Vadim
Runa was six months old with two tiny teeth jutting from her gums. The last time I had felt her gums they had been hard with the pressure of them coming through.
She was changing in small ways every day—gaining weight, her hair thickening, the way she tracked faces across a room becoming more deliberate, more knowing.
The baker Borden had procured for me had told me they kept their babies in the bed until they were toddlers.
As much as I valued having Runa close, it had felt different getting Iskra alone last night.
The west wing. The sounds she had tried to stifle.
The marks I had left that she was carefully not drawing attention to this morning.
The deep red silk kept pulling my attention back to her.
The dress hugged every curve—discreet buttons running the length of the front, the skirt long, paired with a black cardigan that should have made it demure and somehow didn’t. She had entered without self-consciousness—or with complete indifference to being watched, which was worse.
Her perfume reached me before she did—that faint floral scent that was entirely hers, warm against the morning air, unchanged since the first time I had noticed it in a corridor almost two years ago.
The glass heart pendant rested above her breasts, catching the light when she moved. She rarely took it off. I had assumed it was sentimental—a piece she had brought from home, or purchased in Istanbul. Someone may have given it to her. As long as she wore my rings it shouldn’t matter.
It did.
Runa managed a few mouthfuls of porridge before she decided she was done and began returning it. When I tried again she pressed her lips together with the focused stubbornness of someone who had made a decision and was not revisiting it. The tilt of her chin. The look in her eye.
Her mother’s daughter entirely.
I cleaned her face and handed her back to Iskra, who passed her the pineapple core without comment. Runa set to work on it immediately—gnawing with the single-minded dedication of a small creature who had found her purpose. A fresh trail of drool made its way down to her bib. I shook my head.
It had been weeks. A full cycle had passed. She had to be pregnant by now.
I waited until Iskra finished her breakfast before I turned to Olya.
“Can you watch Runa for a little while?”
“Of course,” she said, drying her hands on her apron and moving to the table without hesitation.
Iskra looked up. The wariness was there—that sharp instinct of hers that I had underestimated once and would not underestimate again.
She had good senses.
“Follow me,” I said, pulling the basement key from my pocket.
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When her heels clicked on the resin floor they drew my attention to her slim ankles and the hint of calves that became exposed as she moved. She paused and half-turned, looking for direction.
“You know what Sergei did?” I asked, toying with the keys in my hand.
The wariness vanished. A flicker of sadness touched her eyes before she looked away—but her hand reached for the pendant at her throat.
“I do,” she said, her voice stronger than I had anticipated.
“I kept him. He is in that room,” I said, gesturing toward the cell.
Her head snapped up and she turned to face me fully.
“He was my son,” I said, pausing for a beat. “Our firstborn.”
She nodded.
“I keep him close,” she said, holding up the heart. “Soil from his grave.”
I stared at the glass heart—the darkness visible at its core. I had thought it was decorative. I had thought someone had given it to her.
“It seems we held on in different ways,” I murmured, and raised my hand and walked past her before I examined that thought any further.
Her heels clicked behind me until I reached the door. I unlocked it and held it open. The stench rushed out immediately. She covered her mouth and nose but stepped inside without hesitation.
I watched her circle him.
Curiosity. Hatred. Disgust. Pity.
I didn’t need to look at Sergei to know what she was seeing — greying skin, bones protruding, eyes yellowed and jaundiced. He was clinging on with the stubbornness of a man who had run out of everything except the refusal to go. Hell was waiting. Why delay?
She never released the pendant once.
That was the moment I understood—if anyone ever harmed Runa, or any of our children, Iskra would obliterate them from the earth. Whatever she felt toward me was a fraction of what she carried for our daughter. An infinitesimal fraction.
I slipped the keys into my pocket and leaned against the wall.
She glanced around the room. Empty, except for my uncle curled on the floor.
She raised her foot and placed her heel against his neck—precise, deliberate, the balance of a woman who knew exactly what she was doing.
She pressed down, cutting off his air supply, and somehow kept her balance throughout.
Sergei raised his hand weakly.
She moved with the grace of a ballerina—kicking his hand aside and stepping onto his arm instead.
I frowned.
Her skirt had fallen over his face.
I hadn’t left her any underwear to wear beneath that dress this morning.
“You,” she spat, stomping her heel into the palm of his hand. “You took my son.”
Her venom was sudden enough to raise my eyebrows—but as she spoke I heard the tightness underneath it. The grief that had been sitting there the entire time, contained until this room gave it somewhere to go.
Sergei screamed. I glanced at his hand. Blood. He couldn’t have much left to spare.
Her skirt billowed as she pressed her weight down onto his neck—bouncing, deliberate, the choking and gasping sounds filling the small room. I pressed my lips together, trying not to smile.
She went on to curse him.
Such creativity.
She stepped off and began to kick.
Ribs. Face. Legs.
I should have intervened. Instead I watched—the red silk and the glass heart and the heel finding its mark with the precision of a woman who had been waiting to vent months of frustration.
Not toward a random person. Toward the person who caused the accident.
In this room it didn’t matter that Sergei was blood.
Yet all I wanted was to take her into the next room and screw the life out of her.
People feared me for my reputation. For the wicked acts I had committed alongside my father. But here was a five foot nothing, sweet-looking blonde kicking the shit out of my uncle.
I had made several incorrect presumptions about Mrs Dragunova.
She was panting by the time I strode across the room and caught her wrist. When she didn’t stop I lifted her, dragging her back as she tried to land a few final kicks, her heels grazing the sealed floor.
“I’ll have to wash that blood away,” I murmured, glancing at Sergei.
He was curled into himself, clutching his hand, crying with the particular indignity of a man who had orchestrated the deaths of others and was now undone by a woman in a silk dress.
“Such a pity,” she said, her tone suggesting the opposite entirely.
She was begging for what came next without knowing it.
“You know I had a room set up for you down here,” I said quietly, close to her ear. “Before I found out about Runa.”
Her back straightened. Her head rose.
I had her full attention now.