Taisiya
My breathing is ragged by the time I reach the bedroom. I just lied to the police about killing Gregor. I knew I would get found out, but I ignored reality in favour of playing at being Vadim’s wife.
“Stupid, stupid, bitch,” I croak.
I press both hands over my mouth to shut myself up, but the words are already out, crawling around the room with me.
The door opens behind me.
“Don’t panic. It’s handled.” Vadim’s voice is quiet, which is worse than shouting.
I spin around. “Don’t start.”
His jaw locks. He closes the door and stays in front of it. “I will start wherever I want.”
“I lied to the police.”
“So did I.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“It makes it unified.”
I laugh, but it breaks halfway through. “Unified? Jesus Christ, Vadim. This isn’t a business deal. This is a murder investigation. They have CCTV. They have witness statements. They have my name.”
“They don’t have you.”
“They could.”
“No.”
“You keep saying no like it fixes things.”
“Because usually it does.”
I pace away from him, then back again because there is nowhere else to go. The bedroom feels too big, too expensive, too wrong. The torn curtain hangs crooked by the window. “How are you going to fix this?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“I did this, Vadim. I can’t run away from that.”
“You can when you are part of this family.”
His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he answers it straight away. “Roman.” A weighty pause. “Okay.” He hangs up.
“What?”
“Roman is on his way. He will be here in about forty minutes.”
“Do I need to see him?”
“No. Roman already has a plan to make it disappear.”
“How?”
“Do you really want to know?”
I blink, then sit on the edge of the bed, staring at the TV I’d put on mute when I heard the siren outside. “No,” I say. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. What do you think?”
He comes over and crouches in front of me, placing his hands on my knees.
“You don’t need to come down, you don’t need to speak to Roman, you don’t need to know any of the details.
It will be better that way. And lastly, I think you should trust me,” Vadim says, his eyes holding mine with a conviction that feels like a physical weight.
“Roman handles the things that don’t exist on paper.
By morning, the CCTV will have a glitch.
The witness statements will become unreliable.
And you, Taisiya, will have been tucked safely in my car at the exact moment Gregor met his end. ”
“You’re making me a ghost,” I whisper.
“I’m making you untouchable.”
A cold sweat breaks across the back of my neck.
My mouth goes dry. I shiver. The casual way they speak about life and death is a language I’m still learning to translate.
I look down at my hands. My life used to be about making rent and avoiding the creepy regulars at the bar.
Now, a man who barely knows me is casually erasing a crime scene like he’s taking out the rubbish.
“It’s not right,” I mutter.
“Right doesn’t exist,” Vadim says. He stands up, his shadow stretching across the silk duvet. “Survival exists. Protection exists. You chose to survive. Now let me protect.”
He walks to the window and pulls the torn curtain back into place, hiding the world outside. I watch the play of muscles in his back. He looks like a king surveying a kingdom he’s prepared to burn down.
“Roman is thorough,” he adds, turning back to me. “He’ll be here soon. Stay in the room. Ivan will bring you something to help you sleep.”
“I don’t want to sleep. I want to wake up from this.”
Vadim reaches up and takes my face between his hands.
His palms are rough, warm, and steady. “This is your life now, Tai. Don’t waste it wishing for a version of yourself that died the moment you picked up that knife.
” He lets go of my face, his touch lingering for a heartbeat before he turns and leaves the room.
The click of the door sounds like a gavel hitting a block.
I’m alone with a muted television and the phantom sensation of blood on my fingers.
I don’t feel like a survivor. I feel like a stain someone is trying to scrub out.
Vadim is downstairs with a man who rewrites reality, and I’m up here waiting for it all to go away.
Guilt tears through me, and I choke back the sob that erupts.
The bedroom is too quiet without Vadim’s heavy presence.
I crawl back into the middle of the massive bed.
I stare at the muted screen where people laugh without sound.
My hands won’t stop shaking. I tuck them under my thighs to pin them down.
Vadim says I’m untouchable, but I feel fragile.
I’m a killer in a cashmere jumper. I’m a liar with a Voronov ring.
I hear a car door slam in the distance and realise more time has passed than I expected.
I want to run, but there’s no path back to the life I had.
I’m trapped in a house of men who rewrite the world to suit their needs.
I close my eyes and try to find the woman I was a week ago.
She’s gone. She died in that alley alongside Gregor.
I stay in the dark and listen to the silence of the house.
It’s a heavy, expensive silence. It’s the sound of power.
I’m part of it now. I’m a Voronov. The thought is a fortress, its walls thick and high.
But it only makes me feel hollow. A soft knock breaks through my spiral.
I don’t answer, but the door opens anyway.
Ivan carries a small tray with a glass of Scotch and a sandwich on a plate.
“I don’t want them,” I say before he can offer.
He sets the tray on the bedside cabinet with the same care he uses for everything. “Mr Voronov’s orders, but I would have brought them regardless.”
