18. Katerina
KATERINA
It takes half a day for my father to finally come to see me.
Being brought to my childhood home shouldn’t have come as a shock to me when the SUV finally pulled up to the front gates.
I should have expected as much.
My father, as easily as he’d gotten rid of me the first time, would never want me out of sight now that he knows what I’m capable of.
The moment I stepped onto that stage and opened my mouth, I stopped being his obedient daughter and started being a walking, talking piece of evidence that could unravel everything he’s spent decades building.
So of course he brought me back to the place he has always felt the most in control.
I hear his footsteps before I see him, the same measured tread he’s had since I was small, announcing his arrival like a judge entering a courtroom.
The rhythm never changes, not through birthdays, through reprimands, not even during the nights he came to my room to comfort me through an illness.
It was the sound that used to make me sit up straighter in bed, hoping for a goodnight kiss and settling for whatever positive gesture he happened to be in the mood to give me.
Now I despise it.
The door to my bedroom opens without a knock.
He steps inside, closes it behind him with a soft, final click of the latch and shifts the lock into place. The sound of the bolt sliding home is louder than the blood rushing through my ears. I shift on the edge of my mattress.
There is no concern on his face when he finally turns to look at me. No flicker of the father I once believed existed underneath the politician’s mask, nothing to suggest that he might regret what’s devolved between us.
There is only irritation, thin-lipped and cold. The look he reserves for his aides who have disappointed him, for scandals that have leaked too close to the surface with problems that refuse to stay buried.
He’s still wearing his gala suit and tie—a crisp navy wool, medals gleaming over his breast under the low light.
The collar is slightly askew, the cuff of his right sleeve bearing a small, dark smear of something that looks a lot like dried blood.
There is an old bruise blooming along his jawline, caked with badly applied makeup.
For a long while, we simply stare at each other.
His voice is quiet. “You are a reckless little fool. Do you have any idea what you’ve done? What was your plan? Expose me in front of the entire gala? All for what, to satisfy your grievances with me? You humiliated me. You’ve become a liability, Katerina. What am I supposed to do now?”
Every word is designed to slice exactly where it will hurt most. He dissects me with that same pointed discipline he’s always used for his subordinates, reminding me that I am not his daughter in this moment, I am only a problem.
An embarrassment to the Borchin name.
A crack in the perfect facade he’s spent four decades polishing.
He paces two slow steps closer, his hands fisting at his sides.
“The footage is everywhere. Every major channel has it. Every foreign outlet is sniffing around for more dirt.” His gaze flicks over me, tight with anger.
“Do you understand what this means for me? For the family name? For everything your mother and I sacrificed to build?”
He stops in front of me, close enough that I can smell the faint trace of his cologne still clinging to his ruined clothes.
Anger boils in my veins. “Mom would hate you for what you did to me.”
He flinches, backing away from me.
I shake my head at him. “Blaming me for lashing out is ironic. You destroyed my life to save your own and you have the nerve to call me the problem? You did this to yourself. All I did was expose it.”
His face darkens in a way I’ve never seen before.
Color floods his cheeks, his eyes narrowing to slits.
The careful mask of paternal disappointment cracks open to reveal something raw and furious underneath.
He takes another step forward again, looming over me, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to hold his gaze.
“You ungrateful brat. I gave you everything. And this is how you repay me? By trying to drag me down because of some childish vendetta?” The word is bitten off, hissed between clenched teeth.
His hands twitch at his sides, fingers curling as though muscle memory wants him to strike me and reassert the control he is rapidly losing.
I rise slowly from the edge of the bed until I’m standing. “You sold me. You sat across from Aleksandr Volkov, a man you knew could hurt me, and offered me up to him anyway. Why are you surprised things have turned out this way?”
His breathing is audible, harsh bursts punched through flared nostrils.
He lunges forward, too fast for me to react.
He swings at me. The knuckles of his fist connect hard across my cheekbone before I can pull my arms up to protect myself.
Pain explodes white-hot behind my eyes as my head snaps to the side. Blood floods into my mouth.
My body crumples to the ground, disoriented from the sudden hit. The room spins, my vision swimming as I slowly force myself off the floor and sit upright again. I spit blood onto the carpet between us.
When I’m oriented enough to look up at him, my eyes are burning. “Next time, you'd better kill me.”
He stares at me for a long second, expression blank as though he’s looking at a stranger and not the daughter he raised for twenty-two years. Then he turns, walks to the door, and shuts it behind him.
I swallow more blood that coats my mouth. Whatever fragile thread of fatherhood I still clung to unconsciously snaps. He isn’t my protector anymore. Maybe he never was. All he is now is a man who will break his own child to preserve his power and will still sleep soundly at night afterward.
