Katerina #2
The bitterness in his voice is quiet, but I hear it. It makes me glance back at him. For a moment, I wonder who taught him that tone. A father. A brother. A woman. Maybe all three.
I know better than to ask.
Instead, I take another bite of cake, mostly because I need something to do with my mouth that’s not telling him every humiliating detail of my life.
“He came to my room while I was packing,” I say. “The flight was supposed to be in the morning. I had clothes everywhere. My passport was on the vanity. I was trying to decide if a red dress was too much for dinner with his family.”
Roman listens without interrupting.
That’s unsettling too. Lev never listened this way. Lev waited for his turn to speak. My father listened like he was searching for weakness. Roman listens like he has all night and all the patience in the world, even though I know that cannot be true.
“He told me I should not come,” I continue. “That the trip was no longer necessary.”
Roman’s expression cools. “Coward,” he says again, softer this time.
I smile faintly, but it does not last. “I gave him back the ring.”
The memory rises before I can stop it. The weight of the diamond leaving my hand. Lev’s palm opening to receive it. His face, guilty but relieved, as if my pain was a room he could finally walk out of.
“I thought I would feel heartbroken,” I say. “Maybe I did. Maybe I still do. But mostly I felt embarrassed. I was standing there with a suitcase open, packed for a life that everyone else already knew was over.”
Roman’s hand tightens around his glass. “Everyone?”
I hesitate. This is where the truth becomes dangerous.
I’ve already told him too much, but not enough to expose myself completely. He knows I ran from a fiancé. He knows my father is controlling. He does not know the name Markov means something in certain rooms. He does not know my father’s men do not wear suits because they like fashion.
He does not know I was born into the kind of family sensible people avoid. And I do not want him to. Not tonight.
“My father knew,” I say carefully.
“He knew before you?”
“Yes.”
“And said nothing?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Because alliances matter. Because daughters are useful. Because Sergei Markov can love me and still trade my future if he thinks it protects the family.
I stir the melted edge of the cake with my spoon. “My father arranged the engagement. There were reasons.”
“What kind of reasons?”
“Family reasons.”
Roman gives me a look that says he understands I’m avoiding the question.
I lift my chin a little. “You’ve already bought my ticket, pretended to be my husband, and made me scandalize an elderly passenger outside an airplane bathroom. I think that’s enough involvement in my personal affairs for one evening.”
His mouth shifts, not quite a smile. “That passenger was judging me more than you.”
“Good. You deserved it more.”
“I did most of the work.”
My face burns and I nearly drop the spoon.
Roman’s eyes warm with wicked amusement, and I hate how beautiful he looks with it.
Not handsome in the clean, practiced way Lev is handsome.
Roman’s face is stronger than that. Harder.
A little rough around the edges, with silver at his temples and lines beside his mouth that make me think he has spent years not smiling when he should have.
I take a sip of water and pretend it helps.
I curl my feet beneath the blanket and lean back against the pillows.
The bed is absurdly comfortable. Everything about this suite feels unreal, as if we have been placed inside a rich person’s dream of travel.
Soft linen. Warm lamps. Silver cutlery. A window full of clouds.
Roman is beside me, close enough that his knee almost touches mine.
Almost.
The space between us seems to know what happened in the washroom and refuses to behave.
Every time I move, I become aware of him. The sleeve of his shirt near my arm. The heat of his thigh beneath the blanket. His hand resting inches from mine. The fact that, if I turned my head, my mouth would be dangerously close to his shoulder.
“Do you still have family in Moscow?”
He pauses just long enough for me to notice. “Something like that.”
It’s not an answer. It’s not even close.
But I let it pass because I have my own secrets sitting between us, dressed up as omissions and careful wording.
“What about you?” he asks. “If this trip was meant for him and his family, why still go?”
I think about lying. Something light and easy. Tourism. Revenge. Stubbornness. All of those are true, but none of them are the center of it.
So, I give him another careful piece.
“Because I wanted to see it,” I say. “Before it belonged to the engagement. Before it became dinners and introductions and smiling at people who were deciding whether I was suitable, it was just a place I wanted to go.”
I choose my next words carefully.
“My life has always looked freer than it was,” I say.
