.
I eat because food gets put in front of me.
I drink because Mrs. Wentworth gives me that look until I do.
I sleep badly, talk less, and move through the house by habit more than will.
If I hear Maksim in the corridor, I take another route.
If he sends for me to work, I go, sit, do what needs doing, and leave without looking at him longer than I have to.
Even Leonid notices. Mrs. Wentworth hears me sigh by the window often enough to know something is wrong, but she’s too English to pry when I give her nothing to work with.
A week passes. Nothing changes. Everything does.
Then there’s a knock.
“Yes?”
Maksim steps in with a tray balanced in both hands. He shuts the door with his foot, crosses to the sitting area, and places the tray on the table by the sofa, careful not to disturb anything on it. Then he lifts the silver covers one at a time.
Clear broth with dill, still steaming. Toast buttered edge to edge and cut into neat fingers. A baked apple split open and glazed with honey. Plain rice, soft and warm, the kind meant to settle more than satisfy.
It’s not grand. It’s exactly the kind of food I’ve been able to keep down lately, which means he noticed and remembered without saying a word.
“You brought dinner.”
“You weren’t coming down.”
I look at him, then at the tray again, and something in my chest goes unsteady for a reason that has nothing to do with nausea.
“I’m not hungry.”
His eyes stay on me. “You are.”
I push up too fast, and the floor tilts. I make it to the bathroom, slam the door, lock it, and barely reach the sink before I’m sick.
A second later, his fist hits the wood.
“Elena,” he calls.
I close my eyes, throat burning.
Damn it. He heard.