If he doesn’t have the guts to kill me, he will keep me imprisoned here until one of us dies. I will never leave this house again. Never walk the streets freely or breathe air that isn’t filtered through the vents cut out in the floorboards.
And I will never see Aleksandr again.
That last thought cuts deeper than the punch did.
In the days that follow, I try to reach the staff.
They are the same people who once carried me on their shoulders when I was small, who slipped me extra sweets when my parents weren’t looking, who bandaged my scraped knees and told me stories when nightmares woke me in the middle of the night.
They were my first family in many ways, quiet and steady, always there when the house felt too big and my parents felt too distant while building my father’s military career.
Now they come and go like ghosts.
They deliver trays of food with simple meals like borscht, black bread, boiled potatoes, and tea, setting them on the small table by the window without a word, then come around to collect the empty dishes later.
They change the linens with quick, efficient movements, leaving fresh towels folded on the chair by my bathroom.
Every task is performed with their eyes fixed on the floor, on anything but me.
Whatever my father said to them has them all scared enough to comply.
I can see it in the way their shoulders hunch when they cross the threshold and I try to talk to them.
Their hands tremble slightly when they set down the tray, quickly retreating to the door and disappearing beyond it.
They’ve been threatened—maybe with their jobs, maybe with worse.
In this house, my father’s word is law. Disobedience has always carried hefty consequences.
Still, I try anyway.
It isn’t until one of the kitchen staff’s sons, Ike, comes up to bring me dinner that I finally get a breakthrough.
He’s sixteen, nearing seventeen, lanky in that awkward way boys are when they’ve grown too fast and haven’t quite caught up to their own limbs. His dark hair flops into eyes that are too big for his narrow face, giving him the permanent look of someone startled by the world.
He brings the tray into my room with the same tense body language everyone else has.
When he sets the tray on the small table by the window, he hesitates.
His fingers linger on the edge of the tray a second too long.
Then he glances toward the door, checking for anyone lingering in the hallway before finally lifting his eyes to mine.
I speak before he can turn and flee.
“I know they told you not to talk to me,” I say, keeping my voice quiet the way I used to speak to him when he was little and afraid of thunderstorms. “But I need you to deliver a message to someone for me. That’s it. Then I’ll stop bothering you all.”
His Adam’s apple bobs. “I can’t—”
I clap my hands together in front of me and sink slowly to my knees onto the carpet. If begging is what it takes, I’ll do it until my voice is gone.
“Please, Ike. It’s just a letter. That’s it. No one has to know. I swear.”
He stares at me for a long moment. I see the conflict flash across his face, the boy who once brought me drawings of hedgehogs and proudly showed me his first pocketknife now caught between loyalty to his employer and me.
His father works in the kitchens. His mother cleans the upper floors.
If my father finds out he helped me, they could all lose everything.
After a long, agonizing moment, he nods reluctantly. “Okay. But if anyone sees—”
“They won’t.”
I scramble up from the floor and cross the room to the small writing desk under the window.
There’s a single sheet of cream stationery left in the drawer, embossed with the Borchin crest, and a fountain pen that still has ink in it.
The words come fast, short, no room for subtlety or second-guessing.
Aleks, I’m locked in the east wing. There is an old service tunnel that leads under the house. Comes out at the bottom of the hill. Old storm cellar door. It’s red. -K
I scrawl the address on the front of the folded note, the full street name I remember seeing that first day I was brought to the Volkov estate. Then I fold the paper into a tiny, tight square small enough to hide in a pocket. I press it into Ike’s palm and close his fingers around it.
His hand is warm, callused from helping in the kitchens, trembling just slightly.
“Thank you,” I tell him fiercely, holding his gaze so he can see I mean it with every piece of me. “If this works, if he comes, I’ll make sure you and your parents are safe. I swear it.”
He just nods again, a quick, jerky motion, before slipping the note into the inner pocket of his jacket. Then he’s gone, the door closing softly behind him.
I sit on the edge of the bed, staring at the place where he stood. This may be my last hope. If Ike gets caught or changes his mind and the letter never reaches Aleksandr, I’m finished. My father will keep me here until I break, or until he decides I’m too dangerous to keep alive at all.
But if he succeeds…
I close my eyes and let myself imagine, just for a second, the sound of Aleksandr’s car in the drive.
The low, predatory growl of the engine cutting through the quiet night.
The way the house would go still right before the front doors would burst open.
Then he’d be there, that slow, dangerous smile curling his mouth up that says he’s come to collect what’s his.
I don’t know if he’ll come.
I don’t know even if he still wants me after being exposed so publicly. But I have to cling to the possibility like a lifeline. If Aleksandr Volkov decides to burn the world down for me, then Ramil Borchin won’t just lose what’s left of his reputation.
He’ll lose everything.