13. Anya
ANYA
When Yaromir returns with his aunt, something has changed.
Not visibly. Not in any way I could explain to someone else without sounding foolish.
His shirt is still perfectly buttoned, his expression still controlled, his scar still cutting down his face like a warning.
Larisa walks beside him with her cane in one hand and that cold, elegant posture that makes every room feel like it has suddenly failed inspection.
But Yaromir is different. Colder. More distant than he was before he left.
At lunch, he watched me closely, yes, but there was something almost protective in it. When Larisa questioned me, his silence felt like restraint, not abandonment. Now when his gaze touches mine, it doesn’t stay. It passes over me and moves on.
I don’t like how much I notice.
Alexei is still seated across from me, telling me a story about a man who once tried to bribe Yaromir with a racehorse.
“A terrible horse,” Alexei says, leaning back in his chair. “Ugly animal. Bit three men, kicked a fourth, and tried to jump a wall too high for its own good.”
“What happened to it?” I ask.
“To the horse?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Yaromir kept it.”
I look at Yaromir before I can stop myself.
He’s pouring water into his glass. “It had spirit.”
Alexei grins. “It had criminal tendencies.”
“That too.”
For a second, I almost smile.
Then Yaromir’s eyes meet mine, and the almost-smile dies.
Because whatever was there in his study, whatever dangerous honesty made me say yes to him, is hidden now behind something harder. I can’t tell if I’ve done something wrong or if he has simply remembered who he’s supposed to be.
Larisa sits. “You were discussing horses?” she asks.
“Yaromir’s excellent judgment,” Alexei says.
“Then you were discussing fiction.”
Alexei presses a hand to his chest. “You wound me.”
“Not deeply enough.”
I look down at my plate to hide my reaction.
I don’t like his aunt.
It’s not only that she’s rude. Galina was rude. Dmitri’s mother could cut a woman open with a compliment and smile while doing it. Larisa is different. She doesn’t bother to disguise the knife.
Every time she looks at me, I feel assessed. Not as a person. As a tool someone has left on the table.
Worse, I think she dislikes me, and I don’t understand why. We met less than an hour ago. I have done nothing to her except marry her nephew, and somehow that seems to be enough.
Lunch ends with coffee I barely drink and questions I answer because refusing would make me look weak. Larisa asks what I studied, what my father taught me, what I know about household accounts, whether I have ever managed staff. Some answers make her mouth tighten. Others make her look bored.
Yaromir says very little.
That bothers me more than Larisa’s questions.
When the meal finally ends, I feel as if I have survived an interview for a position I never applied for.
Alexei stands first and offers me his arm with exaggerated formality. “Since your husband has apparently forgotten how to host, allow me to give you the grand tour.”
Yaromir looks up.
Alexei’s smile becomes brighter, which tells me he knows exactly what he’s doing.
“A tour?” I ask.
“Yes. Every newly acquired Volkov should be shown where the exits are.”
Larisa makes a small sound that might be approval or disgust.
I glance at Yaromir. His expression is unreadable, but his eyes have gone flat.
“That won’t be necessary,” he says.
Alexei keeps his arm extended. “Come now. She should know the house. Unless you plan to keep your wife locked in one wing like a tragic Gothic heroine.”
Yaromir sets his glass down. “Careful.”
The word is quiet. It changes the air.
Alexei, to his credit, does not flinch. He only looks at me and lowers his voice as if sharing a secret. “He hates when I’m charming.”
“Are you being charming?” I ask.
“I’m devastated you have to ask.”
That time, I do smile. Only a little, but I see Yaromir notice. His jaw tightens.
A strange little satisfaction moves through me. Not because I want Alexei. I don’t. He’s handsome in a careless, cheerful way, and he knows it. But he doesn’t make my skin go hot and my thoughts scatter.
Yaromir does.
Unfortunately.
Still, if he wants to sit there like a stone statue and pretend he didn’t have me shaking on his desk three days ago, he can watch me smile at someone else.
I take Alexei’s arm. “Show me the house.”
Alexei’s grin turns victorious.
Yaromir stands. “I’ll do it.”
Alexei looks between us, amused. “Ah. Host duties remembered.”
“Leave,” Yaromir says.
“Gladly.” Alexei lets go of my arm, then bows slightly toward me. “Madam. If you ever require a tour conducted by someone with personality, I remain available.”
Yaromir’s voice hardens. “Alexei.”
“I’m leaving.”
He does, still smiling.
I watch him go, then turn back to my husband.
