Chapter 2 #2
"Your tea, Miss Anya," she said, setting it on the corner of my desk. Chamomile, the one she brought when she knew I was stressed.
"Thank you, Elena," I said, my fingers pausing over the keyboard. I noticed a slight tremor in her hands as she arranged the cup and saucer. She'd been looking pale for weeks, moving more slowly through the cavernous house. "Are you feeling all right today?"
Elena looked up, startled. I wasn't supposed to notice her, wasn't supposed to see her as anything more than a function of the household. "I am well, miss. Just a long week."
"You should rest when you can," I said quietly, meeting her eyes for a brief moment. "Your grandchildren are visiting this weekend, aren't they? You'll need your energy for them."
A flicker of surprise, then genuine warmth, crossed her features. "Yes, miss. They are. Thank you for remembering." She curtsied, a gesture so ingrained it was automatic, and slipped out of the room as quietly as she'd entered.
I took a sip of the tea, the warmth a small comfort against the cold dread of my father's demands.
It was a small thing, remembering a housekeeper's grandchildren.
But in a house where people were treated as assets, small acknowledgments of humanity were the only currency that mattered.
I turned back to my analysis, the quiet kindness a temporary shield against the brutality I was about to document.
My fingers flew across the keyboard, producing lies that looked like truth. Twenty-seven pages complete in forty-two minutes. The analysis my father wanted, wrapped in probability matrices and behavioral models that would make any intelligence officer weep with envy.
The Volkovs: Three brothers bound by shared trauma and mutual dependence.
Alexei, the eldest, the Pakhan—controlled to the point of pathology.
Every decision calculated, every move strategic.
Weakness: his protective instincts toward his younger brothers.
Threat to them would destabilize his judgment.
Dmitry, the middle, the enforcer—brutal but predictable.
Driven by rage he barely contained. Weakness: his temper made him easy to manipulate.
Ivan, the youngest, the strategist—brilliant but lonely.
Weakness: his isolation made him vulnerable to unexpected variables.
I'd identified fourteen pressure points my father could exploit.
Their legitimate construction business that laundered their money.
The federal investigation hovering at their periphery.
The death of their grandmother that had fractured something in Ivan—intelligence suggested he blamed himself, though the details were unclear.
I typed faster. The Kozlovs were easier to predict—brutal, straightforward, driven by greed more than strategy.
They'd use the chaos to grab territory, demand a bigger cut of the port operations, threaten violence if they didn't get it.
Sergei Kozlov had the strategic intelligence of a rabid dog but the same dangerous unpredictability.
He'd killed his own uncle over a perceived slight.
My father would need to either buy him off or eliminate him.
The Sokolovs wanted stability. Old guard bratva who remembered when the families worked together instead of tearing each other apart. They'd push for peace, for traditional solutions. Marriage alliances. Territory agreements. The kinds of arrangements that had kept the peace for
The Beskharovs remained wild cards. New players, hungry, willing to take risks the established families wouldn't. They'd been quiet since the bombing, which meant they were planning something.
Or they were responsible for it. The analysis suggested 34% probability they'd planted the bomb to destabilize the other families.
My fingers moved with mechanical precision while my mind counted down to freedom. Each paragraph brought me closer to 2:17 PM. Each perfectly crafted sentence was another step toward the maintenance gate.
"What?"
My father's voice drifted up through the air vent.
His office sat directly below my bedroom—a design flaw in the hundred-year-old mansion that had become my greatest intelligence asset.
I'd learned to decode his entire operation through that vent.
Learned which guards were loyal and which could be bribed.
Learned when shipments arrived and when bodies disappeared.
He was on the phone, speaking rapid Russian. The words were muffled but clear enough. I stopped typing. Held my breath.
"Da, the Council meeting. Noon. All five families will be there."
Silence. The other person speaking.
"The Volkovs want blood for the bombing. But I—" He paused. “Interesting. They requested that?”
More silence.
“Yes. Of course. She is. She’s a virgin.”
