Chapter 23 - Nadya
Once everything has changed, it makes no sense to me how nothing does. My life hardly feels real to me nowadays—and it’s unsustainable.
Time isn’t a construct I’ve ever bothered overmuch with, much to the collective chagrin of most people in my life.
It’s true that I am prone to coming and going as I please, losing track of time when I’m having a blast because I like to squeeze every bit of a moment’s worth out of it before I let it go.
Sure, it doesn’t make me the most dependable person in the world.
But isn’t it something that I’ve never expected from another person, any promises I know I can’t fulfill myself?
Time has never meant much to me before.
Now, I can’t stop noticing how fickle it is, arcane and inconsistent.
I don’t think there’s a person in the world who’d expect two months to be a life-changing amount of time. Bruises can fade, scars can soften, and a body can lose a noticeable amount of weight in that long.
But who really thinks about those kinds of things?
Maybe it’s just me.
Probably, it is.
And maybe that’s what happens when you give up all the thrill and adventure in your life to save the man you love. Not that it’s just agreeing to extra security and toning down the adventures, that’s doing my head in. It cramps my style, but it’s a small price to pay.
At least, it was supposed to have been.
Except six weeks have gone by since Viktor vanished from my life, and both Trifon and Val are still eyeing me like I’m not to be trusted. When I’m asked questions—and, usually, I’m asked too many of them—it’s with a quizzical, scrutinizing glance attached.
It’s fucking insulting.
Lately, the only saving grace has been that Iosif and I are good again.
He shows up as often as he can, and we take icy beers to the rooftop and talk about anything he can tell me to live vicariously through.
Mostly, he lets me make fun of how he’s not the family fuck-up anymore and has left me all alone in black sheepdom.
We share laughter, and he lets me get away with the note of genuine resentment now and again, and never takes it personally.
Like a mantra, I remind myself every night, He is safe. He’s okay. No news is good news sometimes.
But I’ve been narrowing down the possibilities of where he could be. Any scrap of information I come across, I pick up and put into my pocket. What, with all this spare time I’ve got to think and think and think? What else is there to do but scheme and convalesce?
I believe I’ll still be hanging my hat on how long I've lasted.
I've known from the start that I was going to have to bide my time. Maybe I'd feel guiltier if I hadn't held up my part of the bargain. If I hadn’t given this an honest shot, to let them all cool down to a simmer and hear me out. I have. I’ve tried. I’ve remembered that I made a promise, and I’ve fulfilled it.
I signed the annulment papers. And what have I gotten in return?
An aching heart. Being treated to an infuriating better late than never approach. Near-constant treatment as a risk to myself and others.
However, I think a lot about how, as Iosif has since dished gossip to me about, Viktor had made a point when he’d asked my brothers how they planned to get him out from under my skin.
He’s such a stupid, dramatic bitch.
That doesn’t mean his diagnosis hasn’t been correct all along.
He knows it, and I know it. It is both because he saw this and had faith in me and my ability to get here that deepens where he’s taken root in me.
How can’t anybody see that? Having known me all my life and having had a glimpse at the cellular level at which Viktor Zakharov can alter my impulses, how can everybody not see it? Especially with all the fucking cameras to watch it from.
My brothers keep upping the security measures. I keep entertaining newer tactics to sidestep them. It’s more of an art than a science. I’ve always considered myself an artist, after a fashion.
Fortunately, it’s cut-and-dry enough to deduce that my best chance of escape is from the family estate.
It is sacred territory. Within the four walls and many acres of the land, the safety of the Yuri bratva’s king and his council will take precedent.
It has to be that way, because the dominoes would fall without Trifon to hold them up.
That’s also what makes it the prime location to slip away from, when both he and the henchmen are distracted.
It’s a bonus that this is where I’ve grown up. I’ve been a daredevil all my life. I know every way there is out of it.
All the cameras are the marked issue.
Valentin himself had them installed after what he grouchily refers to as “the New York situation”, all part of an updated security system. It includes cameras in every nook and cranny. I don’t need them all to miss me, is the thing. I just need a single blind spot.
One that’ll grant me the opportunity to take off and get far enough away before they catch on.
I just need a head start.