Husband.
The word still feels strange inside me.
Yaromir is looking at me now, properly this time. His eyes move from my face to the place where Alexei’s hand had rested over mine.
“You glare very well,” I say.
“I wasn’t glaring.”
“You were.”
“You enjoy provoking me?”
“I’m learning.”
For half a second, something sparks in his eyes.
Then it’s gone.
He gestures toward the door. “Come.”
The tour is brief, because Yaromir doesn’t talk much unless there’s a reason. He shows me the main hall, the west sitting room, the library, the winter room with its glass ceiling, the back corridor that leads to the garden, and the locked doors I’m not supposed to open.
He doesn’t say I’m forbidden. He simply says, “Not those.”
Which is probably worse.
The house is beautiful, but it’s not soft. Everything is dark wood, stone, iron, leather, old portraits. It feels like a place built to outlast people, not comfort them.
“Have you always lived here?” I ask.
Yaromir’s steps slow. Not enough for someone else to notice, maybe. But I’m watching him too closely now. I see the change. His face gives away nothing, but something in him closes. The little space he had allowed between us during the tour disappears.
“No,” he says.
I wait, but he says nothing else.
I look toward the tall windows at the end of the landing. Outside, the grounds stretch into dark green trees and gray stone paths.
“It doesn’t look like the main Volkov estate.”
“It isn’t.”
“Then whose was it?”
“A man named Belov.”
The name means nothing to me.
Yaromir keeps walking, so I follow.
“He was close to my father once,” he says. “Close enough to be trusted. Stupid enough to think trust meant ownership.”
I look at him carefully. His voice is calm, but it’s too calm.
“What happened?”
“He took something that belonged to my mother.”
The sentence sits between us.
I think of the ring. The way he looked at it the first day at the pier. The coldness in his face when he saw it on my hand.
“What did he take?” I ask.
“This house.”
I stop looking at the walls and really see them. The size of the place. The old money in it. The careful restoration. The silence.
“This was your mother’s house?”
“It should have been.”
Yaromir pauses near a window overlooking the back garden. Below, the trees bend slightly in the wind. His reflection is faint in the glass, scarred and still.
“She grew up here,” he says. “Before my father. Before the Volkov name meant anything to her. Her family had money once. Not power, but enough. When she became inconvenient, this house became one of the things men decided she no longer needed.”
I don’t speak.
I suddenly feel as if the walls are listening.
“Belov helped make that happen,” Yaromir continues. “He moved his family in after she was gone. Wife, sons, grandchildren. They lived here for fifteen years.”
“And you bought it from him?”
Yaromir turns his head slightly. “No.”
A small chill moves down my back.
He says it so plainly.
No.
Not with pride. Not with shame. Just fact.
“I bought his debt,” he says. “All of it. Quietly. Every loan, every favor, every unpaid shipment, every account he thought was hidden under another man’s name. Then I waited.”
“For what?”
“For him to feel safe.”
I stare at him.
His face remains unreadable.
“He threw a birthday party here for his youngest grandson,” Yaromir says. “A magician. A pony in the garden. Imported cake. The kind of ridiculous performance men arrange when they are trying to convince everyone they have not lost control.”
The more calmly he speaks, the worse the story feels.
“At midnight, after the guests had gone, I came with the papers. He didn’t leave.”
I know what’s coming next but I can’t help but ask. “Then?”
“I collected my debt,” he says simply.
I see it in his face. The stillness. The lack of apology.
“You killed him,” I whisper.
“Yes.”
I stare at him, unable to look away.
“He lived fifteen years in a house that belonged to my mother,” Yaromir says. “Fifteen years because he thought the boy she left behind would never become man enough to take it back. When I came for what was owed, he reached for a gun.”
“And you killed him.”
“I killed him before he could use it.”
My hand tightens on the banister. The house feels different now. The polished floors. The heavy curtains. The old portraits. The silence.
Not just beautiful. Paid for in blood.
“Does that frighten you?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
I hate the answer. I hate that he doesn’t soften it.
“You wanted to scare me?”
“No,” he says. “I want you to understand where you are, who you now belong to. I assume you’ve heard stories about me.
They’re not lies. I didn’t grow up in luxury, Anya.
I grew up learning that men only return what they stole when they are forced to.
So I learned the language myself, mastered it even. ”
The words make something cold crawl over my skin.
I thought I was marrying a dangerous man. Now I understand that was too simple.
Yaromir Volkov is not dangerous because he loses control.
He’s dangerous because he doesn’t.