Taisiya
My hands tremble as I place the wine glass carefully on the table. I don’t make eye contact with him. He’s terrified me. Part of me wants to throw the wine in his face and walk out so I never have to lay eyes on him again.
That part is foolish.
The other, bigger part, the part that has kept me alive this long, knows he’s right.
I stay in the chair.
He looms over me for another three seconds, breathing hard through his nose, jaw locked. Then he straightens up and drags a hand through his hair. He doesn’t apologise for the glass or for scaring me. I didn’t expect him to.
“Good,” he says, and that’s all.
I look at the wine running down the dark wall in deep red rivulets, pooling on the dark wood skirting board. Ivan is going to lose his mind. Quietly and with devastating consequences, but he’s going to lose it.
“I’m not arguing because I enjoy it,” I say.
My voice comes out steadier than I feel, which is a small miracle.
“I argue because if I stop, I disappear. That’s what happens to women in situations like this.
They stop pushing back, and then one day they look in the mirror, and they don’t exist anymore. ”
He doesn’t answer immediately.
I finally look at him. He’s standing at the end of the table, hands at his sides now, staring at me with an expression I can’t fully decode. It’s not anger, more like curiosity.
“And what situations would those be then?” he asks quietly.
“Where the man protects the woman to the point that she becomes only that. A creature to be possessed or set free to die.”
“That’s dramatic,” he says and sits down.
“Maybe,” I say. “But it’s true.”
“I’m not trying to erase you,” he says.
“You’re trying to own me. That’s not the same as erasing someone, but it’s close enough to make me nervous.”
“There’s a difference between ownership and protection.”
“Tell me what it is.”
“Ownership means I decide everything. Who you see, what you wear, when you leave the house, when you speak. That’s not what this is.”
“Then what do you have interest in?”
“Knowing you’re alive at the end of each day.”
The simplicity of it knocks me down a peg. I look at the wine still dripping down the wall and think about Gregor’s face in that alley. I think about Vadim shooting Anton in his club, and I think about the man with the purse outside my building this afternoon and how fast Vadim’s gun came up.
“You scared me,” I say. Not accusatory. Just the truth.
“I know.”
“And?”
“And nothing. You needed to hear it.”
“You could have said it without throwing your glass.”
He doesn’t answer that. He picks up his fork and turns it over in his fingers for a moment, then sets it back down without using it.
“I know,” he says finally.
It’s not an apology. I’m not sure Vadim Voronov is physically capable of one, but it’s an acknowledgement, and right now that’s more than I expected.
Ivan appears in the doorway, takes one look at the wine on the wall, and then looks at me, as if to check I’m still breathing. I give him a small nod. He gives Vadim a look that could strip paint, then retreats without a word to get something to clean it with.
“He’s furious,” I say.
“He’ll survive.”
“He deserves better than cleaning wine off your walls because you lost your temper.”
“So tell him. Then go to your room. You need to rest.”
“That’s it? You’re dismissing me?”
His eyes flash dangerously. “Are you arguing with me?”
“No… I… no.” I won’t give him the satisfaction of an excuse to berate me again. I stand up and leave the dining room without another word. I have no idea where this guest room is, so I take the stairs and start the process of elimination.
The first door is a sterile-looking room that I hope Ivan didn’t decide I belonged in. I close the door.
The second room is empty.
The third door opens onto a bathroom, and the fourth is a room that has clearly been prepared.
The bed is made with fresh linen, a dark navy duvet and white pillows arranged neatly.
Pyjamas folded on the end of the bed. There’s a lamp on the bedside table, already on at a low setting.
A wardrobe stands open on one side, and I can see clothes hanging inside. Ivan, apparently, does not mess around.
I step in and close the door behind me.
The room is larger than I expected. It smells of clean linen and furniture polish. There’s a small armchair near the window and a door to what I assume is an en suite. There’s even a notebook on the bedside table, leather-bound and new, monogrammed with a gold embossed ’T’. A pen lies across it.
I stare at the pen and notebook for a long moment.
Then I laugh, short and surprised, and the sound comes out wrong, too close to a sob for comfort. I press the back of my hand against my mouth and wait for it to pass.
I drop onto the edge of the bed and pull off my boots, and stand again with them in hand to place in the wardrobe, because Ivan won’t appreciate it if I’m untidy.
I set them down and stare at the clothes Ivan has hung there.
Dresses, blouses, two pairs of tailored trousers, a soft cashmere jumper in grey and a row of shoes along the bottom.
Everything appears to be in my size. I reach out and touch the sleeve of the jumper.
It’s the kind of soft that I’ve only ever experienced with the men’s cardigan I’m still wearing.
The clothes I stuffed into the rucksack are also in here, looking feeble next to the expensive clothes.
I close the wardrobe.
I can’t think about that right now. I can’t think about any of it. I sit back down on the edge of the bed and breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth.
Gregor is dead.
Anton is dead.
I’m a dead woman walking, or worse.
I’m also sitting in a room that smells of clean linen in a mansion belonging to a man who announced he intends to marry me with the same energy most people use to order a takeaway.
My hands have stopped shaking, which is either a sign that I’m coping or a sign that I’ve broken something important in my nervous system. I genuinely can’t tell which.
I reach for the notebook and pick it up, turning it over in my hands. List. I need to start making my list of things it will take to make me comfortable here. But now everything will seem like an argument waiting to happen.
I set it back down without opening it.
I stand up and pull Vadim’s cardigan off, draping it over the armchair before I strip off my dress and underwear and pull the pyjamas on. They’re slightly oversized, but I feel that is on purpose. No one wants tight pjs. I crawl into bed and swallow back the sounds of the silence.
It’s too quiet. Too unnerving. I get back out of bed and grab my tote, which was placed neatly on the floor next to the nightstand. I reach in for my phone and see a dozen missed calls from Ali. I should call her back, but what would I say?
I ignore them all and flick to the music app, turning it on as loudly as I dare, which is ten times quieter than I’d like it.
But it creates the background noise I desperately needed.
I lie there in the dark with the music low and my eyes on the ceiling, waiting for sleep to arrive and knowing it won’t.
Every time I get close, I see Gregor. His face, his hand on my wrist, the shock in his eyes. The blood. So much blood. I see Vadim’s face over the dining table, fists pressed to the wood, voice dropping to something that made every nerve ending in my body go cold.
I roll onto my side and stare at the wall.
I’m terrified, exhausted, and I’ve been running since last night on adrenaline and more alcohol than I should have. My body is done, but my brain refuses to accept the memo.
I turn the music up another notch and pull the duvet higher.
The pyjamas are soft. The pillow is the kind that doesn’t flatten the second your head hits it. Everything in this room is designed for comfort.
That makes it worse, somehow.
Closing my eyes again, I will myself to sleep. Vadim is right about me needing to rest. He’s right about everything else as well, and I need to stop fighting it.
Sleep comes eventually, because my body has no choice. It drags me under, probably with help from the booze, and the last thing I’m aware of is the music still playing low from my phone on the nightstand.