23. Katya
Katya
I keep looking at my hands.
I've been doing it for two weeks now, in the middle of rehearsal, during the commute back to the apartment, in the bathroom mirror at two in the morning when I can't sleep.
I turn them over and look at the palms, the fingers, the place where my nails meet skin.
They look like my hands. They move the same way.
They still know every barre exercise by memory, still reach for the barre with the same muscle instinct, still curve into port de bras like they were built for nothing else.
But they scratched him. Four lines across his cheek, drawn in the park with his blood under my nails, and I walked home beside him in silence with the cold wind off the river and the knowledge of what I'd done settling into me like something that doesn't dissolve.
I've replayed it a hundred times. The argument, the escalation, the moment I allowed my anger at the entire situation to take over. And then I released it on Artem.
I lost control.
What I keep coming back to isn't the act itself. He was an ass, and I'm sure this wasn't the worst injury he'd ever received. Plus, he could have stopped me at any point.
What I keep coming back to is what happened after. The way he went still. The way his hand came up to touch his own face, slow and deliberate, how he looked at the blood on his fingers, and then how he looked at me.
You've got claws.
His voice, quiet, almost soft, with something underneath it I recognized immediately and did not want to. Not anger. Desire. Dark and certain, like a man who has just been handed something he didn't know he was waiting for.
The memory makes heat pool low in my stomach, and that's the problem.
That's exactly the problem. Because I felt it too, that pulse of something that had no business being there, heat and fury tangled up together until I couldn't tell them apart.
I stood in the cold with his blood on my hands and part of me wanted him to close the distance between us.
That's what scares me more than anything else. Not the clawing, not the fury, not even the violence of it. The fact that I knew exactly what I felt and would give anything not to.
I still want Artem. My body does anyway. It's like it's formed a new muscle memory, craving the feeling of him against me.
That's the part that keeps me up. Not the marriage, not the control, not even the surveillance on my phone that I discovered and have said nothing about since, choosing instead to leave it in a drawer when I go anywhere alone and use the spare cash Lacey pressed into my hand three weeks ago for anything I don't want him to know about.
All of that I have categorized and filed and accepted as the terms of a war I'm still figuring out how to fight.
But this — the clawing, the fury, the part of me that felt something close to satisfaction when he went still — this I don't know what to do with.
Because I was not raised to be this person.
I was raised to be precise and composed and quietly devastating, to express conflict through line and extension and the controlled devastation of a piece of music.
Not like this. Not in parks. Not with my hands.
I think about the girl I was eight months ago, getting ready for an evening that would turn out to be the last normal night of my life, borrowing a dress from Lacey, nervous and hoping for something I couldn't name. She wouldn't recognize me.
I barely recognize myself.
That's what scares me.
There's a knock on my door. Soft, but I know immediately who it is. There's only one person it could be: Artem.
No one else comes to the penthouse except him and Pyotr.
I curl into the bed, wanting to ignore the sound. Artem has been giving me space, which I appreciate, but when I come home to this apartment that isn't mine, I want nothing more than to simply pretend that my husband doesn't exist.
"I know that you are in there, Katya." His voice comes through the door. "Open up."
I close my eyes.
"Do I need to break down the door?"
I curse under my breath and swing off the bed. I walk toward the door, pulling it open hard. "What?" I snap.
Artem is wearing his usual suit, no jacket, no tie. The marks on his face are fading, not as deep as I originally thought. I try not to look at them, but I can't stop myself.
"Your grandfather called."
"Okay." I have no plans to talk to my grandfather. He made his choices, and he would need to live with them.
"He'll be coming for dinner Thursday."
"No." The word slips out immediately.
"Katya—" He presses his thumbs to the bridge of his nose, what he often does when he gets irritated with me.
"I said no." I take a breath, trying to find that control that seems so elusive these days. "I am not going to sit across a table from my grandfather and pretend that any of this is normal. I won't."
Artem is quiet for a moment. I expect him to force the issue, to threaten me or my friends. Instead he just releases a breath and says, "You don't have to perform. Just be present."
