28. Anya
ANYA
We have lunch outside because I ask for it, and because Yaromir has become worse at saying no to me.
The afternoon is cold but clear, with pale sunlight spread over the back garden and the trees moving softly in the wind. A table has been set near the stone terrace, close enough to the house that the guards don’t look tense, far enough that I can pretend we’re not being watched.
There’s grilled fish, potatoes, warm bread, a salad I mostly ignore, and a bowl of strawberries that Yaromir keeps pushing toward me without saying anything.
“I’m capable of feeding myself,” I tell him.
He cuts into his fish. “I know.”
“Then why do you keep moving food closer?”
“Because you keep eating the strawberries and pretending you aren’t.”
I look down. There are only three left.
I glare at him. “You count fruit now?”
“I count many things.”
“That sounds threatening.”
“It usually is.”
I shouldn’t smile. I do anyway.
The last few weeks have done strange things to us.
Not made us easy. Nothing about Yaromir is easy. He still has men at the gates. He still disappears for hours into meetings that leave his face colder when he returns. He still says no when I ask to leave the estate, though now he explains why before I have to fight it out of him.
But he also brings apples to the stables because he knows I want to see Buran.
He lets me ride even when every line of his body says he wants to pull me down and put me somewhere safer.
He sleeps with one arm around me like a man who has never been taught how to hold something gently but is learning through stubbornness alone.
And sometimes, like now, he sits across from me in the weak sun and looks almost peaceful.
His phone sits beside his plate, screen down. Mine is near my glass. When it buzzes, both of us look at it.
My father’s name lights up the screen.
The moment breaks.
Yaromir’s eyes move from the phone to me. I pick it up and read the text before he can say anything.
Anya. I need your help. Please call me.
I stare at the message until the words blur slightly.
Help. Of course.
Not how are you. Not can we talk. Not I’m sorry.
Help.
Something cold settles in my stomach.
I’ve barely thought about my father over the last few weeks, and I feel guilty for that for one second before anger replaces it.
I spent years thinking about him. Worrying about his moods, his debts, his expectations, his disappointments.
I spent my whole life being useful to him in one way or another.
For the first time, I stopped.
And now he wants money again.
Because that’s what this is. It has to be.
I lock the phone and set it face down.
Yaromir watches me. “What did he say?”
“Nothing important.”
“Anya.”
“He wants help.”
Yaromir’s face changes at once. “What kind of help?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Is this the first message?”
I hesitate.
His eyes narrow.
“No,” I admit. “Third.”
“Show me.”
I look at him. “No.”
His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t reach for the phone. That matters. A few weeks ago, I would have expected him to take it if he wanted it badly enough.
He doesn’t.
“Your father is not harmless,” he says.
“I know that better than anyone.”
“He could be used.”
“I know that too.”
“Then why hide the messages?”
“I’m not hiding them.” My voice shakes a little. “I’m ignoring them.”
The wind moves between us, lifting the edge of the tablecloth. A guard shifts near the hedges, then looks away.
I press my fingers against my glass. “Every time he contacts me, I feel like I’m back in that hotel room. Like I’m barefoot and tired and he’s telling me another version of my life has been sold because he made another mistake.”
Yaromir says nothing.
If he speaks too soon, I might break.
“I don’t want to help him,” I say. “I don’t even want to answer him. And then I hate myself because I still don’t want him dead.”
Yaromir’s expression is unreadable, but his voice is quieter when he answers. “He’s being watched.”
I look up. “By you?”
“Yes.”
“Of course.”
“For your safety.”
“For his too?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
That surprises me. It probably shows.
Yaromir looks mildly offended. “I told you his debt was cleared.”
“That doesn’t mean you like him.”
“No.”
“Or forgive him.”
“No.”
“But you’re keeping him alive.”
“I said I would.”
The simplicity of it makes my throat tight.
Yaromir gives promises like other men give threats. Sparingly, directly, and with the expectation that the world will rearrange itself around them.
I look down at my plate. “I don’t want to call him.”
“Then don’t.”
I glance at him.
He picks up his knife again. “If he needs something real, I will hear about it.”
“And if he only wants money?”
“Then he can want.”
A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it. It feels strange, laughing about my father’s desperation, but not cruel. More like relief.
