Chapter 3
Sofiya
SONG: SEVEN DEVILS BY FLORENCE + THE MACHINE
I stand in front of my bathroom mirror and don't recognize the woman staring back.
This happens almost every day, this moment of dissonance where I see my face and my brain has to catch up with reality.
The features are the same, but the context keeps shifting.
Ten years ago, I was Yelena—a girl with a mother and a future that made sense before someone snatched it all away.
Now I'm Sofiya, a woman whose entire existence is choreographed to move me closer to a single moment.
I splash cold water on my face and watch the droplets cascade down my skin like tiny surrenders.
The water is ice-cold and I shiver. I keep my apartment frigid on purpose .
I read somewhere that cold exposure strengthens resilience, that it conditions the nervous system to stay calm under stress.
Whether that's scientifically true doesn't matter as much as the ritual itself.
Every morning, I wake to cold and force myself to endure it.
Most of my income goes to the electricity bill, but I care nothing for luxury anymore. I lived my first fifteen years drowning in decadent luxury, and what did it get me in the end?
My apartment is small but efficient, where everything serves a single purpose.
The bedroom holds a bed, a nightstand, and a lamp.
The kitchen contains only the bare minimum, a stove, a refrigerator, a counter scarred with use.
There's no television, no art on the walls, no photographs of people or places.
The only space that deviates from this stark aesthetic is my training room, which used to be a second bedroom but now serves as the place where I keep the parts of myself best hidden.
That's where I spend the next two hours.
My training routine is methodical, obsessive, and designed to keep my body in peak condition like a weapon I'm constantly sharpening.
I start with stretching—deep hamstring work, hip openers, shoulder mobility exercises that make my joints crack and pop.
Every muscle group gets attention, gets prepared for what's coming.
My body resists at first, tight from sleep and the stress I carry like a second skeleton, but I push through the resistance until movement becomes fluid instead of forced.
Then comes the cardio, which I hate but need.
I run on a small treadmill meant for standing desks, the kind office workers use to feel better about their health.
The space is cramped, so I have to modify my stride with controlled movements that burn through my calves.
My lungs expand and sweat beads on my skin.
After cardio, I move to strength training with the equipment I've collected over the years, dumbbells, a pull-up bar, which I installed myself , resistance bands in various tensions, and a heavy bag hanging from the ceiling like a body waiting for punishment.
I work my legs with squats and lunges that make my thighs burn.
This is where I rebuilt myself. After the hospital released me, after weeks of healing from broken bones, knife wounds and internal damage that seemed impossible to repair, after I ran away from the foster home with stolen money and determination, I became obsessed with building a body that could never be broken again.
A body that would be strong enough to carry the weight of what it needed to do.
I taught myself to fight through any means I could.
I discovered training videos online and practiced them in bathrooms and closets and empty rooms where no one could see the quiet girl teaching herself violence.
I saved money from shitty jobs that paid under the table and took classes at gyms where no one asked questions about why someone so young came in alone with bruises already forming.
I learned boxing, kickboxing, and most importantly stamina—how to outlast an opponent, how to take a hit and keep moving forward.
I mastered reading an opponent's movements like a second language.
I discovered violence is just another form of communication, and if you study it long enough, you become fluent.
When I turned twenty, I found Matteo, who runs an underground fighting ring in a warehouse that smelled like sweat and desperation.
He didn't ask why a girl who looked like she belonged in college was asking to fight for money.
He just saw someone willing to take punishment and keep moving, and he offered me a spot.
For three years, I fought in that ring. Turns out men will pay a fortune to watch a girl fight grown men, whether she wins or loses, whether she bleeds or makes others bleed.
I learned more in those three years than in any other period of my life.
I learned what it feels like to have your face rearranged by someone's fist, the strange disconnect between the impact and the pain that follows, what a rib breaking sounds like from the inside, that sharp crack that echoes through your chest cavity, and that pain is just information, and if you treat it that way instead of something to fear, it loses its power over you.
Then I became proficient with weapons, adding another layer to my skillset.
Guns, knives, garrotes—anything that could kill or incapacitate became part of my education.
I found trainers in gun ranges and backrooms, people who worked outside the law and understood that knowledge is power and some people need that knowledge for reasons they won't discuss over coffee.
I paid them well with money I'd earned bleeding in rings, and they taught me without judgment.
One particularly helpful group was run by and for women, survivors of domestic violence who understood that sometimes the only way out is through. I still send them money every month, a tithe to the sisterhood of women who refuse to stay broken.
Now, standing at the heavy bag, I throw combinations that have become muscle memory.
The bag swings back on its chain, and I move with it like we're dancing, never letting my feet leave the ground—always maintain contact with the earth, always have a foundation to push off from, always have an exit strategy if things go wrong.
I throw kicks that make the bag shudder.
I throw elbows that would shatter bone. I throw knees that could collapse a ribcage.
