KATERINA
The second he leaves the music room, I want to kill him.
The second after that, I want to kill myself.
Not literally. I’m not dramatic enough for that anymore.
But enough that I stand there with my back against the piano, fixing my sweater with shaking hands, and think, Well done.
Brilliant. You’re nearly thirty, you have two children, your father is trying to barter your future over lunch, and you just let a dangerous man put his mouth between your legs in your family home.
My panties are gone.
That fact alone nearly sends me into hysterics.
I smooth my skirt down, drag my fingers through my hair, and try not to think about the way my body still feels.
My thighs are unsteady. My lips are swollen.
Worst of all, my pussy is still throbbing, a deep, humiliating ache that makes every shift of my legs remind me exactly what he did to me and how eagerly I let him.
I hate myself for it. I hate him more.
The door opens before I can finish hating either of us properly, Roman still standing just outside.
Sofia walks in, Roman follows.
I go cold.
She stops in the doorway and looks from me to Roman with instant suspicion, her little face scrunching up in a way that would be adorable if I were not moments away from death.
“What are you doing?”
Roman does not even blink. “Playing hide and seek,” he says.
I turn and stare at him.
He looks back at Sofia as if this is a perfectly reasonable explanation for two flushed adults.
Sofia narrows her eyes. “With the door locked?”
Roman crouches slightly, as if he has all the patience in the world for this interrogation. “I was hiding very well.”
Sofia thinks about it for a second, then points at him. “I want to play.”
Roman says, “That sounds like a bad idea.”
“It’s a great idea,” she says, already taking his hand.
He looks at me once.
There is no apology in it. No shame either. Only a calm, infuriating sort of confidence, as if he knows perfectly well I’m in no state to stop my daughter from dragging him out of the room like a prize she has decided to keep.
And because I’m still standing there trying not to think about my missing underwear, I do not stop her.
Sofia pulls him toward the door. “Come on. You have to hide properly this time.”
Roman lets himself be led away.
I watch them go with the strange, unsteady feeling of someone losing her mind in stages.
A man like him should not look natural with a four-year-old hanging off his hand.
And yet he does.
The corridor feels too bright when I finally step into it. I manage three whole breaths before I hear heels clicking toward me.
Vika. Of course.
She turns the corner, sees me, and slows. Her eyes flick over my face too quickly, too sharply.
Then she says, “I heard someone playing off-key. Must have been your spawn.”
The blood drains from my face. That was me, on the piano. I hadn’t realized I was pressing down on the keys so hard.
I say nothing because I do not trust my voice.
Vika mistakes the silence for irritation and smiles faintly, pleased with herself.
“Where is Roman?” she asks. “I’ve had lunch moved to the lawn.”
I blink at her. “Lunch?”
“Yes. Since he bothered to come, someone should entertain him properly.”
Of course she did.
Of course, while I was upstairs being ruined on a piano, Vika was reorganizing table settings and imagining herself charming him in sunlight.
I keep my expression blank through sheer force of will.
“He isn’t with you?”
I make myself answer. “Sofia took him.”
Vika’s brows lift. “Your daughter?”
“Yes.”
“How funny.” She says it the way women like her always say funny, meaning inconvenient. “Where?”
I force a shrug. “Somewhere in the house. She said she wanted to play.”
Vika rolls her eyes. “I’ll bring him back.”
She turns and walks off before I can answer, and I stand there for a moment with one hand braced on the wall, letting the wave of relief and humiliation and absurdity wash over me. I take off after her.
It takes longer than I expect.
The house is too large for hide-and-seek and too full of corners where a clever little girl and a man humoring her could disappear. I check the conservatory first, then the library, then the small drawing room near the back stairs. No sign of either of them.
I’m halfway down the corridor toward the garden doors when I hear Sofia’s voice somewhere close.
“I know you’re there!”
I stop.
Then I hear Roman’s voice, lower, amused in spite of himself.
“I don’t think you do.”
It’s coming from the old morning room near the terrace.
I push the door open carefully.
At first I see only sunlight across the carpet and one of the curtains moving in the breeze from the cracked French doors. Then Sofia pops out from behind the sofa with a triumphant shout.
“You lose!”
Roman is crouched behind an armchair, which is ridiculous for a man his size and somehow does nothing to reduce the effect of seeing him there.
He looks up and sees me. Something in my chest twists.
Because for a second, before he schools his face, he looks almost happy.
Sofia points at him accusingly. “He cheated.”
Roman rises. “I adapted.”
“That’s cheating.”
“That’s survival.”
She seems to consider this. “Fine. But next time I get to count slower.”
There is such easy nonsense in the room that I have to stop myself from just standing there and watching it.