I look at him. He means it, I can tell somehow.
The way I've learned to read the things he doesn't elaborate on, the brief, undecorated offerings he makes that pass for kindness in whatever language he speaks.
He isn't telling me to smile and say the right things.
He's telling me I can show up exactly as I am.
I don't know what to do with that either. "Fine," I snap. "But I'm not planning anything. And I'm not dressing up."
Artem raises a brow. Says nothing. Which somehow makes me angrier than anything he could have said.
I make a noise in the back of my throat, throw my hands up, and storm off, slamming the door behind me.
Viktor arrives Thursday at seven with expensive wine and that broad smile of his, as though nothing has happened. As though the world is exactly as it should be and he has nothing to answer for.
It isn't lost on me that he hasn't called once since the wedding. At least, he hasn't called me.
There's tension in the air between Artem and me, but I don't miss how his eyes narrow, just slightly, as he catches sight of Viktor.
"Katya." Viktor reaches for me. I let him embrace me, standing still as a statue while he holds me. Tears spring to my eyes, and I blink them back hard. I don't want to cry in front of these men. It feels like a weakness I cannot afford.
He holds me at arm's length, looking at me with that small smile that used to make me feel safe. "You look well."
"You look tired," I say, because it's true and because I've never been able to lie to him about the things I can see plainly.
Something moves across his face. "I am tired," he says simply. He looks past me toward Artem. "Orlov."
Artem doesn't move.
Despite what I said, I show my grandfather around the penthouse, making small talk, trying to maintain whatever peace is left to maintain. Artem follows closely behind, listening, saying nothing.
Viktor asks about my work. I tell him. He nods like the answer means something to him, and I feel the anger begin to bloom in my chest, slow and hot, because this is the part I can't stand.
How much I wish we could just be a family.
How much I wish things were different. I hate him for making me wish that. I hate myself for still wanting it.
But we are too far gone.
He made his choice when he sold me to Artem.
"I ordered borscht," Artem says. I wrinkle my nose but remain quiet.
My husband doesn't know what my favorite foods are and didn't bother to ask.
He ordered something Russian. Something from my world.
I don't know what to do with that either, so I file it away with all the other things I don't know what to do with.
We sit. Artem pours wine. I ignore my glass and reach for my water. The china is old, I notice, lovely and slightly scratched, well-loved in a way that doesn't match the clean, controlled lines of the rest of the apartment. I wonder about it, but I refuse to ask.
Viktor and Artem begin talking business. Enough to find common ground, not enough to say anything of consequence. I zone out, cutting my food into smaller and smaller pieces, watching the two of them from across the table like I'm watching a performance I don't have the libretto for.
And then, somewhere between Viktor's second glass of wine and a story about a shipment that went sideways, he says it. Casually. Like it costs him nothing.
"Your father would have loved to see you like this. Settled. He always worried that you would be aimless."
Immediately, I still.
Artem's eyes move to mine across the table, and I know he senses the danger my grandfather just stumbled into.
"He died when I was a child," I say carefully. "I doubt he thought much about me as a woman."
"Nonsense. He thought about your future often."
"Then maybe he should have been more careful," I snap, dropping my fork with a clang.
Viktor stops. Just a beat. Just one. "He was a good man?—"
"He was a criminal who cared more about power than his wife and daughter." I'm breathing harder now, the control I've been managing all evening starting to come apart at the seams. "He left Mama and me as targets. He drew a bullseye on my back and died before he had to watch anyone take aim."
Viktor's mouth turns down. "Katya." There's a warning in his voice.
"No." I throw my napkin on the table. "I am sick of pretending that this is some kind of family dinner. It's a farce."
Viktor's brow arches. "What would you call it, Katya? A business deal?"
I laugh, because indeed I would. "This is nothing more than your desire for absolution. And you aren't going to get it from me." I feel myself breaking and I can't stop. "You sold me off like I was nothing."
"To a wealthy man. A powerful man?—"
"A man who took my virginity and showed you the sheets—" My voice cracks. I don't think about that night often. I can't.
