33. Anya
ANYA
I’m dancing with Yaromir.
We’re somewhere warm. The room is filled with golden light, though I can’t see where it comes from. There’s music, low and slow, and Yaromir’s hand is firm at my waist. He wears black, of course. He always does. But his face is different here. Softer around the eyes. Less guarded.
He looks almost happy.
The sight of it makes my chest ache.
“You’re staring,” he says.
I smile. “You do it all the time.”
“I’m allowed.”
“Why?”
“Because you are my wife.”
The words should make me roll my eyes. Instead, in the dream, they make me laugh. A real laugh.
His mouth curves, and there it is again, that rare almost-smile I have started collecting like stolen jewelry.
He turns me slowly, his hand never leaving me. I’m wearing something pale, almost white, but not a wedding dress. There are flowers in my hair, I think. Or maybe the light only feels like flowers.
I don’t care.
I’m happy.
I’m happy with him.
The music shifts. I step closer. His hand spreads against my back, and he looks down at me like there is no war, no Volkov name, no blood waiting outside the door.
Only us.
I rise on my toes. “I need to tell you something,” I whisper.
His eyes roam over my face, as if memorizing my face. “What?”
My heart beats fast, but not from fear. From the size of the truth.
“I love?—”
The music stops. The warmth drains out of the room.
Yaromir’s hand disappears from my waist.
The floor beneath me turns slick and cold.
I look down. Water runs around my feet.
Not a ballroom.
The river.
I’m back at the canal, standing near the old warehouse, the sky gray above me, my coat heavy with water. The air smells of rust, mud, and blood.
My hand goes to my stomach.
No. Not here.
I turn, searching for Yaromir, but he’s gone.
Someone stands near the river wall instead.
Katya.
She wears the silver dress from the auction, but the hem is wet and dark. Her hair hangs loose around her pale face. She looks at me with wide, frightened eyes, nothing like the woman who smiled beside Dmitri.
“Katya?” I say.
She opens her mouth. No sound comes out.
The wind lifts around us. The river moves behind her, black and slow.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
She tries again, lips trembling.
I step closer. “What?”
Her eyes move over my shoulder. Terror fills her face.
I turn.
A gunshot cracks through the air.
I wake screaming.
My body jerks so hard pain tears through my side. I try to sit up, but something pulls at my arm, and hands come down on my shoulders.
“Anya. Anya, stop. You’re safe.”
I fight anyway. I don’t know where I am. I only know there are lights above me, too bright, and something tight around my wrist, and the smell is wrong.
“No,” I gasp. “No, I have to?—”
“You’re in the hospital,” a woman says firmly. “You’re safe. Please don’t move like that. You’ll hurt yourself.”
I blink until her face comes into focus.
A nurse. She has dark blonde hair pinned under a cap, tired eyes, and a calm voice that sounds practiced without being cold. One hand rests on my shoulder, the other near the IV taped to my arm.
My mouth is dry. My throat burns.
“Where am I?”
“City General. Emergency surgical ward.”
I stare at her while my mind fills in the gaps.
My hand flies to my stomach.
The nurse sees the movement immediately.
“My baby,” I say. The words come out broken.
Her face softens. “The baby is okay.”
For a moment, I don’t understand.
Air leaves me in a sob. I cover my stomach with both hands, or try to. One arm is heavy with the IV, and my side screams when I move, but I don’t care. Tears rush into my eyes before I can stop them. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she says. “The doctor checked. You’re very early, but for now, everything looks stable.”
For now.
The words frighten me, but I hold on to the first part.
The baby is okay.
I close my eyes.
Thank God.
Yaromir.
My eyes fly open again. “My husband.”
The nurse glances toward the door.
“Has he been here?” I ask.
“I don’t know, sweetheart. You came in without identification at first. The police were contacted, and hospital administration is trying to reach your family.”
“No.” Panic rises again. “No, you need to call him. Yaromir Volkov.”
The nurse’s expression changes. Only slightly.
Everyone reacts to that name. Even people who pretend not to know it.
“I’ll inform the doctor,” she says.
“No, now.” I try to sit up again, and pain flashes white-hot through my side. A cry tears from my throat.
The nurse presses me back gently but firmly. “You can’t get up.”
