7. Anya
ANYA
By the fourth day, I understand that running away is not nearly as romantic as books make it sound.
There is no beautiful train station. No dramatic rain. No mysterious stranger offering help because he sees something wounded and special in my eyes.
There’s only a cheap room above a closed pharmacy, a mattress that sinks in the middle, and one small window that looks out over the back of another building.
I sit on the edge of the bed every morning and count my money.
Then I count it again. As if the number might change if I stare hard enough.
It never does.
The first night, I paid cash for the room using the emergency money I had hidden inside my bridal clutch. The owner, a woman with dyed red hair and suspicious eyes, did not ask questions. I think she sees girls like me more often than she wants to admit.
Girls running from men. Girls who show up in ruined makeup and expensive shoes, pretending they’re not shaking.
I told her my name was Anna.
On the second day, I sold one piece of jewelry. A diamond bracelet Dmitri gave me three months ago after missing my birthday dinner. I remember how I had forgiven him the second the velvet box opened, because I was foolish enough to mistake guilt for affection.
The jeweler looked at the bracelet, then at me, then at the bracelet again.
He offered me less than it was worth.
I knew that. He knew I knew that.
I took the money anyway.
Selling more would have been stupid. Girls like me are noticed. Girls selling expensive jewelry without papers are remembered. And I can’t afford to be remembered.
The engagement ring stays with me. I tell myself it is because selling it would draw too much attention, and that’s partly true. But the real reason is uglier.
I can’t give it away.
I hate Dmitri. I hate what he did. I hate the way his mouth looked on Katya’s, the way his voice sounded when he said I would be fine, as if I were a child refusing to behave.
But the ring is still on my hand.
Not all the time. During the day, I tie it into the hem of my coat with a piece of thread I pulled from the bedsheet. At night, I take it out and hold it in my palm like an idiot. I don’t know why. I feel a weird pull toward the ring, but it has nothing to do with Dmitri.
Today, I stand in the back kitchen of a drive-through burger place called Misha’s, wearing a black cap, a grease-stained apron, and gloves that are too big for my hands.
I hate it here. I hate the heat from the fryers. I hate the smell of oil that clings to my hair no matter how many times I wash it in the tiny bathroom upstairs. I hate the way the floor stays slippery even after I mop it. I hate that my feet ache after three hours and my back hurts after five.
Mostly, I hate that I’m bad at it.
“Anna,” Pavel snaps from the grill. “Buns. I need buns.”
I jerk back to attention. “Yes.”
He points with his spatula. “Not those. The toasted ones.”
I reach for the wrong tray again.
He closes his eyes like he’s praying for patience. “No. Those are cold.”
“I know.”
“You clearly don’t.”
I bite the inside of my cheek and move to the right tray.
There was a time, not even a week ago, when men opened car doors for me and waiters remembered my drink order. Now I’m being scolded by a man with onion smell on his shirt because I can’t tell which buns are ready.
The worst part is that he’s right. I don’t know how to do any of this.
I’ve never worked before. Not properly. Not for money. Not because rent depends on it. My life before this was fittings, lunches, salon appointments, charity events, and pretending not to hear my father argue behind closed doors.
I thought I was tired then.
I didn’t know what tired meant.
“Order twelve,” Pavel says. “Two chicken, one double, no pickles.”
I stare at the screen. The words seem to move too quickly.
“Anna.”
“I heard you.”
He gives me a look that says he doubts it.
I assemble the food slowly, carefully, trying not to mess it up. The girl at the drive-through window, Marina, chews gum while taking payments and somehow remembers six orders at once. She’s nineteen and already better at surviving than I am.
She glances back at me. “You’re holding the line.”
My face heats. “I’m trying.”
“I can see that.”
It isn’t cruel. Somehow that makes it worse.
I lower my head and keep working.
That’s my rule now. Keep my head down. Stay in the kitchen.
Don’t go near the front counter.
Don’t look too long at customers.
Don’t say my real name.
A drive-through kitchen is not glamorous, but it’s useful. People here are too busy to ask questions. The manager pays in cash because half the staff has some reason not to be on paper. And from the back, no one can see me unless they come looking.
Still, every time a black car slows near the window, my heart jumps.
Every time the door opens too hard, I think of Dmitri. Or my father. Or the Volkov men.
I don’t know who’s looking for me.
That’s almost worse than knowing.
