35. Katya
Katya
I feel like I've been pacing the floor for hours. Not that I would know. There's no clock in this room, and no electronics. I'm time blind, and it's making me even more on edge.
Artem came and went, dropping an insane story at my feet with little fanfare.
The meal he brought me is half eaten on the desk.
I'd been on a hunger strike, and I'd hoped that I would be able to parlay that into an escape.
I caved not even a second day into it when the carrot of knowledge was dangled in front of my face.
Unfortunately, all Artem's story did was confuse the hell out of me.
His words contradict Nadia's, and I have no idea who is lying.
I want to bang my head on the door in frustration as I replay Artem's words in my head. His voice was steady, but I could hear the underlying touches of grief in it. And honestly, he didn't come out of the story looking perfect.
He admitted to suggesting me as a teenage bride for Alexei, which was foul.
And yet Nadia's story makes sense, and her grief was palpable.
Both of them have lost people. Both of them built their lives around what those losses cost them. Both of them decided, at some point, that I was the most efficient route to what they wanted.
The question I keep circling is whether there's a difference between the two. Whether the motive matters.
I stop pacing and release a heavy breath.
That's when the world comes apart around me.
There is a loud sound, so loud that I feel the door vibrate, and I jump, immediately terrified.
"What the hell?" I whisper to myself. I run toward the window and look out. I can't see anything happening, but there's more — shouting and the sound of heavy footsteps pounding on the floor.
Something is happening, and I absolutely do not like that I am locked in a room with no escape.
I start hitting the door again. Both fists, calling out, trying to be heard over the noise that's getting louder, closer, moving up through the house floor by floor.
The lock turns.
I stumble back as the door swings open and Artem fills the frame. He reaches for me, and I take his hand without hesitating.
"Let's go."
I don't think twice. I might not have grown up in the Bratva, but I know when you start hearing things that sound like guns and yelling, you don't think twice when someone gives you an out.
He takes my arm and moves me down the hallway at a pace that isn't quite running but is everything just short of it.
The noise is coming from the staircase at the front of the house — shouts, the sound of doors being opened, the systematic quality of a well-planned operation moving through a building room by room.
"There's a set of back stairs. They used to be servant?—"
"I know."
Right. I forgot that he knew the complete layout of the house. He probably memorized it.
I don't have time to be irate over it. He's pulling me forward, scanning the space as we move, and I'm impressed by how much ground he covers in what feels like a short time.
We reach the back stairs, and he goes first, putting himself between me and any potential danger below. The stairs are narrow and dark, and we're moving fast. I'm not wearing shoes, and he takes me by the waist, helping me navigate the uneven surface.
We don't make it far before I see her.
"Artem—" I grip his shoulder, stopping him as Nadia steps out of the doorway at the base of the stairs. Her weapon is raised, and her eyes are narrowed.
Shit. I didn't think too much about what was happening, who might have been breaching our home, but I'd assumed it was another family.
Now I realize how wrong I was. This is an FBI raid.
"Stop." Her gun is aimed between us, as though she hasn't decided who she's going to shoot.
Artem goes still in front of me.
"Step away from her," Nadia orders.
He doesn't. He moves closer, shielding me with his body.
Nadia's eyes widen slightly. "You can't be serious."
"Move, Nadia." His voice is even. Negotiating. "Your team is in the building. You aren't going to find anything that incriminates me. You do this, and you can kiss your career goodbye."
"He's not lying," I tell her. "My grandfather would never have kept anything from the business here. He wasn't stupid. He knew that this could happen."
Nadia ignores me. Her eyes are fixed on Artem.
"When I saw you sniffing around her, I thought, surely, you wouldn't…" She keeps the weapon level. Her eyes are back on Artem now. "I mean, fucking Viktor Popov's beloved granddaughter — insane."
I wrinkle my nose, but my gut tells me to remain silent.
"But then you did it, you married her, and I knew she was my way in."
Artem's mouth is set in a thin line. "Are you done giving me a play-by-play of the last few months? I was there, Nadia. If you have a point, make it."
"I thought she was in danger. That you were using her.
" She tilts her head slightly, as though she's discovered something.
The gun doesn't waver. "You had exits. Your men were holding the front.
You could have been in a car ten minutes ago.
" A pause. "Instead you're here, on a back staircase, with her. "
Artem says nothing.
"You care about her." She says it like a discovery. Like something she's been running a calculation on for years and has just received the final variable. "You actually care about her."
"Nadia—" There's a warning in his voice.
"That changes things." Her finger moves on the trigger, and I feel like my heart is in my stomach. "You took everything from my family. And now you have something to take."
I watch it happen. The decision arriving in her face, not madness, which would be easier, but clarity. The cold, grief-sharpened clarity of a woman who has been waiting years for this moment.
Artem moves faster than I expect.
Not toward her. He turns to me, wrapping his arms around my body, forcing me to the ground. I don't even have time to gasp before the gun goes off.
I feel wet warmth on my front, and my eyes widen.
"Artem?" I'm shaking as I look down, trying to process who was hit.
Hands close on my arms from behind — FBI, someone in tactical gear, pulling me back — and I fight it. I fight it harder than I've fought anything, my feet scrabbling on the stairs, reaching for him.
"Artem!" I can see it now, the spot of red spreading across his chest. Even with a bullet in him he's stoic, staring at me, not appearing remotely concerned about the wound.
"Let me go!" I yell, trying to get to him. "He needs help."
I glance up and watch as Nadia is wrestled to the ground by another agent.
He looks at me across the space between us, across the hands holding me back, across everything. His voice is level. Still controlled. Still him. "Katya. I'm fine."
"You're not—" I reach for him again, desperate to get free.
"Go, Katya." His eyes hold mine. The expression on his face is the one I've been trying to name for months. The one he locks down. The one I almost had in the dining room before the dark took me.
I have it now.
"Sir." Someone is beside him, assessing the wound. "We need to move you."
He lets them. He keeps his eyes on me until the angle of the stairwell takes him out of sight, and the last thing I see is his face, and the expression I finally have a name for.
They put me in a black SUV.
Not roughly. Not in handcuffs, which surprises me. A woman with a badge and a careful voice tells me I'm not under arrest, that I'm being taken in for questioning, that I have the right to an attorney and the right to remain silent and several other things I hear without processing.
I watch the house recede through the window.
I think about Artem's hand on the wall of the staircase. The controlled way he went down. The specific, terrible efficiency of a man managing his own damage.
I think about him coming back.
He had exits. He had men at the front. He could have been in a car ten minutes ago — Nadia said it herself, and she was right, and he wasn't.
He was on a back staircase with his hand on my back moving me toward an exit, and then he was between me and a gun, and then he was down, and I was reaching for him before I knew I was moving.
The SUV moves through the dark streets.
I press my forehead against the cold glass, and I think about six weeks, about locked rooms, about a man who called it asset management and left food in the kitchen and kept my grandfather buried close enough to visit.
About a teacher who never got to teach.
About a girl who thought the most dangerous thing in her world was a difficult audition.
I don't know what comes next.
I know that I need him to be alive when I find out.
That's enough for now.
That has to be enough for now.