Iskra
My walk of shame was approximately ten metres—from my bedroom to the kitchen and back again.
I slammed the door in Tau’s face.
He said nothing. He had the specific quality of silence that suggested he was composing his thoughts rather than having none.
I didn’t want his thoughts.
I was raging.
He thought he was so clever—removing the lock from my door at some point between that night and this morning. Came and went as he pleased. My room, my bed, my body apparently still on the same terms as the contract that I had told him to take and file somewhere anatomically challenging.
No.
I snatched my phone from the bed.
Me: DO NOT FUCKING TOUCH ME UNTIL YOU GET YOUR DISEASED DICK TESTED.
The message bubbles appeared immediately.
I began to pace.
Vadim: Fine.
I stared at the phone.
What was happening?
I thought I had gotten him off my back. Told him where to put his obligations. Watched the anger flash across his face at breakfast and called it delicious. Named my son. Started planning the headstone. Assembled my odd little family around me within the remit he allowed.
Yet here I was. Back at the beginning. Only somehow worse off.
I stomped to the door and yanked it open.
“I need a gun,” I told Tau.
“Nyet,” he said.
Nothing else. Just a single disapproving eyebrow raised in the air like an African king passing judgement.
“Fuck you, too,” I snapped and slammed the door in his face.
Again.
I eyed my closet.
Within it were shoeboxes full of cash. Payment for services rendered. Monthly stipend. Birth bonuses never claimed. Money that had been accumulating in the dark while everything else fell apart.
I began to pace. Slow and steady.
What would Madame Popova do?
Think, Iskra. Think.
I can’t kill him. Too many people would come after me. The brotherhood. Konstantin. Tau, possibly, depending on which side of his personal interest that fell on.
But killing wasn’t the only option.
An idea began to settle. Quiet and specific and entirely workable.
I didn’t need to kill anyone.
A knock at the door.
“Are we going to the graveyard?” Tau asked.
The headstone had been fitted. I needed to see Makari.
“Da,” I said.
Then I stuck both middle fingers up at the door and moved them speedily up and down before I got caught.
Childish for a twenty-five-year-old woman with a degree, a closet full of cash and a serial killer as a saint.
I didn’t care. It made me feel better.
??
??
??
Radovan drove. Tau sat beside him.
I ignored them both. Arms crossed, eyes on the window, the city moving past without registering.
I could feel Tau’s eyes on me every so often. I resisted the urge to stick my middle finger up at him again. Even though I had done it behind a closed door not an hour ago and it had helped considerably.
The moment the car slowed and turned through the graveyard gates, the anger dissipated. The tension with it. This wasn’t the place for it. This wasn’t the time.
Radovan parked and stepped out to open my door.
“You don’t need a gun to hurt someone,” Tau said quietly.
I nodded without looking at him and climbed out.
Their footsteps followed at a distance behind me.
I saw the headstone before I was close enough to read it. Polished black marble catching the light. Small. Right-sized for what it marked.
I smiled as I drew closer.
A small engraved teddy bear on one side. A cross on the other.
Makari Kozlov.
Beloved son of Iskra Natalya Kozlova.
Taken too soon.
Until we meet again.
The date in smaller print at the base. I had asked for that specifically—I didn’t want to see it glaring up at me every time. Stupid, really. The date was already etched into everything. My body knew it before my mind did. It was the right choice because this seemed to hurt less.
“It suits him,” Radovan murmured from somewhere behind me. “Makari.”
I smiled at the tiny grave and crouched down.
Someone passed me the flowerpot.
Siberian Squill. A flowering plant that would come back every spring — small blue flowers pushing through the soil year after year whether anyone remembered to tend them or not.
Small blue flowers for my boy.
I took my time. The men shuffled around me and said nothing and let me have it.
I felt drained by the time I got back into the car. The distinct emptiness of having done something that needed doing and finding it both exactly right and nowhere near enough.
Harmed by everyone who was supposed to love me.
Just like Makari Kozlov.
I rested my head against the cool glass.
But the same way the silent pain of not knowing what had happened to Makari had plagued me until Vadim saw fit to converse with me—now another question had settled in its place. Heavier, somehow, for arriving so soon after the grave.
Could I be pregnant again?
I could stall all I wanted about the STI test. Manufacture delays.
But he would return regardless.
With a vengeance.
??
??
??
I retreated to my room.
Hid away, really.
The question gnawed at me.
I had found Makari.
But what would I do if I became pregnant again?
I twisted the ring on my finger. The pale yellow diamond surrounded by the smaller white ones. The slim gold band that was meaningless.
One day later he came.
Handed me an envelope.
I didn’t need to read the contents. His smirk said it all.
Property of Vadim.