29. Sofia
SOFIA
I leave the music room before Damir can change his mind about the doctor and carry me there himself.
He lets me go, which is still new enough to feel suspicious.
He watches me walk out, his eyes on my back, his face unreadable in that way that means he’s thinking five things at once and deciding which one I’m allowed to see.
I don’t ask what any of them are. I already have enough things in my head.
The piano stays behind me in the bright room, black and polished and ridiculous.
Mine, he said. As if a piano can fix a prison. As if it doesn’t matter that some part of me wanted to touch every key just because he bought it for me.
I hate that part of me.
I hate that it’s getting stronger.
I walk toward my room to change into something simpler for the doctor.
The dress I’m wearing covers my throat, but it feels too neat, too deliberate, too much like a costume meant to hide that last night happened.
The hallway is quiet, though not empty. Guards stand at their usual posts.
One of the maids passes me with fresh towels and gives me a quick, careful smile.
Everyone is careful now. That’s worse than being hated.
I turn into the west corridor, and I’m almost at my door when I hear voices from the sitting room nearby.
I should keep walking. I know that.
Instead, I stop.
The sitting room door is not fully closed. They are not shouting, but the house carries sound well when people think no one is listening.
“She was gone for three days,” Irina says. “She was in a club with another man, apparently safe enough to walk around. I don’t understand why he’s trusting her so blindly.”
“Keep your voice down,” Grigori says.
“I am keeping my voice down.”
“You are not keeping your judgment down.”
There’s a pause.
Kirill says, “Judgment is not the problem. The problem is that we still don’t know what she was doing there.”
My hand tightens around the edge of my sleeve.
Irina answers before Grigori can. “Exactly. What was she doing? Why did she not call? Why did she not send word? Damir tore half the city apart, and she was sitting inside a club.”
“She was scared,” Grigori says.
“She is always scared of something when it suits her.”
I stand very still.
Grigori’s voice hardens. “Enough.”
“No,” Irina says, though softer now. “You all like her because she says things and makes Damir act human for five minutes, but none of you are asking what happens if this was a game to her.”
“It was not a game.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Irina.”
“No, listen to me. She probably had something to do with Dmitri showing up at that shopping gallery, whether you want to say it aloud or not. She ran during the fight. Now Damir brings her back like she’s the wounded party in all of it.”
Kirill says, “Irina has a point.”
Grigori turns on him. I can hear it in his voice. “You too?”
“I’m not saying she deserved anything. I’m saying we need the truth. Damir is not thinking clearly with her. He hasn’t been thinking clearly since the church. And after all, she’s an Antonov, so how much can we really trust her?”
The words go straight under my ribs.
Because they’re not entirely wrong.
I did invite Dmitri. I did run. I did hide at Arman’s club while Damir searched for me. I let Anya lie. I let Arman take the blame for part of the truth. I let Marina apologize to me when she had done nothing wrong.
I can tell myself I was trapped.
I can tell myself I was frightened.
Both are true. They are not the whole truth.
I also wanted control so badly that I created a disaster and then stood in the wreckage pretending I had only been dragged there.
Irina speaks again, quieter now. “Damir is dangerous when he grieves. We have all seen it. I don’t want to watch him become that again because of a woman he barely knows.”
“He knows her,” Grigori says.
“Does he? Or does he want to save her because he could not save Elena?”
That silence is worse than the words.
I step back before I hear anything else. I turn and walk the rest of the way to my room without looking back.
Inside, I close the door carefully. I don’t slam it. I don’t lean against it and slide down like a girl in a bad film. I walk to the wardrobe, open it, and stare at the clothes Damir bought me.
I pick a cream blouse with a high collar and a long dark skirt. My hands move slower than usual. I change without looking too long in the mirror. When I finally do look, I barely recognize myself. I look composed. Pale, but composed. The marks on my neck are hidden unless someone knows to look.
I know to look. So does Damir.
There is a knock.
I turn. “Come in.”
Damir enters without his jacket, phone in hand. “What happened?”
I hate him for seeing it so quickly.
“Nothing.”
“Sofia.”
“I changed.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I pull the collar of my blouse a little higher. “Are we going to the doctor or not?”
His eyes narrow. For a second, I think he will push. Then his gaze moves over my face, and something in him adjusts. He chooses not to.
That’s becoming harder to fight than his orders.
“Yes,” he says. “We are going.”
The clinic is on the lower level of the house, though calling it a clinic makes it sound smaller than it is.
There’s a proper examination room, locked medicine cabinets, clean steel instruments, a narrow bed, and the cold smell of disinfectant.
Damir’s world has a private version of everything normal people use publicly: doctors, cars, guards, rules, punishment.
The doctor is a woman this time. She’s in her forties, with dark hair pulled back and a calm face that doesn’t change when Damir enters behind me like an approaching threat.
“Mrs. Volodina,” she says. “I’m Dr. Morozova.”
I almost correct her. Not because it’s wrong, but because I am still not used to it.
“Sofia is fine,” I say.
Damir looks at the doctor. “Check her throat.”
Dr. Morozova looks at me, not him. “May I?”