It takes me a little while, but I piece it together. I guess having a psychosis-inducing amount of idle time can have “lots of time to plot” in the Pros column. I’ll take it. Especially since no one can really say shit to me for wandering around, so long as I’m keeping to myself.
Having a project keeps me hanging on. It almost makes up for the patience that doesn’t come to me naturally, ever.
And that’s fucking hilarious, because the conclusion is right there staring me in the face out of nowhere.
Just as it occurs to me, I’m left wondering how I could possibly have not put it together first.
There may be three cameras situated outside of his bedroom window. But hell will freeze over and pigs will fucking fly before Trifon Yuri risks any cameras, no matter for what gig or purpose, record what’s happening in his and Yulia’s bedroom.
If all they do is catch me on the way out, once I’m already out of the window? I’d say I’m home fucking free.
Trifon may have told me it’s fine to return to my apartment in the city this week, especially with four guards watching me on a rotating schedule, but all I see is that it’s as good a sign as any that I’m getting that he doesn’t see Viktor as an active threat anymore. To me, that means it’s time to go.
Running the first time hadn’t been my choice, it’s true.
This time, it will be.
I’ve spent so much time over the last few weeks going over and over my last conversation with Viktor.
Even more than I’ve clung to the primal, blood-tinged kiss we’d shared, I’ve thought about what I said to him.
I could’ve done this differently. A thousand different ways.
He had told me he wouldn’t—and then we’d been ripped apart.
When I think of it now, I think about how I’d meant it. I still mean it. I love him, and I love that he’d so theatrically confess his fealty to me. At the same time, it keeps me up at night, thinking about how much trouble we could’ve saved ourselves.
This is my chance. It’s my choice.
***
My moment of action arrives on an uneventful Thursday.
It isn’t really as uneventful insomuch as it is so fucking predictable that Trifon runs his weekly council meeting from the makeshift war room in the east wing every Thursday twilight.
They typically run anywhere from an hour to four.
The entire time, soldiers are guarding the perimeter of that wind. That’s where security is concentrated.
It leaves gaps.
Plenty of them for me to slip through.
I crawl right through that gap all the way to my eldest brother’s bedroom door and knock. I’d already anticipated Yulia being here. I want her to be. I keep the knock soft enough not to wake baby Zina if she’s already down.
Yulia opens the door, swathed in a lavender silk robe, her bouncy, strawberry blonde hair twisted up in a lopsided disarray that betrays how horizontal she must’ve been before I disturbed her.
Her eyes are puffy with exhaustion. Those eyes fill with questions as she blearily takes me in—the bag over my shoulder and all.
She steps aside wordlessly to let me in.
My heart swells with love.
It may be true that I’ve been lonely and spiraling, but my family is my family. My brothers may be prone to being goddamned hypocrites, but they love me to the ends of the earth. They love me when they don’t agree with me, or like my choices—and I have to trust that it’ll remain true.
It’s they who’ve raised me to be the profound pain in the ass I am.
When it boils down to it, I’m independent and ballsy and wear my heart on my sleeve.
If I am reckless, it’s because I free-fall at any given moment, save in the knowledge that my safety net will catch me.
They don’t get to be shocked that this is who I am.
It’s precisely who they’ve loved me into being.
I just need to love them back as best I can, without betraying myself in the process. Easy enough, right?
As it happens, my baby niece is not deep in slumber with her thumb sucked into her precious mouth.
She’s currently eagerly fidgeting with an Etch-A-Sketch she’s almost definitely too young for in the middle of the bed.
She spots me and swats the poor toy away from herself with her chubby fists, and squirms to the edge of the mattress.
She’s so fucking fearless. I’m obsessed with her. She’s a great teacher.
I catch her and coo as much into her cheek.
She shrieks some delighted mumbo-jumbo.
Out of peripheral view, I see Yulia pour out two glasses of wine from an already-open bottle of Sauvignon Blanc on top of her dresser.
She drifts back across the room and hands one of them to me over Zina’s head.
We clink, holding one another’s eyes, and I feel understood for the first time in forever.
It ratchets my audacity as fiercely as the living embodiment of hope, joy, and freedom in my arms in the form of this ferocious baby girl.