Chapter 6
Ksenia
Iwoke with the rabbit under my chin.
Morning light filled the sitting room—pale November sun through curtains I did not remember closing.
The greenhouse pieces sat on the coffee table where I had left them, glue dried cloudy on the fourth wall.
The macaroni bowl had been taken. The hot chocolate mug had been taken.
The blanket was still around my shoulders.
Then the night arrived. All of it. Every second.
The door opening. Daniil in the doorway. The lamp behind him. My hands clutching the rabbit against my chest and the look on his face—not shock, not disgust, not amusement. Recognition. He had known what he was looking at.
He had made me macaroni.
I sat up fast. The blanket fell to my waist. I grabbed the rabbit and shoved it under the pillow, then stood and looked down at myself. Lavender pajamas. Pink and cream striped socks. I looked like a woman who had been caught in the middle of something she would rather die than explain.
I stripped in the bathroom. I showered until the water turned cold. I dried my hair with the dryer I had packed, not the one Galina had placed in the bathroom for me, because using someone else’s dryer in someone else’s house felt like one concession too many.
I dressed for war.
Black trousers, fitted, high-waisted. A cream silk blouse with a mandarin collar.
A structured blazer in dark charcoal. Heels—the black ones with the narrow toe, the ones Zoe called my “don’t fuck with me” shoes.
I put on makeup. Foundation. Concealer. A red that was almost brown on my mouth.
I swept my hair back and pinned it at the nape.
I looked at myself in the mirror. Polished. Adult. Every seam in place, every button closed, every trace of the woman on the floor with the stuffed rabbit erased.
Then I saw the ring.
A plain band. White gold. It sat on my left hand as though it had always been there, though I had worn it for less than twenty-four hours. I turned my hand. The metal caught the light.
Married.
The word still did not fit. Three days after burying my father, I had stood in the church where Daniil had buried his and let a man I had wanted from a safe distance place a ring on my finger.
I closed my hand around the ring and went downstairs.
The breakfast room occupied the rear of the house, facing the garden.
Morning light came through tall windows and fell across a table set for two.
Daniil sat at the near end, a cup of coffee in front of him, security reports fanned across the place mat.
He wore a dark shirt—charcoal, almost black—with the sleeves rolled to the forearm.
His hair was neat. His jaw was clean-shaven.
He looked like a man who had slept eight hours and risen without effort.
He was infuriatingly handsome. The fact registered before I could stop it. The line of his shoulders beneath the shirt. The way his forearms rested on the table. The quiet authority in the way he held the report—one hand, steady, reading without urgency.
My husband.
He looked up.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
“Did you sleep?”
The question was ordinary. His voice was ordinary. Everything about him was so aggressively, mercilessly ordinary that my hands wanted to shake.
“Yes. Thank you.”
I sat across from him. Galina had set out coffee, toast, butter, jam, sliced fruit. I reached for the coffee and poured it into a cup, adding nothing, holding it between my hands because I needed something to hold.
“I’ve instructed Galina and Pavel that no one enters your suite without your explicit permission,” Daniil said. He turned a page. “That includes me.”
“Thank you.”
“A car will take you to Harbor House at ten. Ilya will accompany you. He’s been briefed on your site protocols.”
“Fine.”
We sat in silence. He read. I drank coffee I could not taste. The garden beyond the windows was still and gray, the last leaves clinging to branches that bent under their own weight.
This went on for four minutes.
He turned another page. He picked up his coffee. He set it down. He did not look at me. He did not glance at my clothes, which screamed competence. He did not search my face for signs of the woman he had seen on the floor.
“Are we going to pretend it didn’t happen?”
The question came out sharper than I intended. The polished, adult version of myself would have waited. Would have measured the moment. Would have found a more elegant way to open the conversation.
The woman who had been caught holding a threadbare rabbit did not have that patience left.
Daniil set down the report. He looked at me. His ice-blue eyes held mine without evasion, without heat, without the particular sharpness that would have given me something to fight against.
“You mean the wedding? Or what happened after?”
I felt the blush spread.
“After.”
He paused for a moment.
“Until you decide otherwise.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is. You decide what this becomes. Not me.”
I pressed my thumb against the rim of the cup. The ceramic was warm. The small pain of the heat kept me anchored.