“You’re very devoted to a man who terrifies most people.”
“He terrifies people who deserve it.” Ivan straightens, folding his hands. “You do not fall into that category.”
I stare at the sandwich like it might bite me. “I thought you were here to give me sleeping pills or something.”
“Not how this works.”
“Good. Because I would tell you to shove them up your arse.”
He smiles. “Food and a glass of the finest Scotch is better than any sleeping pill.”
“You’re only saying that because you made the food.”
“It’s a sandwich. A monkey could make it.”
“Modest. I bet it’s won awards.”
He shrugs and backs away. “Eat, Mrs Voronov. It will be a long night if you intend to stay up.”
“They’re really doing this? Erasing what I did?”
“It’s what they do, and they are very good at it.”
“I suppose you have to be in the Bratva, right?”
“Right,” he says and leaves, closing the door behind him.
I give the sandwich the side-eye for a minute longer, then pick it up and take a bite because my body apparently doesn’t care about my moral crisis.
It’s good. Ham, mustard, something sharp that cuts through the bread.
I chew slowly, staring at the muted TV, then turn the volume back up to hear about how a couple from Berkshire want to spend eight hundred grand on a forever home.
She makes pottery, and he has an allotment.
They’re either secret drug dealers, millionaire heirs or lying about how much money they have to get on TV.
I choose option number three. Unless the allotment grows special plants that nobody has noticed—ever.
I get into it, though, and make noises of appreciation at the barn conversion as I finish the sandwich. I pick up the glass of Scotch instead and take a sip, letting it burn down my throat.
Time crawls. The rain hasn’t stopped outside, and I can hear it faintly against the window, a steady percussion that should be soothing and isn’t.
I check my phone. No messages. No missed calls.
Aliksa hasn’t tried again, which is a relief, but it also adds another layer of dread.
Did she grass me up after all? The thought sits heavily in my gut.
How could she hate me so much for something I wasn’t even aware of?
If she wanted Vadim so badly, why not just go after him instead of whatever the fuck this was? It still doesn’t make sense to me.
The programme ends, and I switch to the same show, but over in Spain, where she wants a massive place to entertain all their millions of friends who plan to pop over, while he wants something smaller and more manageable. They can’t even agree on how to spend their imaginative pounds.
But it’s working.
I’m feeling calmer, and soon my eyes close, being dragged under by the food and Scotch and mindless TV.
***
I wake to a grey morning where the rain has stopped but probably not for long.
The TV is still on, and Vadim is nowhere in sight.
I’m restless as I climb out of bed. I’ve been holed up here for days, and I need to get out.
I shower and get dressed in jeans and an oversized tee, boots, and a raincoat I find hanging up.
I slip out of the bedroom, my heart hammering against my ribs.
The hallway is silent, the air thick with the scent of floor wax and the lingering ghost of Vadim’s cologne.
I don’t see Ivan or any of the guards, which feels like a miracle or a trap.
I make it to the kitchen and out the back door before anyone can stop me.
The air is bitingly cold, smelling of wet earth and urban grit.
“Don’t head out of the gate,” Vadim says from behind me.
I spin. “How did you know I was out here?”
“Cams,” he says, pointing upwards to the CCTV.
“Great. The bane of my life, it seems.”
“Everything okay?” he asks, moving closer.
“No, I’m restless, worried, bored, and probably half a dozen other things I haven’t thought of yet.”
“You want to go out?”
I nod.
“You’re not considering swinging by the police station, are you? Roman will be pissed if you are going to confess after all the spins we’ve pulled off tonight. I, of course, will forgive you.”
“How magnanimous,” I drawl. “But no. I was thinking of going to find Arseny Kaverin.”
Vadim’s eyes go flat, that icy blue turning into a frozen lake. He doesn’t move, but the temperature around us drops.
“I’m not going to open the door to my life with him. I just want to meet him. Right now, he is still this figure I’ve never even met before.”
He moves closer. “Okay, I get that. You sure?”
I nod.
“I’ll get the keys.”
I let him go, wrapping my arms around myself.
He returns in under a minute. With the keys to the Bentley in his hand, he leads me to the front of the house.
He unlocks the doors. I climb into the passenger seat as he slides in beside me and starts the engine.
The vibration travels through the floor.
He dials a number on his phone, and it rings.
“Baron,” he says. “Taisiya wants to see Arseny. What’s his address in the East End?
” A silence stretches through the car as Vadim listens to Baron’s response.
He doesn’t look at me. He keeps his eyes on the driveway, fingers tapping a rhythm against the leather steering wheel.
“Tredegar Square, Bow,” Vadim says, hanging up. He shifts the Bentley into gear and rolls toward the gates.
“Of course,” I mutter.
We drive through the city in silence, the grey morning blurring past the windows. London looks different today. It looks like a grid of secrets I’m finally starting to map.