Epilogue
TAYLOR
Two years later, my daughter speaks better Russian than I do.
This is humiliating for several reasons. The first is that she is two. The second is that she appears to know it.
“Nyet,” Nadia says firmly.
She stands in the middle of the breakfast room wearing one sock, Mikhail’s watch around her wrist, and nothing else below the waist because she has recently decided pants are a form of political oppression.
“Yes,” I tell her.
“Nyet.”
“You need pants.”
She turns toward Mikhail. “Papa.”
It is not a request. It is an appeal to a higher court.
Mikhail lowers his newspaper. He’s already dressed for work in a dark suit, though his tie is still draped over the back of his chair. His reading glasses sit low on his nose.
That still does things to me.
Marriage has apparently not cured stupidity.
“Nadia,” he says in Russian, “listen to your mother.”
Our daughter studies him. Then she walks over and holds up both arms. Mikhail folds immediately. He lifts her into his lap.
“You are undermining me,” I say.
“I told her to listen.”
“You did it while rewarding her.”
“She required comfort.”
“She requires pants.”
Nadia lays her head against his chest and looks at me with open triumph.
Mikhail strokes her hair. “She has had a difficult morning.”
“She stole your watch and peed behind a chair.”
“She was expressing herself.”
I stare at him.
There was a time when Mikhail Korolev terrified ministers, criminals, government officers, and most of Moscow. Now a half-dressed toddler manipulates him before breakfast.
Nikita enters carrying the missing pants. “She left these in the library.”
“Why was she in the library without pants?”
Nikita shrugs. “She is her father’s daughter.”
“I wear pants in the library,” Mikhail says.
“Usually,” I add.
His gaze slides toward me.
Nikita ignores us both and takes Nadia from his arms. Unlike Mikhail, she has no difficulty dressing her. Nadia protests loudly in Russian. Nikita answers in the same language, faster than I can follow.
“What did she say?” I ask.
“That your rules are oppressive,” Mikhail says.
“She said no such thing.”
He folds the newspaper. “She implied it.”
“I understand more Russian than I used to.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“Because you both speak faster when you’re plotting against me.”
Nikita finishes fastening Nadia’s pants and sets her on the floor.
Our daughter runs in circles wildly, her hands out, catastrophic grenades with the pins out.
A guard appears in the doorway at precisely the right moment and catches her beneath the arms. Nadia laughs.
The guard does not. He looks toward Mikhail as though he has accidentally handled an explosive.
“You may put her down,” I say.
He does so carefully. Nadia pats his knee. “Spasibo.”
His expression softens by perhaps half a degree. Then she steals the radio from his belt and runs. He closes his eyes.
The house is still guarded. More than ever, probably.
There are men at every entrance, cameras along the grounds, and enough emergency planning to survive a small invasion.
Mikhail knows Nadia’s location at all times, keeps three pediatricians on call, and once attempted to have a playground professionally assessed for assassination risks.
I stopped that. Mostly.
But the house no longer feels like a prison.
I know which stairs lead where now. I know which rooms belong to Nikita, which doors mean meetings, and which guards will pretend not to notice when I slip into the kitchen after midnight.
I understand the language well enough to know when the staff are gossiping about us.
I understand the rules too. Some exist to keep us alive. Some exist because Mikhail cannot imagine love without preparing for catastrophe. Those are the ones we still fight about.
He has learned to ask more often. I have learned that accepting help does not always mean surrender. Neither lesson came naturally.
Nadia circles the table with the stolen radio. Someone speaks through it. She answers with complete confidence in a mixture of Russian, English, and words she invented herself.
“Give that back,” I tell her.
She runs faster. Mikhail watches her with the helpless awe that has never faded. When she was born, he held her like someone had placed the future directly into his hands. Then she opened her eyes and screamed at him. He fell in love immediately.
“Your daughter is committing theft,” I say.
“Our daughter.”
“Currently yours.”
Mikhail rises. He catches Nadia on her next pass and lifts her beneath one arm. She shrieks with laughter. He returns the radio to the guard. “My apologies.”
The man accepts it solemnly. “It is no problem, Pakhan.”