I push the phone farther away. Then I ask the question that has been sitting in the back of my mind all week.
“Have you heard from Larisa?”
Yaromir stills for a fraction of a second. “No.”
“Nothing?”
“No.”
“Is that normal?”
“With Larisa, silence is usually either judgment or planning.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
I look toward the garden, where the trees cast thin shadows across the lawn. “Do you think she’ll come back?”
“Yes.”
“You sound certain.”
“She rarely leaves a wound alone.”
I turn back to him. “Am I the wound?”
His eyes hold mine. “No.”
The answer comes too quickly to be polite. Too firmly to be meaningless. For some reason, it warms me.
Then his phone rings. Whatever softness was in his face disappears before he even picks it up. He listens for less than ten seconds, then stands. “I have to go.”
I try not to show my disappointment. “Work?”
“Yes.”
“Dangerous work?”
His mouth tightens. “Not today.”
“That’s a vague answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
He comes around the table and bends to kiss my forehead.
The gesture still surprises me. It’s too domestic for him. Too quiet. Too much like something a husband does when leaving his wife after lunch, instead of a mafia boss leaving a guarded estate to deal with men who sometimes try to kill him.
I catch his wrist before he steps away. “Come back.”
His gaze drops to my hand, then returns to my face. “I will.”
Then he leaves.
For a while, I stay outside after he’s gone. I finish the strawberries. Then I feel ridiculous and eat the last piece of bread too, mostly because no one is there to watch me pretend I am above appetite.
The afternoon stretches.
I walk to the stables, but Buran is in a mood and pins his ears back when I approach without Yaromir. I tell him he’s a traitor. He ignores me.
By the time I return to the house, I feel restless in a way I can’t explain. My body is tired, but my mind will not settle. I try to read in the library. The same paragraph stares back at me four times. I try to look through fabric samples for the new dresses. Every shade annoys me.
Then, standing in front of the wardrobe in Yaromir’s room, I realize something.
My period is late.
The thought is so sudden and clear that I sit down on the bed.
No.
I count the days in my head. Then again.
Then once more, slower.
My mouth goes dry. It could be stress. Of course it could.
In the last month, I have run from a wedding, hidden in a city, worked in a kitchen, almost been taken by a man in a club, married Yaromir, fought with his family, been dragged into a war, and learned more about my own body than I knew in twenty-two years.
Stress can do things.
Stress is probably doing things.
Still, I sit there with my hand pressed against my stomach, unable to move.
Pregnant.
The word doesn’t feel real. It feels too large for the room.
I stand too quickly and have to grip the bedpost until the dizziness passes.
No. I need to know.
I go to the door and open it before I can change my mind. Nina is in the hallway, speaking quietly to another maid. She turns immediately when she sees me. “Madam?”
“I need something.”
“Of course.”
My voice drops, though no one is close enough to hear. “A pregnancy test.”
For the first time since I have known her, Nina loses her perfect composure. Only for a second. But I see it. Her eyes widen, then settle.
“Yes, madam.”
“Don’t tell him.”
She pauses.
“Nina.”
“I understand.”
“Please.”
Her expression softens. “I’ll get it myself.”
Waiting is worse than the lockdown. I pace the bedroom until I can’t stand it, then the bathroom, then the bedroom again. My father texts once more, but I don’t open it. I turn the phone over and leave it on the table.
When Nina returns, she has a small paper bag in her hand. “Do you want me to stay?” she asks.
I shake my head. “No.”
She nods and leaves.
I lock the bathroom door. My hands shake so badly I almost drop the box.
The instructions are simple. Too simple for something that might split my life in half. I do what it says, then set the test on the counter and step back as if distance will make the result less powerful.
Three minutes.
I stare at the tiled wall. I think of Yaromir’s face in the morning light. His hand on Buran’s bridle. His mouth at my forehead before he left. His voice saying I will as if the promise itself could keep death away.
I think of Dmitri for one brief second and feel nothing but cold relief that this, if it is true, cannot be his.
My hand moves to my stomach again. “No,” I whisper. “Not now.”
But even as I say it, something in me aches.
The timer on my phone goes off. The sound makes me jump.
I turn slowly. The test lies on the counter, small and white and ordinary.
Two lines.
For a moment, I don’t understand.