“I need to find him.”
“You need to stay in bed.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand that you were pulled from a canal with a gunshot wound, hypothermia, and water in your lungs.” Her voice stays calm, but sharper now.
“You were extremely lucky. The bullet passed through soft tissue along your side. It missed anything major. You have bruising, a mild concussion, and some water inhalation. You are not walking out of here.”
I look down at myself for the first time.
I’m in a hospital gown. There’s a thick bandage wrapped around my side beneath it. My arms are bruised. There are scratches along my wrist and a dark mark where Dmitri grabbed me.
My ring is gone.
My throat tightens.
“He’ll think I’m dead,” I whisper.
The nurse pauses. “What?”
“My husband. He’ll find the blood. The river. My ring.” My breathing speeds up again. “He’ll think I’m dead.”
“Anya, breathe slowly.”
“You don’t understand what he’ll do.”
The nurse’s expression is grim. “We’ll do our best to contact him. Just stay calm,” she says firmly, leaving the room.
I fall asleep with my hand on my stomach.
Not because I want to. I try to stay awake. I try to listen for footsteps, for the nurse, for someone to come back and tell me they’ve called Yaromir, that he knows I’m alive, that he’s on his way.
But my body has other plans.
Pain, fear, cold, blood loss, the river. They pull me down before I can fight properly.
When I wake, the room is darker.
The lights are dimmed. The monitor beside me beeps steadily. My throat is dry, and my side aches with a deep, heavy pulse beneath the bandages.
For a moment, I think I’m alone.
Then I see the man standing beside my bed.
I jerk upright too fast. Pain tears through me, and I gasp, grabbing my side.
“Easy,” he says.
Viktor.
For one confused second, I just stare at him.
He looks exhausted. His coat is wet at the shoulders, his hair slightly disordered, his face harder than usual. But it’s him. Solid, familiar, alive.
Relief hits so hard I almost cry.
“Viktor?”
“Yes.”
“How did you?—”
“I’ve been looking for you since the south canal.”
Everything comes back in a rush.
I reach for him before I think about it.
Viktor stills when I wrap my arms around him. He’s not a man made for comfort, not like this, but after a second his hand comes carefully to my back, avoiding the bandage.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
I pull back, wiping at my face quickly. “Yaromir?”
Viktor’s expression changes.
My relief disappears. “What?” I ask.
He looks toward the door, then back at me. “Tell me what happened.”
“Where is he?”
“Anya.”
“Tell me where my husband is.”
His jaw tightens. “Planning to tear down the Volkov house.”
My blood goes cold. “No.”
“He thinks you’re dead.”
“No.” I try to sit up again, slower this time, but the pain still claws through me. “Did the hospital call him?”
“No.”
“Then how did you find me?”
His face tightens. That small hesitation makes my stomach turn.
“Viktor.”
“A body was found near the canal.”
For a second, the room goes soundless. The monitor beside my bed keeps beeping, but it feels far away now. My hand moves to my stomach beneath the blanket.
“A body?” I whisper.
“Yes.”
“Does he think it’s me?” I ask.
“Yes, unfortunately,” Viktor says. “I’ve been looking for you for hours, I turned all the hospitals in the county upside down.”
“Why didn’t Yaromir go?”
“Because he’s done looking for proof. He found your ring and blood near the water. In his mind, that was enough.”
My eyes burn.
My ring. He found my ring.
Of course he thinks I’m dead.
“Who was it?” I ask.
Viktor’s jaw works once. “Katya.”
The name hits like another gunshot.
I stop breathing.
For a moment, I’m not in the hospital bed anymore. I’m back by the river in my dream. Gray water. Wet stone. Katya in her silver dress, pale and afraid, trying to speak but unable to make sound. Her eyes moving over my shoulder.
Then the gunshot.
I press a hand to my mouth. “No.”
Viktor watches me closely. “You knew?”
“I dreamed it.”
The words sound insane as soon as I say them.
“I saw her by the river. She was trying to tell me something. Then there was a shot.” My throat tightens. “I thought it was just the nightmare mixing everything together.”
“Maybe it was.”
“No.” I shake my head, and the room tilts slightly.
“No, she was there. Or she knew something. Dmitri said run, then he shot me. But before that…” I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing myself back into the warehouse.
