9. Anya
ANYA
I don’t go back to the room above the pharmacy.
I can’t. Not with blood on my dress, one heel missing, and the shape of a dead man still burned behind my eyes.
For almost an hour, I walk without knowing where I’m going. My feet hurt so badly that pain becomes background noise. The city is colder at night than I expect. Wind cuts through the thin dress Marina gave me, and every passing car makes me flinch.
At some point, I find a small hotel near the station.
Not a good hotel. Not even a decent one. The sign outside flickers. The lobby smells like bleach, old smoke, and wet coats. A man behind the counter looks me over once and decides what I am before I even speak.
“Room please,” I finally say.
“Are you expecting someone?” he asks, giving me a once-over again.
Short dress. Smudged makeup. Loose hair. Cash in hand.
He thinks I’m a hooker.
A week ago, that would have shattered me. Tonight, I don’t care.
“Room,” I repeat.
His eyes drop briefly to the red marks on my dress.
He notices, but men like him are paid not to ask questions, and I have enough cash from the tips at Venera to buy his silence for one night.
He slides a key across the counter. “Top floor. End of the hall.”
I take it.
The room is small and damp, with faded wallpaper, one narrow bed, and curtains that don’t close all the way. The bathroom light buzzes when I turn it on. There’s a crack in the mirror running through my reflection, splitting my face in two.
I stare at myself for a long time.
There’s blood on my thigh. Blood on the hem of the dress. A few small drops near my hip. Not mine. My stomach turns, but there’s nothing left in it.
I scrub at my skin in the sink until it hurts. The water turns faintly pink, then clear. The dress is ruined, but I rinse the worst of it and hang it over the shower rail. Then I sit on the edge of the bed in my underwear and shake. I press both hands over my mouth to keep from making noise.
I should call someone. But who?
My father would drag me home and hand me back to the Volkovs if it saved him from embarrassment. Dmitri would make everything about himself. Marina might help, but I don’t have her number, and I don’t know if going back near Venera is safe.
So I crawl into bed with damp hair, bruised feet, and a chair shoved under the door handle.
I tell myself I will not sleep.
I do.
The nightmare starts in the hallway.
I’m back under the flickering light. The walls are wet. The floor is sticky beneath my bare feet. Music pounds somewhere far away, too slow and too deep, like a heart beating under the building.
Leonid is there. On his knees.
“You bitch,” he says.
Blood spills from his mouth when he smiles.
I try to move, but my legs won’t obey me. My breath catches. My hands are empty. I know what comes next, but I can’t stop it.
Then the shot cracks through the hallway.
Leonid falls, and the blood spreads toward my feet, dark and endless.
I look up.
The man stands at the far end of the corridor, half swallowed by shadow.
I can’t see him clearly. Only the gun. The coat. The flash of a scar. Dark eyes watching me like he has been watching for much longer than I know.
I should be afraid.
I am afraid.
But the dream shifts. The hallway becomes quieter. Warmer. The music fades until all I hear is my breathing. The man steps closer, and the air changes with him.
Smoke. Cedar. Cold night air.
My pulse trips.
No.
I know that scent.
The scar comes into vision in the flickering light. The eyes become familiar. Not fully, not logically, but my body understands before my mind does.
Yaromir.
He says nothing. He only looks at me.
In the dream, I’m not wearing the black dress anymore. I’m in my wedding gown again, white silk dragging through blood. My veil hangs loose down my back. My hands tremble at my sides.
He comes close enough that I have to tilt my head back.
I should run. Instead, I stand there and let him look.
His gaze drops over me slowly, not polite, not soft. It moves over my throat, my mouth, the rise and fall of my chest. Wherever his eyes go, heat follows.
“You’re shaking,” he says. His voice is low, rough enough to brush against something inside me.
“I’m scared,” I whisper.
His hand lifts. I think he will touch my face, but he doesn’t. His fingers stop near my jaw, close enough that I feel the warmth of him without contact.
“Not only scared.”
The words go through me like a secret. My body reacts so strongly I almost whimper in the dream. Heat gathers low in my stomach, spreading between my thighs with a force that frightens me because I don’t know what to do with it.
I’ve never felt this way with Dmitri.
Not once.
Dmitri tried. A few times, in private, when he was impatient and I was embarrassed and both of us pretended it was romantic.
His hands moved over me like he was searching for proof of something.
I lay there trying to want it, trying to become the woman I was supposed to be, but all I felt was pressure, confusion, and the growing certainty that something in me was wrong.
