Chapter 5 #2
I remember dancing for her in the den while she worked her needlepoint at six, maybe seven years old, spinning in circles until the room tilted, showing off some routine from ballet class.
She'd applaud every time, even when dizziness sent me crashing into the side table.
Her hands never stopped moving through the fabric, creating something beautiful from nothing but thread and patience.
"My little dancer," she'd say. "So graceful. "
A lie. I was all sharp elbows and scraped knees, too much energy for my body to contain. But she saw grace in me anyway. Saw the best version I might grow into.
How she braided my hair before school in those early years, before Irina took over.
Stolen moments when Father traveled on business , tension leaving her shoulders the moment his car pulled away.
We'd make cookies together, her hands guiding mine through measuring flour and cracking eggs.
Getting more on myself than in the bowl.
Her laugh when I'd inevitably make a mess—warm, genuine, the sound of a woman who might have been happy in a different life.
"You're just like I was at your age," she'd say, wiping flour from my nose. "Too curious for your own good."
I remember the day everything changed with painful clarity.
The absolute finality of watching her die, of understanding in one terrible moment she was gone forever.
Being pulled from the room by Volk, his hand on my arm the only thing keeping me upright.
The Jeep's storage area, curled into myself while my mind fractured.
Hours of torture under the desert sky—hands that hurt me in ways I didn't know humans could hurt each other.
Voices that laughed at my pain like it was entertainment.
Anatoly's especially, high and delighted, the sound of someone who'd found his calling.
Innocence ripped away in the most brutal ways imaginable, pieces of myself carved off and left bleeding in the sand.
I take a steadying breath and accept the truth I’ve been circling since the beginning.
I accept that I will not survive this revenge.
If I'm lucky, not immediately. But there will be consequences.
An entire Bratva seeking justice for their murdered Pakhan, men loyal to Father who won't get distracted by power struggles, who won't let the opportunity to seize control blind them to the need for vengeance.
Men who will hunt me until they succeed in erasing me from existence the way Father tried to do ten years ago.
This outcome doesn't surprise me. Because this life—lived in hiding, consumed by hate, existing as this damaged and warped version of who I might have been—isn't living.
I'm caught in a holding pattern, suspended between past trauma and future violence.
I'm both prisoner and executioner. At least I will have avenged Momochka.
I think about Volk. About the X beneath his eye that mirrors mine.
About the way he looks at me, like he sees all the broken pieces and recognizes them because they match his own.
About what it might mean that he's kept my secret, that he hasn't exposed me even though doing so would probably earn him favor with Father.
About whether I could actually kill him when the time comes.
The answer should be simple. He drove away that night. Left me bleeding in the desert to die or survive on my own. Saving my life doesn't absolve him of abandoning me to face that choice alone.
But the answer isn't simple anymore. Nothing is.
I set the clipping carefully on my nightstand.
Something I haven't done in years—usually I seal it away immediately before grief can take root and grow into something that might choke out my carefully cultivated rage.
Tonight, I let it stay. Let my eyes find it as I lie down, my body sinking into sheets that smell like lavender detergent. The only softness I allow myself.
Tomorrow I'll put the photograph away. Tomorrow I'll return to being Sofiya. The dancer, the spy, the weapon I've been forging myself into for a decade. All sharp edges and lethal intent.
Tomorrow I'll continue this delicate, dangerous dance with Volk. Move closer to the end game that will destroy us all—him, Father, me. Maybe the entire Bratva if I'm lucky.
The photograph stares back at me from where I’ve set it on the nightstand. I wonder what she would tell me if she could. Would sh want me to spend my life on this crusade for her, or do what she never got the chance to do.
But it's too late for that now. Has been for years.
I've gone too far down this road to turn back.
Invested too much—time, pain, the pieces of myself I've sacrificed on the altar of revenge.
Stopping now would mean all of it was for nothing.
So tomorrow I'll wake up and be Sofiya again.
Put on my armor of makeup and attitude. Go to the gym and punish my body until it remembers what it's for, not pleasure or comfort, but precision. Violence wrapped in grace.
Tomorrow I'll go back to the club and dance and wait for Volk to appear again, knowing every moment with him makes this harder.
Every touch, every word, every loaded glance—they're all cracks in my resolve.
Small fissures that might one day become a complete break.
The tears slow, eventually stopping, and I lie in the darkness of my apartment with its cheap furniture and cheaper walls, listening to the neighbors fighting two doors down.
The distant wail of sirens. The sound of a city that never sleeps.