9. Anya #2
“I know enough.”
“You know nothing.”
“I know Dmitri had his hands on Katya an hour before he was supposed to marry me.”
His face changes.
Not with shock. With irritation.
He knew. Maybe not about Katya specifically, maybe not exactly, but he knew enough. He knew the kind of man Dmitri was. He knew what I would be expected to swallow.
The room tilts for a moment.
I stare at him. “You knew.”
“Men like Dmitri have weaknesses.”
“He was cheating on me.”
“And you think you’re the first woman in history to discover that before a wedding?”
I step back until my legs hit the bed. “I hate you.”
His eyes harden. “You are alive because of me.”
“No,” I say. “I’m trapped because of you.”
He moves toward me, and I grab the ashtray from the nightstand. “Don’t come closer.”
He stops.
For a second, we stare at each other.
I can see the calculation in his eyes. Not fear. He doesn’t think I’ll use it. He’s probably right, which makes me hate myself more.
“You have embarrassed powerful people,” he says.
“I was embarrassed first.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
“Then you are still a child.”
The ashtray feels heavy in my hand. My fingers ache around it.
“I won’t go back,” I say. “I won’t marry Dmitri. I don’t care what you say. I don’t care what he says. I don’t care what anyone does.”
“I’m not taking you back to Dmitri.”
I stop fighting for half a second. Not because I trust him, but because of the way he says it. There’s no anger in his voice now. No impatience. No disgust. For the first time since he forced his way into my hotel room, I see something real in his face.
Fear.
Not the ordinary kind. Not embarrassment, not irritation, not wounded pride.
Real fear.
It sits in his eyes, making him look older than he did five minutes ago. Smaller too. My father, who has spent my whole life pretending the world bends for men like him, is standing in front of me looking like a man who knows exactly how breakable he is.
“Anya,” he says, quieter this time. “I’m in trouble.”
I stare at him.
For one stupid second, I almost laugh.
“You?” I say. “You’re in trouble?”
His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t snap back.
That scares me more.
“Yes.”
I pull my wrist free from his hand. He lets me, which is another warning. Sergei Sokolov doesn’t let go unless he has already realized force will not solve the problem.
“What kind of trouble?”
He looks toward the door, then back at me. “The kind you don’t walk away from.”
My stomach turns cold. I sit slowly on the edge of the bed, because my legs suddenly feel weak. The cheap hotel room seems even smaller now, with the stained curtains, the buzzing bathroom light, the damp black dress hanging over the shower rail.
My father remains standing. For once, he doesn’t look disgusted by the room. He looks trapped in it with me.
“Tell me,” I say.
He rubs a hand over his mouth. “I owe money.”
I stare at him. That’s all?
For a moment, anger comes back so strongly it almost feels like relief.
“You owe money?” I repeat. “That’s why you broke into my room? That’s why you dragged me out of bed?”
“It’s not a small amount.”
“Of course it isn’t,” I say bitterly. “Nothing with you is ever small.”
“Anya.”
“No. Say it properly.” My voice shakes, but I don’t care. “How much?”
He hesitates.
That hesitation tells me everything before he speaks.
“Enough,” he says.
I stand again. “How much?”
His eyes harden with shame. “More than I can pay.”
My throat tightens. I think of the house. The cracked marble. The flickering garden lights. The old furniture polished for guests. The way he always pretended everything was fine while the walls quietly rotted around us.
All this time, I thought he was proud. Maybe he was only desperate.
“To whom?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer.
“Papa.” The word slips out before I can stop it.
His face changes, just slightly. Then he looks away. “To people who lent under Volkov guarantee.”
I go still.
Now I understand why he came.
“No,” I whisper.
“After you ran from the wedding, that guarantee disappeared.”
He looks exhausted now. Not sad. Not sorry enough. But exhausted in the way of a man who has spent days running from doors closing one after another.
“They will kill me unless I pay,” he says.
For a second, all I hear is the traffic outside the hotel window. A horn. A truck passing. Someone shouting from the street below.
They will kill me.
I hate him.
I do. I hate him for bringing me into this.
I hate him for seeing my marriage as a solution before he saw me as his daughter.
I hate him for every time he told me to be quiet, be pretty, be useful.
I hate him for knowing what Dmitri was and still pushing me toward him because the Volkov name could save him.
But I don’t want him dead.
The realization comes quietly, and I hate that too.
“So this is what this is about,” I say.
His shoulders tense.
“You’re not here because you were worried about me. You’re not here because your daughter disappeared for days. You’re not even here because I ran from my own wedding.” My voice cracks, but I keep going. “You’re here because without the Volkovs, they’ll come for you.”
“And you think I don’t know how that sounds?”
“I think you know exactly how it sounds.”
He looks at me then, and the fear in his eyes is still there. Raw. Undignified. Human. “I am not asking you to forgive me,” he says. “I’m asking you to understand that if I don’t find a way to settle this, I will be dead before the week ends.”
My chest feels tight.
I want to tell him good. I want to tell him he earned this. I want to be the kind of daughter who can turn away from a father who tried to sell her comfort for his survival. But when I imagine him dead, really dead, not just punished in some clean emotional way, I feel sick.
He’s still my father.
“What do you want from me?” I ask.
He exhales slowly, like he has been waiting for the question and dreading it at the same time. “I have a proposition.”
I laugh once, empty and sharp. “Of course you do.”
“Listen to me.”
“No. I already listened once. I listened when you told me marrying Dmitri would secure our future. I listened when you said the Volkovs valued loyalty. I listened when you acted like my life becoming a transaction was normal.”
“Anya, please, you have to help me.” Tears roll down his face.
I look away, disgusted.
“All you have to do is get married. It’s a small price to pay for my life.”
I think about Dmitri, how cruel he can be. He’ll never let me be in peace ever again.
There is a point where exhaustion becomes stronger than fear. Where the body gives up before the mind does. I sit on the edge of the hotel bed, staring at my father, and realize I don’t have the strength to keep fighting him in this room.