“Was someone else there?” I can’t remember.
“But Katya…” I open my eyes. “Katya is dead?”
“Yes.”
The answer is quiet. Final.
I should feel something. Satisfaction, maybe. Justice. She betrayed me. She smiled beside Dmitri. She stood in my wedding photographs knowing what she had done.
But all I feel is sick.
Now she’s a body by the canal.
Because of Dmitri?
Because of me?
Because everything around the Volkovs turns bloody eventually?
“I don’t understand,” I whisper.
“Neither do I. Not yet.”
“Did Dmitri kill her?”
“We don’t know.”
“But Yaromir thinks I’m dead, Katya is dead, and he’s going after his father’s house.”
“Yes.”
The word settles over the room like smoke.
I grip the blanket. “He’ll kill Dmitri.”
“That is almost certainly the plan.”
“And Kirill?”
“If Kirill is protecting Dmitri, yes.”
My side throbs. My head swims. The nurse’s words come back to me. You were extremely lucky. The baby is okay. You can’t leave this hospital.
But Yaromir doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know I’m alive. He doesn’t know about the baby. He doesn’t know Dmitri kissed me, that I pushed him away, that I ran, that I tried to get back to him.
He’s walking into that house carrying my death inside him.
I try to pull the blanket off.
Viktor stops me. “Anya.”
“I have to go.”
“I know.”
I look up at him. For a moment, I forget the pain.
“You know?”
“Yes. That’s why I came.”
The door opens, and the nurse from earlier steps inside.
She takes one look at Viktor, then at me trying to sit up, and her face hardens. “Absolutely not.”
“I have to leave,” I say.
“You were shot.”
“I know.”
“You nearly drowned.”
“I know.”
“You’re pregnant.”
Viktor goes still beside me.
Hearing it aloud makes the truth feel larger.
The nurse points at me. “And you’re not going anywhere.”
“My husband thinks I’m dead.”
She pauses. “Then we call him.”
“He’s not answering,” Viktor says.
“Then we call the police.”
That almost makes me laugh. It comes out broken. “The police won’t stop him.”
The nurse looks between us, and I can see the moment she understands this is not a normal marriage, not a normal family, not a normal night. Her face changes, fear slipping in around the edges of her professionalism.
“What will happen if you don’t go?” she asks.
Viktor answers for me. “People will die.”
I look down at my stomach. “And if I do go?”
The nurse’s expression softens despite herself. “You could reopen the wound. You could faint. You could put yourself and the pregnancy under stress you don’t need.”
I close my eyes, and I see the truth so clearly.
I open my eyes. “Help me.”
The nurse looks like she wants to refuse.
She looks at Viktor. Then at my stomach. Then back at me.
“This is a terrible idea,” she says.
“I know.”
“If you start bleeding, you come back immediately.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She mutters something under her breath and moves to the IV. Her hands are quick and careful as she removes it, tapes the spot, checks the bandage at my side, and helps me sit upright properly.
The pain is bad.
Not unbearable. But bad enough that my vision blurs for a second.
Viktor sees it. “We can still send someone else.”
“No.”
“Anya.”
“He needs to see me.”
Neither of them argues with that.
Ten minutes later, I’m in a wheelchair with a hospital coat over my gown, a blanket over my lap, and a scarf wrapped around my hair. I look like a patient being taken for tests. I feel like a body held together by bandages, fear, and one decision.
Viktor pushes the chair toward the door.
The nurse walks ahead with a clipboard.
We move through the corridor slowly. Too slowly.
The hospital lights are harsh, making everything too white, too clean.
Somewhere, a child cries. Somewhere else, a man coughs wetly behind a curtain.
Normal suffering, ordinary suffering, while outside this building my husband is preparing to bring war to his father’s door.
At the nurses’ station, a young doctor looks up. “Where are you taking her?”
“Radiology,” the nurse says without blinking.
“At this hour?”
The nurse just shrugs, not giving her a response.
Viktor pushes me forward. At the far end of the hallway, a side exit waits.
Beyond that, a car.
Beyond that, Yaromir.
I close my eyes for one second. I see him dancing with me in golden light.
I hear the gunshot.
Then I open my eyes.
I’m coming, Yaromir.