Soon I'm sweating so heavily my clothes are soaked through, clinging to my skin.
My hands are wrapped in tape and protected by gloves, but even through all that padding, I can feel each strike vibrating through my wrists and up my arms, a pleasant ache that tells me I'm doing this right.
This is exactly what I want, this feeling of power and control and readiness.
But I also have to be careful not to leave visible marks.
I can't show up to Lush covered in bruises.
That would make Aleksandr ask questions I'm not prepared to answer.
Then comes the weapons work, my favorite part of the routine.
I have knives in several sizes and configurations, each one balanced differently, each one serving a specific purpose.
They're my preferred method of dealing with problems because they're silent and don't require the annoying paperwork that comes with gun ownership.
I practice throwing them at a wooden target mounted in the corner of the room, working on the draw, the release, and the follow-through that makes the difference between a knife that sticks and one that bounces off harmlessly.
I also have a garrote made of piano wire and wooden handles, the most intimate form of killing because it requires you to be close enough to feel death happening, to hear the last desperate gasps, and feel the body go limp in your arms. I've never actually used one on a person, but I've thought about using it on Father more times than I can count.
I've fantasized about the feeling of that wire around his neck, about the moment when recognition floods his eyes and he realizes who I am, about the satisfaction of watching his face as he's forced to accept he's dying because of me, because of what he did to a fifteen-year-old girl he was supposed to protect.
Those fantasies are what keep me going when the training gets too hard, when my body screams for rest, when doubt creeps in about whether I can actually pull this off.
With my routine complete, I move into a long stretching session to cool down properly.
My body shakes with fatigue, muscles trembling from the effort I've just put them through, but I push through it anyway because flexibility prevents injuries and injuries are distractions I can't afford.
Any significant injury would keep me out of work and disrupt the careful positioning I've spent two years building at Lush.
By late afternoon, I'm soaking in a hot bath of Epsom salts, letting my abused muscles recover while my mind continues working.
I think about Father and what I've learned about him through careful observation and patient eavesdropping.
I've pieced together a picture of a man who's aging, becoming more paranoid with each passing year.
I've also learned he married his mistress, whom he apparently already had two children with that he's now made legitimate.
I had no idea I had siblings walking around somewhere, though I always knew Father kept women on the side like most men keep spare change.
I wonder if my half brother, the heir apparent to an empire built on blood and lies, would be opposed to expediting the succession timeline.
Would he help me when he’s old enough if I approached him correctly?
Or would he report me to Father like a good son should?
I think about the moment when I finally get close enough to Father to make my move.
I've played out the scenario thousands of times in my head, maybe tens of thousands, refining it like a choreographer perfecting a dance.
In my head, I have him exactly where I want him, vulnerable and aware and understanding what's about to happen.
In my head, I always win because that's the only ending I can allow myself to imagine.
But reality is messier than fantasy, more complicated than the clean narratives I tell myself.
Reality has variables I can't control, like Volk, who seem to exist outside the normal rules.
Father and Volk have access to resources and experience that most people don't possess.
The uncertainty of what Volk does or doesn't know about me is like an itch I can't scratch, a constant low-level anxiety that never quite goes away.
Feeling restless, I climb out of the bath and find myself standing in front of my mirror again, completing the circle I started this morning. The training is done, and now I can focus on the other part of my daily ritual, the part most would find absurd given how I spend the rest of my time.
I have a skincare routine that would make most people laugh if they knew about it.
I use high-end products, the kind that actually work instead of just promising miracles in pretty packaging.
My skin is part of my armor, part of the disguise, and I take care of my armor the same way I take care of my weapons.
By the evening, I've completed my daily routine, eaten a protein-heavy meal that tastes of nothing but serves its purpose, taken my vitamins like a good girl, and prepared everything I need for work.
Tonight's outfit is simple in concept but calculated in execution—a black skirt, which hugs my curves in ways that feels almost obscene, paired with a teal green corset to bring out the color of my eyes and give my skin an ethereal paleness men seem to find fascinating.
And heels high enough to be seductive but uncomfortable enough to keep me alert despite years of practice.
My makeup is carefully applied to enhance my best features while avoiding the kind of perfection that would make me seem too untouchable, too unapproachable.
I look at myself one more time before leaving the apartment, studying the woman in the mirror with the critical eye of someone who knows she's looking at a costume rather than a person.
I've built her from the ground up, piece by careful piece.
She's not real in any meaningful sense. She's a replica of what a woman my age should be, what men expect her to be, what the world wants from someone who looks like this.
The person underneath—the woman who's spent ten years training and planning and waiting for her moment—is hidden so well sometimes I even forget she exists.
Sometimes I almost believe I'm just Sofiya, a dancer at Lush with a mysterious past and good reflexes and nothing more complicated than that.
If only I could forget I'm actually a ghost, a girl who was supposed to die in the desert, a weapon someone forgot to destroy before it had a chance to learn how to destroy them back.