The words hit like physical blows. I couldn't breathe.
A virgin? Was he talking about me?
“Of course. She’ll be there. Goodbye.”
I bit down on my hand. Hard. Tasted copper as my teeth broke skin. The pain cut through the panic just enough to keep me conscious. I counted prime numbers in Russian and English simultaneously.
I looked at the go-bag hidden in the air vent. Looked at my laptop showing the nearly complete analysis. Looked at my hands, bleeding where I'd bitten down to stop the screaming trapped in my throat.
The door opened without warning.
My father filled the doorway, his gray suit immaculate, his silver hair precisely styled, his pale blue eyes assessing me with the same cold calculation he'd use on a spreadsheet. Behind him stood Yevgeny and Maksim—the guards whose shift change created my escape window.
"You're attending the Council meeting." Not a question. Never a question with him.
My hand throbbed where I'd bitten it. Blood had dripped onto my keyboard—three drops between the G and H keys. I watched them instead of looking at my father.
"Wear the red dress," he continued. "The one I bought last month. Be ready in thirty minutes."
The red Valentino. Four thousand dollars of silk and sophisticated tailoring that his assistant had selected, had delivered, had hung in my closet like a prophecy. I'd never worn it. Never wanted to. It was the kind of dress you wore to be seen, to be displayed, to be evaluated.
To be sold.
My world tilted off its axis. Every calculation I'd made, every pattern I'd identified, every variable I'd controlled—none of it mattered if I wasn't here at 2:17 PM.
If I was sitting in some Council meeting in Manhattan while Yevgeny took his cigarette break and Maksim processed the shift change and my window opened and closed without me.
"Father." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "I don't—I'm not prepared. I don't know the protocol."
He raised one eyebrow. Such a small gesture, but I'd learned to read his micro-expressions like other people read books. That particular eyebrow meant: you're wasting my time with obvious lies.
"I'll embarrass you," I tried again. "The other families don't know me. I've never been presented formally. Showing up now, without context—"
"You'll sit. You'll be silent. You'll smile when spoken to." Each sentence fell like a gavel.
"My analysis," I said desperately. "I haven't finished—there are three more pages on the Volkov positions. You said thirty pages minimum. I'm only at twenty-eight. You need this information before the meeting—"
"Email it to me in twenty minutes. Whatever you have."
"But the accuracy—you said accuracy was everything. I need more time to verify the probability calculations. To cross-reference the intelligence. To—"
"Twenty minutes. Then get dressed."
He turned to leave.
"Father." The word cracked in my throat. "Please. The analysis is complex. If I rush it, if I make mistakes, it could affect your negotiations. Give me another hour. Let me finish it properly. Then—"
He paused in the doorway but didn't turn around. "Anya. This is important." His voice carried the particular tone that meant the conversation was over. "Don't disappoint me."
The door closed. The lock clicked—electronic, unpickable, controlled from the security office downstairs. I heard it engage with the specific whir that meant it wouldn't open again until someone with the code released it. Usually that didn't matter. I had nowhere to go anyway.
Today it meant everything.
I stared at the closed door. Calculated probabilities with a mind that wouldn't stop running scenarios even when they all led to the same conclusion.
Option 1: Refuse to go. Probability of success: 0%. He'd have the guards carry me to the car. I'd arrive at the Council meeting looking hysteric, reinforcing whatever narrative he'd already crafted about my anxiety making me "difficult."
Option 2: Go to the meeting and refuse the marriage. Probability of success: 0%. Bratva daughters didn't refuse. They were traded, not asked. My consent was irrelevant.
Option 3: Try to escape before we left. The go-bag was twelve feet away in the air vent. But the door was locked. The windows were reinforced glass with sensors. Even if I could get out of this room, there were seventeen guards between here and the maintenance gate.
Option 4: Create a medical emergency. I could induce a severe panic attack, hyperventilate until I passed out. But my father had seen my panic attacks before. He'd load me in the car unconscious if necessary.
The truth was, I had no options at all.