The title no longer surprises me. It still reminds me. Mikhail is no longer governor. He is, according to my father, a restaurateur. This is technically true.
He owns twelve restaurants now, along with a catering company, two event spaces, a food distribution business, and enough private dining rooms that I have learned not to ask what is being discussed behind most of their doors.
My father believes this was a natural career transition. My father is a very intelligent man in most areas. He also believes Mikhail’s restaurants are successful because Mikhail is unusually good at business. This is also technically true.
My parents moved to Russia fourteen months ago. They were able to be long-distance grandparents for exactly as long as the visa process took, and then they couldn’t stand it anymore.
Mikhail offered them the east wing. I said no. My father said hell fucking no. Mikhail accepted that answer. That may have been the most convincing evidence of personal growth he has ever produced.
Instead, my parents live fifteen minutes away in a house my father insists they purchased themselves despite the fact that I have seen the paperwork and know exactly how creative Mikhail can become when someone tries to refuse his money.
Dad runs one of the restaurants. Not for Mikhail, according to Dad.
With Mikhail. This distinction is extremely important to him.
That distinction was his condition for running something that had any connection with Mikhail.
He wanted a kitchen, ownership, and the right to tell Mikhail to get out of it whenever he became annoying.
Mikhail agreed to all three. He even put them in writing.
Dad likes him considerably more now that Mikhail is “out of politics and doing something honest.” I have never asked what he thinks the armed men in the private dining rooms are doing. My mother knows more. She has chosen peace. I respect her for it.
By noon, we are at the restaurant. My father is already shouting at someone in the kitchen when we arrive. I hear him before I see him. “No. No, no, no. That is not enough garlic.”
The chef responds rapidly in Russian.
Dad points at the pan. “I don’t care what you just said. More.”
“You know he cannot understand you,” I tell him when he comes through the swinging doors.
“He understands tone and pointing.”
“Like a dog,” I sigh.
“You said it, not me,” he says, grimacing at the chef. Dad kisses my cheek, then takes Nadia from Mikhail without asking. “There’s my girl.”
“Papa,” Nadia says.
Dad stops. “No. Grandpa.”
“Papa.”
He looks at Mikhail. “She does this to upset me.”
“She is expressing herself,” Mikhail says.
Dad points at him. “You. Kitchen. I want to talk about the fish delivery.”
Mikhail looks at me. I smile sweetly. “Go do restaurant crime.”
My father frowns. “What?”
“Restaurant time,” I say. Mikhail’s mouth twitches.
Viktoriya is already sitting at our usual table near the windows.
She looks almost exactly the same as she did when I first met her, except the suits are more expensive and she wears the exhaustion of someone who works directly for a powerful woman. “Late,” she says.
“I have a toddler.”
“You were late yesterday too.”
“You’re not going to believe this. I had a toddler then too.” I sit across from her. “Where’s your husband?”
“At home.”
“Doing what?”
She shrugs. “Cleaning?”
Dima lasted another six months in the office after everything happened. Then he married Viktoriya and discovered that domestic life suited him considerably better than government administration ever had.
“Well, I might have a new excuse to miss lunch in the future.”
“And what is that, American?” she asks, looking annoyed already.
I shrug, suddenly embarrassed. “I re-enrolled in school. Nadia stopped breastfeeding last month. I figured I’ve run out of excuses.”
“You had a baby. That is not an excuse.”
“Tell that to my transcript.”
Viktoriya smiles and reaches over to rub my arm. “Well, tell your transcript to go easy on you.”
I never meant to quit. Life simply kept happening faster than I could plan around it. A pregnancy. A kidnapping. A birth. Marriage. A move that somehow became permanent.
Then Nadia needed me, and I wanted to be needed. Now she needs me differently. And I want something that belongs to the version of myself who came here before I knew Mikhail existed.
“I’m only doing part-time this semester,” I say.
“That is still doing it. What does Mikhail think?”
“He’s proud of me,” I admit, twisting my ring. “He tries not to make it sound like permission anymore.”
“That is progress.”
“Enormous progress.”
