7. Anya #2
I think I’ve got it.
Then we step into the club, and I realize almost immediately that I don’t.
Venera is not like the places Dmitri took me.
There is no polished marble, no velvet rope pretending to be exclusive, no soft lighting designed to make everyone look expensive.
This place is low-ceilinged and dark, with red bulbs over the bar and smoke hanging thick in the air even though smoking indoors is supposedly not allowed.
The music is too loud. The floor is sticky. The booths are half-hidden in shadow. Men sit around small tables with open collars and heavy watches, their eyes following every girl who passes.
Marina leans close so I can hear her. “Stay near me.”
I nod.
For the first hour, I do exactly that. Marina shows me how to move through the room, how to pause by a table without fully stopping, how to lean in just enough to hear but not enough to invite hands. She introduces me as Anna, and no one questions it.
At one table, a man gives me money just for laughing at a joke I don’t understand.
At another, someone orders champagne because Marina tells him his friends look thirsty and he clearly likes being told he’s generous.
I start to relax. Not completely. But enough.
Maybe I can do this.
Maybe beauty is useful here too, just in a cheaper dress.
Around midnight, Marina gets pulled toward a table near the bar by a regular who keeps calling her “little fox.” She looks annoyed but not worried.
“Stay here,” she tells me. “Don’t wander.”
“I won’t.”
I mean it. But then Nika waves me over from the edge of the dance floor. “Anna, table six wants another bottle. Bring the sparkler.”
“I don’t know where that is.”
“Behind the bar. Ask Sasha.”
By the time I find Sasha, get the bottle, and realize there is no sparkler, Nika is gone. Table six is full of men I don’t recognize. One of them complains that the bottle took too long. Another tells me to smile.
I smile.
It works. For a while.
Then one of them asks where I’m from.
“Here,” I say.
“No,” he says, amused. “Not with that face.”
I laugh because I’m supposed to.
His name is Leonid, or at least that’s what he tells me. He’s maybe forty, with a soft stomach under an expensive shirt and a ring on his smallest finger. His voice is gentle in a way that almost feels kind after the noise of the club.
“You’re new,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Student?”
“No.”
“Runaway?”
My smile falters.
He notices. Of course he notices.
“I’m joking,” he says smoothly. “Relax.”
I laugh again, but this time it feels less convincing.
He orders another bottle. Then another. Each time, he presses money into my hand, folded small. The tips are more than I made all day at Misha’s.
I keep looking for Marina, but I can’t see her through the crowd.
“Your friend left?” Leonid asks.
“She’s around.”
“Good. Friends are important.” His eyes stay on my face. “But you seem like someone who needs better friends.”
There’s something in the sentence I don’t like.
I step back slightly. “I should check on another table.”
He touches my wrist.
Not hard. Just enough.
“Stay. We’re still ordering.”
I glance down at his hand. Marina’s voice comes back to me. If a man touches you, move away like it was an accident.
I gently pull my wrist free and smile. “I’ll come back.”
He lets me go.
For a few seconds, I think that’s the end of it. Then a man near the booth shifts, blocking the gap between me and the room. Not dramatically. Not like in movies. He just happens to stand where I need to pass, drink in hand, smiling like nothing is wrong.
Leonid leans back. “Sit for a minute, Anna.”
“I’m working.”
“You’re working for tips, yes? I’m tipping.”
The men at the table laugh quietly. My skin prickles.
I look toward the bar again. Still no Marina. “I need to find my friend,” I say.
“She’s busy.”
The way he says it makes my stomach tighten.
A waitress passes nearby, and I turn toward her. “Excuse me?—”
She doesn’t stop.
Maybe she doesn’t hear me. Maybe she does.
Leonid stands, and suddenly he’s much closer than before. His kindness is still there on his face, but now I see it properly. It’s not kindness. It’s patience. The kind a person has when they already know how something ends.
“You’re very nervous,” he says. “That’s all right. First nights are difficult.”
“I’m fine.”
“No papers, yes?”
My breath catches before I can stop it.
His eyes brighten faintly.
Stupid.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“There’s no need to be scared,” he says. “Girls like you can make better money than this. Much better. There are private rooms upstairs. Richer men.”
“No.” I say it too quickly.
His expression doesn’t change. “You haven’t heard the offer.”
“I said no.”
The man blocking the gap smiles wider.
Behind Leonid, one of the others takes my empty glass from the table and pushes another drink toward me. I didn’t order it. I didn’t see anyone pour it.