I tried alone too. Once.
Then again, months later. Fingers under the sheets, face burning with shame, trying to chase the thing other women whispered about like it was easy. I never found it. I only felt silly and unfinished.
But now, in this dream, Yaromir has not even touched me. And I’m already aching.
He leans closer. The scar on his face is inches from mine. His breath warms my lips. My hands rise before I decide to move, gripping the front of his shirt, holding him there.
“Tell me to go,” he says.
I don’t.
I can’t.
His mouth brushes my jaw, and the sound that leaves me is so needy I don’t recognize it as mine. My knees weaken. His arm comes around my waist, hard and steady, pulling me against him before I can fall.
The dream turns feverish after that.
His mouth on my neck. His hand sliding over my waist. My body arching into his like it has been waiting for permission. There’s no awkwardness. No careful politeness. No pressure to perform. Only heat, deep and terrifying, building so quickly I can’t breathe around it.
“Yaromir,” I gasp.
He holds me tighter. The pleasure breaks through me so suddenly that I wake with a sharp cry.
For a second, I don’t know where I am.
The room is dark. The curtains are half-open. A car passes outside, throwing light across the cracked ceiling. I lie frozen under the thin blanket, chest heaving, thighs pressed together, my whole body pulsing with aftershocks I don’t understand.
Then I realize.
Oh God.
My face goes hot.
I’m wet. Not just warm or restless. Wet in a way that makes shame and wonder crash together until I don’t know which one is stronger.
I press a trembling hand over my mouth.
I’ve never orgasmed before. Not with Dmitri. Not by myself.
Never.
And now it happens in a filthy hotel bed after a nightmare about blood and a man with a scar.
I stare into the darkness, breathing hard. My body still feels open somehow. Awake. Betraying me. Like it has discovered a language the rest of me doesn’t know how to speak.
I should be horrified. I am horrified. But underneath that, buried deep where I don’t want to look, is something worse.
I want the dream back.
In the morning, someone knocks on my door.
At first, I think I dreamed it.
I’m lying on my side under a thin blanket that smells faintly of detergent and cigarettes, my hair still damp at the ends, my body heavy from the kind of sleep that doesn’t feel like rest. Gray light slips through the gap in the curtains.
Outside, somewhere below, a truck reverses with a shrill beep.
Then the knock comes again. Three hard hits.
My eyes open, and for a second, I don’t move.
No one knows I’m here.
That’s my first thought.
No one is supposed to know I’m here.
My heart begins to beat faster. I sit up slowly, pulling the blanket to my chest even though I’m alone.
The black dress from last night hangs over the bathroom door, stiff in places where the blood didn’t wash out completely.
My shoes are gone. My money is tucked under the mattress.
The chair is still wedged under the handle.
Another knock.
“Open the door.”
My whole body goes cold.
My father.
I don’t breathe. I don’t blink. For one ridiculous second, I think if I stay completely still, he might go away.
“Anya,” he says.
I climb out of bed, legs weak beneath me. I pull on my coat over the underwear I slept in, then move toward the door as quietly as possible.
“How did you find me?” I ask.
“Open the door.”
“No.”
His pause is short. “Don’t make this uglier than it already is.”
A laugh almost escapes me.
As if I’m the one who ruined everything.
I look around the room, searching for something I can use, but there’s nothing. A cracked lamp. A glass ashtray. A chair under the door. My old life trained me for dinner tables and smiling through insults. It didn’t train me for this.
“Go away,” I say.
“Open the door, Anya.”
“Why? So you can drag me back?”
No answer. That tells me enough.
My fingers tremble as I remove the chair from under the handle. I don’t know why I do it. Maybe because some childish part of me still believes he won’t hurt me if he sees my face.
I unlock the door, but only enough to pull it open a few inches.
He stands in the hallway in a dark overcoat, freshly shaved, hair combed neatly back. He looks too polished for this place. Too clean against the stained carpet and peeling wallpaper.
His eyes travel over me. My messy hair. My bare legs. The coat clutched around my body. Something passes across his face, but it’s gone too quickly to be concern.
I try to close the door, but he moves faster. His palm hits the wood and pushes it open hard enough that I stumble backward.
“Stop,” I snap.
He steps inside and shuts the door behind him.
Suddenly the room feels half its size.
I back away from him, panic rising in my throat. “Get out.”
“Lower your voice.”
“No.”
“Anya.”
“No.” My voice breaks, and I hate that too. “I’m not going back to the Volkovs.”
Sergei’s jaw tightens. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”