Artem visibly stiffens, and Viktor sputters, uncomfortable.
"Oh, stop acting scandalized," I snap. "You've ordered men killed. A little sex is nothing."
"Enough," he growls.
"No." I'm shaking. That control I've always prided myself on is gone once more. "Fuck you." I shake my head, pushing back from the table. "Fuck you both."
"Enough." Artem's voice, flat, controlled, and still somehow louder than anything else in the room. His blue eyes are on me, narrowed. "Katya."
I'm breathing heavily. "I need a moment." I look at Viktor. "Don't be here when I come back."
My heels click angrily across the hardwood. I make it to the hallway bathroom, shut the door, and stand with my forehead pressed against the cool marble of the sink.
I breathe.
In through the nose. Out through the mouth. The way they teach you before a performance when the nerves get too big to contain.
I run the water. Wash my hands. Look at my face in the mirror, flushed, eyes bright, still shaking slightly around the edges.
Then I hear voices.
Low and sharp, just audible through the gap under the door. I shouldn't move toward it. I know I shouldn't.
I move toward it anyway.
I ease the door open, just enough. Stand in the shadow of the hallway. Viktor is at the front door, coat already on, and Artem is standing opposite him, one hand on the door frame, body angled like a man who has already decided this conversation is over.
"You need to control her." Viktor's voice, tight with something that sounds almost like warning. "She is your responsibility now."
Artem laughs. It's short and cold, nothing warm in it. "Ah yes. You do love to remind me of that."
"People are talking. She is the heiress?—"
"She is a woman who has been handed a life she didn't choose." Artem's voice doesn't rise. It drops. Lower and more dangerous for it. "Her reticence is your fault."
Viktor's jaw tightens. "I know why you are doing this." His eyes are hard. "I know what you want from this marriage. Don't think I'm blind." A pause, loaded and deliberate. "Irina?—"
I shift my weight and the floorboard doesn't creak. I've learned every creak in this apartment by now, mapped them like a dancer marks a stage. I move and I don't make a sound, and neither of them notices me standing in the dark of the hallway.
But I notice Artem.
I see what that name does to him.
He goes very still. The way he went still in the park. But different, colder, and underneath the cold something that moves too fast for me to name, something that pulls across his face and vanishes before it fully forms. His hand on the door frame tightens until the knuckles goes white.
"Good evening, Viktor," he says. Quiet. Final. He opens the door, a clear dismissal.
Viktor looks at him for a long moment. Then he goes.
The door closes.
My heart lurches. He didn't look back for me. Not once.
Artem stands with his back to me, hand still on the door, and doesn't turn around. He knows I'm there.
"Go to bed, Katya."
I don't move. "Who is Irina?"
A beat. Long enough to mean something.
"No one you need to concern yourself with."
"He said her name like a weapon. Who is she?"
"Go to bed."
"Artem, I'm your wife?—"
"I said go to bed." He turns then, and his face is closed, that particular blankness he wears when something costs him, the expression I've learned to watch for because it means I've gotten closer to something real than he intended.
His eyes find mine in the dim of the hallway, and they are ice-pale and very far away.
The conversation is over.
He's decided, and I know him well enough now to understand that there are rooms in him with locks I don't have the keys to yet. I won't get anything else tonight. He'll make sure of it.
So I let it go.
I walk back down the hallway to the guest room and leave the door open, because I always leave the door open now and I've stopped pretending I don't know why.
I sit at the barre and I don't practice.
I just sit in the dark and think about the way his hand went white on the door frame, the way two letters of a name undid something in his face he usually keeps welded shut.
Irina.
A name with no face. No story. Nothing to hold onto.
It's worse that way, somehow. A name with no context is a splinter, too small to find, too sharp to ignore.
I curl my fingers around the barre and sit with it, and I think: I am going to find out who she is.
Not tonight. Not tomorrow. But I am going to find out.
I'm not the girl I was eight months ago.
That girl was afraid of what she didn't know.
I'm starting to think that's exactly the wrong thing to be afraid of.