There are some people I thought would be here who are not. Anya and I never had a fight. Sometimes I wish we had. She moved to St. Petersburg not long after Nadia was born. We exchanged messages for a while. Then fewer. Birthdays. A photograph at Christmas. Once, a picture of a cat she adopted.
She never told me she could not live beside the choices I made. She didn’t have to. Some friendships end because someone does something unforgivable. Others simply reach a road one person cannot follow.
I miss her. I also understand. The restaurant door opens, and the hostess straightens immediately.
So does one of the security men near the entrance. “Governor Dobrovaa.”
I look up. Olga walks inside wearing a dark coat, two government security officers several steps behind her.
I still have not gotten used to that. Governor. Mikhail’s old title belongs to her now. She wears it better than he did. Mostly because she actually enjoys governing.
Nadia sees her before anyone can announce her properly. “Olga!” The entire restaurant hears it. The hostess looks faintly horrified. Olga does not.
Nadia escapes my father and runs directly into her legs. Olga’s expression softens instantly, and she bends to pick her up. “You are getting too big.”
Nadia answers rapidly in Russian. Olga looks at me. “She says her father is buying her a horse.”
“Well, he isn’t.”
Mikhail appears from the kitchen beside my father. “I said we would discuss it.”
“Well, unsay it.”
Mikhail approaches Olga, and for a moment, the two of them simply look at one another. Then he inclines his head. “Governor.”
Olga looks at his suit. “Restaurateur.”
I cover my mouth. Mikhail looks offended.
My father appears beside him. “Governor. Your usual?”
The governor of Moscow Oblast smiles at my father. “Please.”
My father disappears toward the kitchen. He believes Olga and Mikhail know one another because they used to work together. This is also technically true.
No one has ever explained to him that Olga once watched Mikhail strangle a man to death with his own tie and then allowed that man’s body to disappear into an ambulance while I stood in a puddle of amniotic fluid.
There are some things families do not need to discuss over lunch.
Olga sits beside Viktoriya. She accepts the menu even though she orders the same thing every time.
There are no folders. No government documents. No threats about arrests. That chapter ended a long time ago.
Mikhail gave Olga everything he promised after Orlov died.
Accounts. Contractors. Officials. Judges.
Police. Enough names to keep investigators busy for nearly two years.
Then he resigned. He never went back. And somehow, somewhere between dismantling a criminal network and rebuilding half a government, Olga became governor.
Lunch lasts two hours. My mother joins us halfway through because she has been shopping with Nikita, which apparently requires four bags and two drivers.
Dima arrives twenty minutes later because Viktoriya forgot he was meeting us.
My father comes out of the kitchen repeatedly to complain that everyone is letting their food get cold.
At one point Nadia is sitting in Olga’s lap, feeding pieces of bread to Dima while Nikita and my mother argue about whether she needs a sweater.
Mikhail watches all of it from beside me. His hand rests on my thigh beneath the table. There was a time when I thought loving him meant disappearing into his life.
Instead, somehow, his life grew large enough to hold mine. Not perfectly. We had to make some things from scratch.
Nothing about a life with Mikhail could ever be perfect.
He is still controlling. Dangerous. Capable of making decisions that would horrify most reasonable people. And we still choose each other, and that makes the world bearable.
That evening, we go home. I put Nadia to bed after three stories, two songs, and a prolonged negotiation over whether she is allowed to sleep holding a wooden horse with one sharp leg.
She is not. Nikita wins that argument by replacing it with Mikhail’s old baby blanket.
By eleven, the house is quiet.
I sit in the library reading through course registration information when my phone vibrates on the nightstand. A file has appeared. No message. Only an audio attachment.
For a moment, I am twenty-three again, alone in a strange country, opening a recording at midnight without understanding that it will alter the course of my life.
The first file contained my voice. This one contains his. I press play. There is a brief silence.
Then Mikhail’s voice fills the dark. Low. Rough. Private.
“Come to bed, kotik. I miss my wife.”
I delete it and stand up. He still gives orders like he expects the world to obey.
Fortunately for him, sometimes I choose to.
The End.
Dear precious reader, thank you for reading Cruel Demands!
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