“How did you recognize it?”
He considered the question. Not because he was deciding whether to answer—because he was deciding how much to answer.
“I have experience with that world.”
The words landed and sat between us. No elaboration. No follow-up. No careful explanation of how or why or with whom. He offered the fact the way he offered the coffee: plainly, without ceremony, and without expecting anything in return.
“You’ve been a Daddy.”
I did not know why I said it in those terms. The directness felt necessary. If he could stand in my doorway and watch me hold a stuffed rabbit, I could say the word.
“Not exactly—but I know those that have. I’ve spent time with Littles. I’m fascinated by the dynamic. The mindset.”
“And you recognized it in me.”
“Yes.”
“Because of the pajamas? The cartoon? The rabbit?”
“Because of all of it. And none of it.” His eyes held mine with fierce attention. “There’s something about you. Separate from all the rest of it.”
I set down the cup. My hands needed to be empty for what came next.
“Do you think I’m weak?”
He did not answer immediately. He leaned back in his chair. The morning light caught the edge of his jaw, the hard line of his nose, the pale color of his eyes.
“I watched you bury your father,” he said.
“I watched you protect your brother at Volna — not with a weapon, with your mind. You stood between two organizations that were ready to tear each other apart and made them listen. You married a stranger three days after putting flowers on your father’s grave, and at your own wedding reception you remembered which captain’s wife had recent surgery and which client needed reassurance about his freight contract. You are the opposite of weak.”
I said nothing.
“But . . . I do think you were tired.”
The word cracked something behind my ribs. Not because it was gentle. Because it was accurate. I had been tired for years. Tired since before Papa died. Tired since before the Voronins.
Daniil continued.
“Wanting submission does not mean you have submitted to me. You wanted something last night. You needed rest, and comfort, and someone to make sure you ate. I did that. It does not give me ownership of the part of yourself you showed me. It does not give me the right to expect it again. And no one will ever hear about it from me.”
He picked up the report.
I stood.
“I’ll be ready at ten.”
He nodded without looking up.
I walked to the door. Three steps from the threshold, I stopped.
“Daniil.”
He raised his head.
I wanted to say thank you. I wanted to say something that matched the weight of what he had done—the macaroni, the armchair across the room, the open door, the silence he had maintained all morning while I rebuilt my walls brick by brick.
I could not find the words. The polished, articulate woman in the charcoal blazer and the “don’t fuck with me” heels could not construct a sentence adequate to the moment.
“I’ll see you this evening,” I said.
“Yes. Looking forward to it.”
Harbor House smelled of wet plaster, sawdust, and the particular mineral tang of standing water in old walls. I breathed it in and felt my spine straighten.
This was my ground.
The scaffold stood in the main gallery, aluminum frames locked together, platforms set at twelve and sixteen feet. Dehumidifiers hummed in the corners. Plastic sheeting covered the baseboards.
Ilya followed me through the entrance. He was built like a refrigerator with a head—broad, silent, and visibly uncomfortable inside a building site. His suit jacket had collected dust within thirty seconds. He kept his hand near his side, where his weapon sat beneath the fabric.
“The scaffold hasn’t been cleared by security,” he said.
“I cleared it. It’s my site.”
“My instructions—”
“Your instructions are to accompany me. Not to inspect my damn scaffolding.”
He gave me a look of begrudging respect.
I found the foreman, Dwayne, near the east wall. He stood with his clipboard and his hard hat and the expression of a man who had been fighting a losing battle with water damage for more than a week.
“Status,” I said.
“Dehumidifiers are pulling moisture. Plaster on the north wall is soft past the first inch — we’ll need to cut back to solid substrate. Floorboards on the second level took the worst of it. Six boards swollen beyond repair. I’ve got replacements ordered but the supplier—”
“I’ll handle the supplier. Show me the floor.”
Zoe appeared from behind the scaffold, wearing paint-splattered overalls, work boots, and earrings shaped like tiny gold screws. Her hair was tied back with a pencil. She held a measuring tape in one hand and a half-eaten granola bar in the other.
“You’re alive,” she said. “You’re married. You’re wearing heels to a construction site.”
“I brought flats.”
“You’re wearing heels.”
“I’ll change.”
“You won’t. Let’s go up.”