“I had beautiful clothes, a beautiful house, cars, parties, staff, everything a person is supposed to be grateful for. But there was always someone deciding where I could go, who I could meet, what was appropriate, what was safe, what was expected.”
He remains quiet.
“And I wanted to see snow,” I say.
Roman is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “You will.”
The certainty in his voice makes me turn my head on the pillow. “You sound very sure.”
“I am.”
“Do you control the weather too?”
“No.” His mouth curves slightly. “Only most other things.”
I should laugh, but the way he says it does not feel entirely like a joke.
Outside the window, the clouds glow faintly under the moon, soft and endless, like the world has been covered in white velvet.
I press my cheek deeper into the pillow and look at them, trying to imagine Moscow beneath us.
The cold. The streets. The churches with golden domes.
The city I was supposed to enter on Lev’s arm.
“I don’t even know where I’ll go when we land,” I admit.
Roman looks at me.
The lamp beside the bed leaves shadows along the hard lines of his face. Without his jacket, with his collar open and his sleeves rolled back, he looks less like a stranger from first class and more like a man who has stepped out of some darker, older world.
“You have a hotel?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Booked by the fiancé?”
I wince at the word. “Technically.”
“Then no.”
“No?”
“You’re not going there.”
I lift my head. “I’m not?”
“No.”
I stare at him, caught somewhere between amusement and outrage. “You have a habit of deciding things very quickly.”
“I have a habit of being right.”
“That must be exhausting for everyone around you.”
“It is.”
A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it. His expression softens by the smallest amount, and I get the strange feeling he’s been waiting for that sound.
I settle back again, but I don’t close my eyes. “So what am I supposed to do? Sleep at the airport?”
“No.”
“Wander Moscow alone with one bag and no plan?”
“Definitely not.”
“Then what?”
Roman’s gaze holds mine, steady and unreadable. “I will show you Moscow.”
My breath catches.
It’s not a grand declaration. He doesn’t say it dramatically. He says it as if the matter has already been settled somewhere in his mind.
I blink at him. “You?”
“Yes.”
“You’re going to show me around Moscow?”
“You wanted to see it.”
“I did.”
“Then you will see it properly.”
Something warm spreads through my chest, dangerous because it feels too much like comfort.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
“I mean it. You already bought my ticket. You already...” My face heats, and I look away. “You’ve already done enough.”
Roman’s hand rests near mine on the blanket. Not touching. Close enough that I notice every inch of space between us. “Perhaps I want to.”
That’s worse.
That’s so much worse.
I look back at him.
There is no teasing in his face now. No amusement. Just that calm, unsettling focus, the kind that makes me feel as if he can see through the pretty manners and the careful words to the reckless woman underneath.
“You don’t know me,” I whisper.
“No.”
“And I don’t know you.”
“No.”
“That should matter.”
“It does.”
“But not enough to stop you?”
His gaze drops briefly to my mouth, then returns to my eyes. “Not nearly enough.”
I should tell him no. I should remind him this is one night, one flight, one impossible mistake between strangers who will part ways when the plane lands. I should protect myself from the way his certainty makes the future feel less empty.
“The river first,” he says. “Early, before the city gets too loud. Then Red Square, if you want the obvious things.”
“I do.”
“Good. Obvious things are often obvious for a reason.”
I smile. “That sounded almost romantic.”
“It was not.”
“Of course not.”
He continues, as if he has not noticed what he’s doing to me. “There is a place near Patriarch’s Ponds. Good pastries. Quiet tables. You can sit by the window and stare at snow like a tourist.”
“I will be a tourist.”
“No. You will be with me.”
“You make it sound beautiful,” I say.
“It is beautiful.”
“Even in winter?”
“Especially in winter.”
I look back at the window.
Below us, the clouds stretch on like snow.
“All right,” I whisper.
Roman’s voice is low. “All right?”
“You can show me Moscow.”
For a moment, he says nothing.
Then I feel the back of his fingers brush mine on the blanket. It’s barely a touch, so light I could pretend it does not happen.
“Sleep now,” he says.
This time, I do not argue.
I close my eyes with the taste of chocolate still on my tongue and the promise of Moscow waiting somewhere beyond the dark.