Then I do. I pick it up with numb fingers.
Two lines.
Pregnant.
The word opens under my ribs and steals the air from my lungs. I sit down on the edge of the bathtub because my legs will not hold me.
The bathroom is very quiet. Outside, the house continues around me. Footsteps somewhere in the hall. A door closing. Distant voices. The guarded, controlled life of the Volkov estate moving on as if nothing has changed.
But everything has changed.
I’m pregnant.
Yaromir’s child is inside me.
A laugh comes out of me, small and terrified and not really a laugh at all. I press my hand over my mouth, then lower it to my stomach again.
There’s nothing to feel yet. Still, my palm rests there like it knows something the rest of me is only beginning to understand.
I should think of what this means politically. Instead, the first clear thought that comes is much smaller.
Yaromir is going to lose his mind.
And then, because I’m apparently losing mine too, I start to cry.
I close my eyes, and all I can see is his face. The way he looks when he’s angry. The way he looks when he’s trying not to soften. The way he stood in the breakfast room this morning and told me not yet, because the world outside our gates is full of men who might hurt me to reach him.
What will he do when he finds out?
Lock the gates forever?
Put guards outside every door?
Carry me from room to room like I might break?
Or worse, will he look pleased? That thought frightens me more than the others.
Yaromir pleased is not simple. His happiness has teeth. His protection already feels like a wall closing in. A child will turn that wall into a fortress.
I stand too quickly and nearly drop the test into the sink. “Oh God.”
I can’t leave it here. That thought cuts through the panic first. Not the baby. Not the future. Not my husband’s reaction.
The stick.
I look around the bathroom as if someone might already be watching me. Ridiculous. The door is locked. Still, the Volkov house has too many eyes, too many silent maids, too many guards who lower their heads and report everything that matters.
I wrap the test in tissue. Then I wrap it again. Then, because that doesn’t feel like enough, I tuck it into the bottom of an old cosmetics pouch I hardly use and shove that behind a folded stack of towels in the lowest bathroom cabinet.
Not hidden well enough. Nothing in this house feels hidden well enough.
I close the cabinet and stand there, breathing hard.
I need to tell him. Of course I need to tell him.
He’s my husband.
The father.
The man who will burn down half the city if he thinks something threatens what belongs to him. And now, inside me, there is something that belongs to him in a way I’m not ready to understand.
My stomach twists.
I leave the bathroom and start pacing the bedroom. From the window to the bed. From the bed to the wardrobe. From the wardrobe back to the window.
The room looks exactly the same as it did an hour ago. Dark wood. Heavy curtains. His watch on the dresser. My brush on the vanity. His cuff links beside my hairpins, as if our lives have started mixing together without asking permission.
I press both hands to my face.
How do I tell him? Do I wait until he comes home and simply say it?
Yaromir, I’m pregnant.
No. Too abrupt.
I have something to tell you.
Worse. He will immediately think someone is dead.
I sit on the edge of the bed, then stand again. Maybe I should confirm with a doctor first. Tests can be wrong. Stress can make bodies strange. I’ve been through enough stress to ruin three women’s cycles.
But two lines are still two lines.
My phone buzzes on the vanity, and I freeze. For one terrible second, I think it’s Yaromir.
It’s not.
My father. Again.
I don’t open the message.
The anger comes as a relief, because it’s easier than fear. I grab the phone and flip it face down. “Not now,” I say to the empty room.
The phone buzzes again. Then again.
I stare at it.
He has sent me four messages today. Maybe five. I’ve lost count. Every one of them sits unopened, demanding something from me even in silence.
My father always did know how to make need feel like a command.
Then the phone starts ringing. The sound slices through the room.
I stare at his name on the screen.
Sergei Sokolov.
For a moment, I consider throwing the phone across the room. Then I remember I’m pregnant, trapped in a guarded estate, married to a man who is currently somewhere dangerous, and my father has apparently decided this is the perfect day to become unbearable.
I snatch the phone up and answer. “What?” I snap.
Silence. Not long. Just enough for my irritation to turn cold.
Then a man laughs softly on the other end.
My blood stops.
“Hello, Anya.”
The voice is not my father’s.
It’s smoother. Younger. Familiar in a way that makes my skin crawl.
Dmitri.