I don’t touch it.
The room seems louder now. The music presses against my ribs. Smoke burns the back of my throat. All those shadowed booths suddenly look like places where girls disappear for ten minutes, twenty minutes, forever, while everyone pretends not to count.
I duck around the man who blocks my exit, and I move away from these men as fast as I can. Only when I turn the corner near the service door do I let myself breathe properly.
That’s the last of it, I tell myself. I’m done.
I don’t care how much money Marina said I could make. I don’t care how badly I need cash. I’m ending this shift, changing out of this awful dress, and never stepping foot inside Venera again.
The club feels different now that I’m frightened. The red lights look uglier. The smoke feels thicker. Men who seemed drunk and harmless an hour ago now look like shadows with teeth. Every laugh makes me flinch.
I look for Marina near the bar, but she isn’t there.
Neither is Nika.
I spot the narrow hallway that leads to the dressing room and head for it, pulling the hem of my dress down as I walk. My heels stick slightly to the floor with every step. Somewhere behind me, the music rises, bass shaking through the walls.
The hallway is almost empty. Too empty.
The noise from the club fades behind me, muffled by the walls. A single bulb flickers above the back exit, throwing weak yellow light over cracked paint and a row of stacked crates. The air smells like spilled beer, cleaning fluid, and damp concrete.
I should turn around.
The thought arrives one second too late.
A hand closes around my upper arm. I spin, but Leonid is already there. His pleasant smile is gone. “You got lost,” he says.
My stomach drops. “Let go of me.”
He doesn’t. His grip tightens until pain shoots up my arm. “You embarrassed me in front of my friends.”
“I said let go.”
He glances toward the end of the hallway, where the exit door waits in darkness. “You’re going to come with me quietly.”
“No.” The word comes out before I can think.
His expression hardens. One hand clamps over my mouth, the other dragging me backward toward the side door.
Panic tears through me. I claw at his wrist, trying to twist away, but he’s much stronger than I am.
My heels scrape against the floor. My shoulder hits the wall hard enough to send pain down my side.
He lowers his mouth near my ear. “Stop fighting.”
I bite his palm.
Leonid curses and yanks his hand back, but he doesn’t release me. I suck in air and scream, but the music swallows most of it.
“Help!”
He shoves me against the wall so hard my head snaps back. For a second, the hallway blurs.
Then I think of the sitting room at the Volkov estate. Dmitri’s hand on Katya’s waist. His voice saying, She’ll be fine. I don’t know why that memory comes back now, but it does. It cuts through the fear and leaves something hot behind.
Rage.
I am so tired of men deciding what I will survive.
Leonid grabs for me again, and this time, I stop trying to pull away. Instead, I drive my knee up between his legs with everything I have.
He makes a horrible, broken sound and drops to his knees, both hands going between his thighs. “You bitch,” he grunts, face twisted with pain.
I stumble backward, gasping, one hand braced against the wall.
Then a gunshot cracks through the hallway. The sound is so loud it punches the air from my lungs.
Leonid jerks once. For a second, he stays upright on his knees, eyes wide with shock.
Then he falls sideways onto the floor.
I scream.
Blood spreads fast beneath him, dark against the concrete. Some of it has splattered across my dress, small red marks on the black fabric and one warm streak across my thigh.
My body locks.
I can’t move. I can’t breathe.
At the far end of the hallway, someone stands half-hidden in shadow. For a second, I catch a glimpse of his face. Not enough to recognize him. Just dark eyes, hard and unreadable, and a pale slash of something down one side of his cheek.
A scar, maybe.
Or maybe it’s only the bad light.
My mind can’t hold on to details. Everything is noise and blood and the smell of gunpowder in the hallway.
He doesn’t speak. Neither do I.
The gun remains at his side, pointed toward the floor now, but that doesn’t make me feel safer. Nothing about him feels safe. He has just shot a man in front of me and stands there like the act cost him nothing.
Another door slams somewhere behind me. Voices rise from the club.
Someone heard.
That breaks me loose. I look down once more at Leonid’s body, at the red stains on my dress, at my shaking hands.
Then I run.
I don’t look back to see if the man follows. I don’t stop when my ankle twists in one of the stupid heels. I tear through the dressing rooms, grab my bag my locker, shove open the first door I find, and stumble into the cold air behind the club.
The alley spins around me.
I keep running.