That alone makes me like her more.
“Yes.”
Damir stays near the wall while she asks basic questions. Dizziness. Difficulty swallowing. Pain when breathing. Loss of consciousness. Nausea. Headache. I answer as plainly as I can. Damir listens to every word.
Then his phone vibrates. He ignores it.
It vibrates again. He looks down, and his face changes.
I see the moment duty gets its hand around his throat.
He looks at me. “I need five minutes.”
I nod too quickly. “Okay.”
He looks at the doctor. “No one else comes in.”
“Understood,” she says.
He leaves. The door closes behind him.
I breathe easier. I hate that too.
Dr. Morozova waits until his footsteps are gone before she turns back to me. Her voice lowers, still professional. “I need you to unbutton the collar.”
I do. Cool air touches my skin.
She examines my neck with careful fingers, not pressing too hard, asking before each movement. When her thumb pauses near the side of my throat, her expression changes. It’s small, controlled, but I see it.
“This was from pressure?” she asks.
“Yes.”
I think of the man from the club before I can stop myself.
I tried to push it out of my head, to turn it into something smaller than it was.
A drunk creep. A bad moment. A man who got too close and paid for it.
But that’s not what happened. His arm locked around my throat with purpose.
He pulled me back like he knew exactly how to cut off my air before I could scream.
For a few seconds, I wasn’t being harassed. I was being killed.
And why?
That’s the part I can’t get past. He wasn’t just some idiot at the bar. It was planned, or at least practiced. I can’t tell Damir that, because if I do, he will tear the city open before we know enough, and part of me is still ashamed that all of this began because I ran.
“An arm?”
I nod.
She glances toward the closed door. Then back at me.
“Did he do this?” The question is direct.
For a second, I don’t understand. Then I do, and my stomach twists.
“No,” I say at once. “Not Damir.”
Her eyes stay on mine. “You can answer honestly here.”
“I am.”
“Has he ever put his hands on your throat or restricted your breathing?”
“No.” The answer comes quickly because it’s true.
Damir has done many things wrong. He has ordered, controlled, hidden, decided, and taken over my life as if force is a language everyone should understand.
But he didn’t do this.
“He didn’t hurt me,” I say. “A man at the club did.”
The doctor nods, still watching me carefully. “All right.”
She continues the examination. My throat is tender, but nothing appears broken. She checks my pupils, my blood pressure, my oxygen, my breathing. Then she asks about the fight at the gallery, about the last few days, whether I was drugged, whether I lost time, whether I ate properly.
The answer to that last one is embarrassing.
“Not much,” I admit.
“Any vomiting?”
“No.”
“Nausea?”
“A little.”
“Dizziness?”
“Sometimes.”
“Abdominal pain?”
“No.”
“Last menstrual period?”
I stop.
The question is ordinary. It should be easy.
It’s not.
I think back. Wedding. Church. Damir. Elena’s clothes. Running. Club. Last night. The days before all of that blur together under stress, but then the date comes to me with a cold little click.
I tell her.
Dr. Morozova pauses. “How regular are your cycles?”
“Usually regular.”
She doesn’t react dramatically. She simply makes a note. “I will run a quick test along with the rest.”
My mouth goes dry. “Test?”
“Routine,” she says.
It’s not routine. Not the way she says it.
I sit on the examination bed while she takes blood and urine samples. My hands are cold. I keep looking at the door, expecting Damir to come back at any moment, but he doesn’t.
The doctor returns after a few minutes with a different expression.
“Sofia,” she says.
I already know before she says it.
Maybe my body knows first. Maybe some part of me had known since the question about my period and had simply refused to stand near the thought.
“You’re pregnant,” she says.
My hand goes to my abdomen before I can stop it.
Pregnant. The word doesn’t fit anywhere.
“That’s not possible,” I say.
Dr. Morozova’s face softens slightly. “The test is positive. We will confirm with blood work and an ultrasound when appropriate, but the initial result is clear.”
I stare at her. “How far?”
“Very early. We will estimate more accurately after blood levels and dates.”
Very early.
My body goes hot, then cold.
I’m pregnant. With Damir’s child.
The door opens.
I jerk my hand away from my stomach.
Mikhail steps in, then stops when he sees the doctor’s face and mine. His expression becomes carefully blank. “Sorry,” he says. “Damir had to leave for an urgent matter.”
I stare at him.
“He asked me to stay close,” Mikhail continues. “He would not have left otherwise.”
I nod.
I should ask what happened. I should be worried. I should be angry that Damir promised we would talk, promised the doctor would check me and nothing else, promised without promising that he would not disappear again, and then he left anyway.
Instead, all I feel at first is relief.
Because he’s gone. Because I don’t have to look at him while the doctor’s words are still ringing in my ears. Because I have a few minutes, maybe an hour, maybe less, before my life changes again in a way I can’t take back.
“Okay,” I say.
My voice sounds normal. Too normal.
Mikhail looks at me more closely. “Are you all right?”
I almost laugh.
Instead, I nod again.
“Yes,” I say, touching my belly. “I’ll be alright.”