Roman glances at Sofia, then at me, and says, “She’s been looking for me.”
The words are simple.
The way he says them isn’t.
Sofia runs over to me and grabs my hand. “He hides well but not perfectly.”
“I’m sure that was very disappointing.”
“It was educational,” she says importantly.
Roman’s mouth shifts.
I look at him then, and something in me gives a little. Because this is insane.
This man is ruthless. Dangerous. Feared. A man who can walk into a council room and make old predators sit up straighter. A man my father should never have allowed within reach of this family if he knew the whole truth.
And he’s standing in the middle of my mother’s morning room having just played hide-and-seek with my daughter as if that’s a thing men like him do between business calls and blood debts.
Vika finds us in the morning room before I can come up with an excuse to take the children upstairs and lock the door.
“There you are,” she says, as if we’ve all been delaying her plans on purpose. “Lunch is set on the lawn.”
Sofia looks up at once. “Outside?”
“Yes,” Vika says.
“I want to eat outside.”
Vika smiles at Roman, not at Sofia. “No, darling. This lunch is for grown-ups.”
Sofia’s face falls.
And before I can step in, Roman does.
“She’s coming,” he says.
Vika turns, still smiling because she hasn’t yet understood that he’s serious. “No, I don’t think—”
“She’s coming,” he repeats, calm as ever. “And Nikolai too.”
The room goes quiet.
Sofia looks delighted. Nikolai looks wary. I look at Roman and try not to show how much that small, simple thing affects me.
Vika lets out a light laugh, but there’s strain under it now. “Roman, really, it’s not that kind of lunch.”
He doesn’t even look at her. He looks at Sofia. “You wanted to eat outside?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re eating outside.”
That’s the end of it.
Vika knows it, too. I can see the moment she understands that pushing will only make her look foolish. Her mouth tightens, and then she turns to me with that bright, false smile.
“Well, then I suppose you’d better come too.”
Of course.
As if I would let my children sit out there with Vika and Roman and whatever game she still thinks she’s playing.
So, I follow them outside.
Lunch is set on the back lawn beneath the pale afternoon sun, all white cloth and silver dishes and flowers that look absurdly delicate for a family meal. The grass runs down toward the water, and the breeze off it is cold enough that the napkins keep trying to lift.
Vika has clearly arranged all of this in a hurry and spent too much time making it look effortless.
The table is beautiful in that exhausting way rich people mistake for comfort. Soup first, creamy tomato with little grilled cheese triangles on the side. Then platters of fish, roasted potatoes, warm bread, vegetables glazed with butter, and a salad Sofia immediately distrusts.
“It looks healthy,” she says suspiciously.
Roman sits down beside her. “It probably is.”
“I don’t think I like that.”
“I can see that.”
She beams at him.
I sit across from them because there is nowhere else for me to go that doesn’t look obvious. Nikolai ends up on Roman’s other side, quieter as usual, but listening to everything.
Roman is good with them.
Not showy. Not fake. He doesn’t baby them. He just talks to them like they are actual people, and both of them lean toward him as if they’ve been waiting for someone to do it.
Sofia starts first. “Do you know how to sail?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know how to drive very fast?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know how to fight sharks?”
Roman takes a sip of water. “Not often.”
Sofia nods, satisfied. “I thought so.”
Vika keeps trying to pull the conversation back. She asks him where he summers, whether he prefers Europe, whether he always works this much. He answers politely enough, but not in a way that gives her anything she can hold.
His attention keeps going back to the children.
And once or twice, to me.
That’s worse than if he flirted outright.
At one point Sofia reaches for the breadbasket and nearly tips her water over. Roman catches the glass before it falls, and she says, with great seriousness, “You’re useful too.”
He almost smiles. “I’m relieved.”
Nikolai says, “Sofia thinks everyone belongs to her if they’re nice once.”
“That’s not true,” Sofia says. But the look on her face says something else.
Vika turns her gaze to me.
“What?”
“You’ve barely spoken.”
“I’m eating.”
“That’s unusual.”
Before I can say anything else, Roman says, without looking at her, “Let her eat.”
Vika goes still for half a second. I do, too.
I hate that a small defense from him can still move something in me.
I reach for the potatoes just as a crack splits the air.
For one stupid second, my mind tries to place it somewhere harmless. A branch. A dropped tray. One of the gardeners knocking something over near the hedge.
Then I see the glass beside Roman’s hand burst.
I look up at once.
So does he.
And across the table, for one suspended second, our eyes meet.
He knows I understand.
I know he saw it before I did.
Everything in him changes. Not his face exactly. His body. The ease is gone. The man sitting at lunch with my children disappears.
Another shot cracks through the air.
We’re under attack.