At the end of the lunch rush, Pavel finally lets me take ten minutes. I go outside through the back door and sit on an overturned crate in the alley. The air is cold enough to sting my face.
Good. It keeps me awake.
My hands smell like salt and oil even through the gloves. I pull them off and stare at my fingers. The skin around my nails is dry. One nail is broken. My manicure, pale pink and perfect on my wedding morning, is ruined now.
I should care more than I do.
From inside the restaurant, I hear Marina laugh at something. A real laugh. Tired, but real.
I wonder what that feels like.
My phone is an old prepaid one I bought from a kiosk on the second day. I keep it off most of the time. I turn it on only when I need to check the time or see if there are messages from unknown numbers.
There are none.
I press my palms hard against my eyes until the tears go away.
No crying. Not here. Not in an alley that smells like garbage and frying oil.
I reach into the inside seam of my coat and loosen the thread with shaking fingers. The ring slides into my palm.
It looks absurd here.
I remember Yaromir looking at it at the restaurant, the brief hardening of his face. At the time, I thought he was judging me. Maybe he was. Maybe he looked at me and saw exactly what I was: a pretty, useless girl wearing a powerful family’s name before she had earned anything.
The memory should embarrass me.
It does. But it also warms something low in my stomach, and I hate myself for that.
Even now, filthy and exhausted, I can remember the smell of him in that corridor. Smoke. cedar. cold air. His silver-threaded hair. The scar down his face. The way his eyes had moved over me without flattery.
I close my fist around the ring. “Stupid,” I whisper to myself.
The back door opens. I shove the ring into my pocket so fast my knuckles scrape the zipper.
Marina steps out, smoke already between her fingers. “Break’s over in two.”
“I know.”
She leans against the wall beside me and lights the cigarette. Her eyes slide over my face. “You want to make extra money tonight?”
I look at her. “Doing what?”
She flicks ash into the alley like the question is boring. “Club shift. Nothing dramatic. You stand around, look pretty, smile at men with too much cash, make them order bottles. You get tips.”
I should say no.
Every reasonable part of me knows I should say no. I’ve already worked nine hours, my feet hurt, and my hair smells like oil. The last thing I should do is walk into a club full of strangers when I’m trying not to be found.
But then I think of the money hidden under my mattress. How little there is. How quickly it disappears.
“How much?” I ask.
Marina’s mouth tilts slightly, like she expected that. “Depends how pretty you are.”
I almost laugh. “That’s the one thing I know how to be.”
She looks me over, not unkindly. “Then come after closing.”
That’s how, three hours later, I end up in the back room of a club called Venera, standing under a flickering light while a woman named Oksana throws a black dress at me and tells me to change.
The dress is not really a dress. It’s tight black fabric with straps too thin to be useful and a hem that barely reaches the tops of my thighs. The material clings to my body in a way that makes me want to keep pulling at it, but every time I tug it down, the neckline moves lower.
“I can’t wear this,” I say.
Oksana looks me up and down while chewing gum. “Then you can’t work.”
Beside me, Marina is already changing into something red, rolling her eyes as she steps into heels. “Just put it on. No one’s asking you to marry it.”
That makes my chest tighten in a way I don’t expect.
Marina notices immediately. “Sorry,” she says, quieter.
“It’s fine.”
It isn’t, but I change anyway.
There are two other girls in the room. Nika, who has short black hair and silver glitter across her eyelids, and Polina, who looks younger than me but moves with the tired confidence of someone who has already seen too much.
They both glance at me with mild curiosity, then return to fixing their makeup.
No one asks who I am. No one asks why I’m here.
That’s becoming one of my favorite things about poor places.
Marina steps behind me and zips the dress up. “Listen to me.”
“I’m listening.”
“You smile. You laugh when they say something stupid. You get them to buy drinks and bottles, but you don’t drink anything they hand you unless you see it poured.”
“I know that.”
“You don’t know anything,” she says flatly. “You’re rich-girl pretty. They’ll notice.”
“I’m not rich.”
“Right,” she says drily.
I look away.
She catches my chin and turns my face back. “Be friendly, but not friendly enough. Make them feel interesting, not entitled. If a man touches you, move away like it was an accident. If he keeps doing it, come find me.”
I nod. I think I understand. After all, haven’t I done some version of this my whole life?
Smile at men. Let them believe they are clever. Make people feel important without giving them anything real. I know how to sit at expensive tables and laugh at the right moments. I know how to make men soften when they look at me.