The red dress fit perfectly. Of course it did. The neckline was modest—bratva wives didn't display flesh to anyone but their husbands—but the cut was calculated to show exactly what was being offered. Young. Healthy. Viable for breeding.
Was I being offered? Was that what was happening?
My body? My life? My virginity?
I stood before my mirror, watching my hands shake as they worked the zipper.
The woman in the reflection looked like a stranger.
Looked like someone who'd given up. Dark hair that needed to be styled instead of hidden in a bun.
Pale skin that hadn't seen enough sun because I'd lived my entire life behind glass.
My fingers fumbled with the braiding. French braid, the kind my mother had taught me before her heart gave out when I was eight. She'd stood behind me at this same mirror, her fingers gentle in my hair, humming something in Russian I could never quite remember.
I wondered if she'd stood in front of a mirror like this once, preparing herself to be traded to my father. If she'd calculated her own escape routes and found them all blocked. If she'd pressed her fingernails into her palms to keep from screaming, just like her daughter did now.
The braid was crooked. I undid it, started over.
My hands steadier the second time. Muscle memory taking over where conscious thought failed.
Three strands, over and under, pulling tight enough to hurt.
The pain helped. Gave me something to focus on besides the bus to Montreal that would leave without Emma Graves.
Makeup next. I wasn't skilled at it—had never been allowed to practice, never had anywhere to go that required it.
Foundation to cover the shadows under my eyes from three years of bad sleep.
Concealer over the place on my hand where I'd bitten down hard enough to break skin.
Lipstick in a shade called "Russian Red" that someone in marketing probably thought was clever.
Behind me, through the bedroom window, I could see the maintenance gate. Through it, the path I'd memorized so completely I could navigate it with my eyes closed.
Now, the path was closed.
The intercom crackled. "Car is ready."
My father's driver. Which meant my father was already outside, impatient, checking his phone while he waited for his commodity to present herself.
I took one last look at my room. The place I'd spent twenty-six years learning to be useful.
Bookshelves lined three walls—seven languages worth of literature I'd absorbed like oxygen.
Russian classics my grandmother had shipped from Moscow.
French poetry I'd memorized to keep my mind sharp.
German philosophy that made sense of a senseless world.
The complete works of Jane Austen, pages soft from reading, margins full of my mother's notes I'd traced with my fingers a thousand times.
For some reason, I had the feeling i’d never see it again.
I walked downstairs on legs that felt disconnected from my body. The marble was cold under my feet—I'd forgotten shoes. Didn't matter. There would be shoes in the car. My father thought of everything.
Viktor waited by the black Mercedes SUV, still checking his phone. He looked up when I approached, his pale eyes scanning me with the same assessment he'd use on a profit-and-loss statement. The dress, the hair, the makeup—all meeting specifications. His asset was properly packaged for market.
He nodded once. Approval. The closest thing to affection I'd ever gotten from him.
"Get in."
I climbed into the back seat. The leather was cold despite the morning sun. Two guards flanked me—not Yevgeny or Maksim, they were staying to maintain the regular rotation. These were Viktor's personal security. Ex-military. The kind who'd return fire in a heartbeat and never ask questions.
The door closed with the heavy thunk of German engineering. The locks engaged automatically—electronic, like everything in my father's world. No handles on the inside of the back doors. Another security feature. Another cage.
Through the tinted window, I watched the Morozov estate disappear. The maintenance gate was visible for exactly three seconds as we turned onto the main road.
The SUV turned onto Brighton Beach Avenue, heading toward Manhattan. Toward the Council meeting. Through the tinted glass, Brooklyn blurred past. People walking freely. Choosing their own directions. Taking the subway wherever they wanted. Living lives where they were people instead of property.
The bus to Montreal would leave without Emma Graves. The hostel reservation would go unclaimed. The forged ID would yellow in the air vent, a monument to the person I'd almost become.
I was Anya Morozova, brilliant daughter of Viktor Morozov, worth more as a treaty than as a person.
I was a chess piece. And chess pieces got played.