Iskra
It was the same every morning. The rustle of him gathering his clothes in the dark. The soft thud of his shoes. Then the click of my bedroom door as it snapped shut behind him, and the silence that followed—the kind that was somehow louder than his presence had been.
I had seen his bedroom exactly once, on the first day I arrived, when I needed something to wear and Radovan had pointed me east with the expression of a man who had not been briefed on this specific scenario.
The days had begun to move strangely. Too slow inside the house, too fast when I measured them against what I was losing.
My life had contracted to the dimensions of this estate—the garden perimeter, the west wing, the kitchen when I was feeling reckless, and the Pakhan with his cock on a schedule that was his to set and mine to accommodate.
Fine.
I was getting something out of it. I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise at this hour of the morning, alone in the dark with pillows shoved under my hips.
But the shine of novelty was beginning to dim. And when it dimmed the prenuptial agreement came back into focus—all eleven clauses of it, clear and legally binding.
What was at stake. What was for sale.
One son.
That was all I needed to give him. One male child and the clause structure shifted in my favour—enough money to go somewhere, to start something, to become a person again rather than a function.
He could try to prevent the divorce if he decided he wanted to keep me, but I had been thinking about that particular problem for weeks and I had the beginning of a contingency in place.
There were possibilities. I just couldn’t see all of them yet.
For now I couldn’t predict the Pakhan or the future, so I lay in the dark with the pillows doing their job and waited for his fastest sperm to reach one of my eggs.
I reached for my phone to play music that would help me get back to sleep.
Something on the nightstand caught the light.
I turned my phone torch on.
Three cards. Fanned out neatly on the polished surface as though they had been placed there deliberately—which of course they had. Nothing in this house happened without deliberation.
Platinum. Gold. Black.
Mrs I Dragunov.
Credit cards. Three of them, in a name I was still getting used to.
I picked up the black one and turned it over.
This wasn’t in the agreement.
With a sigh, I put it back.
I turned the torch off and tapped the screen to find my playlist. The soft instrumental music began to play. I tucked my phone beneath my pillow and closed my eyes.
I didn’t allow my thoughts to rest on my family.
I was here in this bed because of them.
Instead I began to inhale and exhale long deep breaths.
Focused on the beat from the speakers.
And blocked everyone out.
??
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I tossed a peanut at Radovan’s head and watched it bounce off his forehead. He blinked. He didn’t move.
“That has to be at least fifty points,” I said, cracking open another shell.
Olya tutted from the other side of the kitchen, where she was wiping down the counter with the focused displeasure of a woman who had not signed up for this.
“Look at the mess you are making,” she grumbled.
“I’ll clean it up.” I closed one eye and lined up my next shot. “I’m bored.”
The peanut bounced off Radovan’s hair and disappeared somewhere behind him.
He turned. The look on his face was the specific expression of a man reconsidering his career choices. Then he picked up his post and moved to stand in the doorway instead, placing himself just far enough away to be technically out of range.
I cracked open another shell and considered the distance.
“Argh! That hurt—someone get the first aid kit!” I screamed.
Radovan spun and ran back into the kitchen.
The peanut was fired mid-stride.
Left cheek.
I stood up and cheered for myself.
He stopped. Turned slowly. His jaw was clenched tight, and his right eye began to twitch.
“I have a gun,” he said.
He left.
I gave it thirty seconds before I walked to the hallway.
“Spartak!” I called out. “I need a hand with something.”
His footsteps approached with the reluctance of someone who had heard everything from the next room and knew exactly what kind of hand was going to be required.
I settled back onto my stool and began cracking shells, lining the peanuts up in a neat row along the counter.
New target incoming.
Spartak stood beside the door and I tossed him a peanut. He grabbed it mid-air and ate it. At least he was normal.
My phone buzzed on the counter.
Vadim: Stop tormenting my men. Or else.
Radovan was a dirty fucking tattletale.
Every single time. Every single time he ran straight to the Pakhan.
Didn’t they have a no-snitching policy in the vor?
Me: I’m locked up twenty-four hours a day. What else am I supposed to do?
Vadim: Who said you can’t leave the house? I left your cards beside the bed.
I could leave?
The cards.
Vadim: I have to go. If you need to go out tell Radovan.
Me: Thanks.
I put the phone down and looked toward the doorway where Spartak stood waiting for another peanut.
“Could you please tell Radovan that I need to go out in thirty minutes?”
Radovan was blissfully unaware of what was about to happen to his afternoon.
I was going to drag him all over the city today.
But first, I had some peanuts to sweep up.
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I glanced behind me to see both men trailing at a respectful distance, their expressions conveying the specific suffering of people who had dressed for security work and ended up on a four-hour window shopping circuit.
The plan in my head had been solid. High-end shops. Pretty things. Spend his money with the focused enthusiasm of a woman who had been locked in a mansion for weeks and had three credit cards with her name on them.
The reality was that my frugal, miserly soul simply could not part with money — even money that wasn’t mine. Every price tag I turned over made something in me recoil on principle.
So I window shopped. Four hours of it, pressing my nose to glass and admiring things I had no intention of buying, stopping only for food, which I did pay for — on the black card, because that felt like the least I could do.
Radovan looked as though he had lost the will to live. Even Spartak, who had entered the day with considerably more goodwill toward me, was beginning to droop at the edges.
On the way home I asked to stop by the river.
The water was dark and moving fast with the thaw, carrying the last of the winter ice in grey fragments toward wherever the river went from here. The cold air came off it sharp and clean and I stood at the bank for a moment and just breathed.
“Let’s do this again tomorrow,” I told them as we walked the path.
“Please,” Radovan said. “I am begging you. Go back to using me as target practice.”
“Too late, snitch,” I muttered.
The walk back was brisk and the cold worked its way into my lungs in the way that outdoor cold does—not the dead chill of the house but something alive and moving.
The change of scenery had done me a world of good.
More than I had expected, if I was honest.