Zoya
The next few days do not feel real.
That’s the only way I know how to explain it.
Outside the house, everything is still broken.
The library is closed. My apartment is unsafe.
Karina texts every fifteen minutes until I threaten to block her, then every hour instead.
Ruslan’s men come and go in black cars, speaking in low voices, carrying folders, answering calls, disappearing behind closed doors.
Somewhere out there, someone still wants him dead.
Someone may know my face.
Someone may know my name.
And somehow, inside the house by the sea, Ruslan and I begin living like the world has narrowed to a bedroom, a kitchen, a stretch of wet sand, and the dangerous little space between his hand and my skin.
It starts that first morning.
I wake up in his bed with my face half-buried in his pillow, sore in places I feel too shy to name, and his arm heavy around my waist. For one terrifying second, I don’t move.
Then he does. His hand slides slowly under the shirt I slept in, palm warm over my stomach, and his mouth brushes the back of my neck. “Awake?” he asks.
I should say no. I should pretend to sleep. I should roll away and demand a serious conversation about what we did, what it means, where I’m supposed to go, whether I’ve officially lost my mind.
Instead, my body answers before my brain can organize itself.
I press back into him.
He goes still for one breath. Then his hand tightens.
That morning is slow. He touches me like he has nowhere to be, even though I know men are waiting downstairs for him.
His mouth moves over my shoulder, my breast, my stomach.
By the time he pushes my thighs apart, I’m already shaking, already whispering his name like I’ve known it in this way for years instead of days.
After, he leaves the bed only because someone knocks on the door.
He pulls on trousers, opens it halfway, and listens to whatever his man says with a face carved out of stone. I sit under the sheets, naked and flushed and trying not to stare at the marks my nails left on his back.
When the man leaves, Ruslan shuts the door and looks at me.
“What?” I ask, because his stare makes me nervous even after everything.
“You’re hiding.”
“I’m literally sitting in your bed naked. I think I’m past hiding.”
His mouth almost smiles. “Not entirely.”
I throw a pillow at him. He catches it.
The next time happens that afternoon against the bookshelves in the sitting room.
That time is not slow. It starts because I make the mistake of asking whether he actually reads all the books in the house or if they’re just there to make him look less criminal.
He says, “Less criminal?”
I say, “You know. Decorative intelligence.”
He looks at me over the rim of his glass. I should know by then what that look means.
He crosses the room, takes the book out of my hand, and kisses me until I forget the joke entirely. It becomes hands, breath, the hard edge of a shelf against my back, my dress shoved up around my hips, his mouth at my ear telling me to be quiet because there are men in the hall.
I am not quiet. He looks very pleased about that afterward.
I pretend to be offended, but I’m not.
By the third day, I stop pretending I don’t wait for him.
Not all day. I’m not that pathetic. But I know the rhythm of the house now.
Morning calls. Men at the dining table. Stepan arriving around noon with the same grim expression and a folder under one arm.
Ruslan disappearing into the office for hours, then coming out with his jaw tight and his patience gone thin.
Those are the times he comes looking for me.
Sometimes he finds me in the kitchen, eating toast because I refuse to sit through another formal lunch with men who look like they’ve buried bodies recreationally. Sometimes he finds me on the balcony, wrapped in a blanket, trying to pretend I’m reading.
Sometimes I find him. Once, in the laundry room of all places, because I follow the sound of his voice and find him ending a call in Russian with murder in his eyes.
I should leave. Instead, I say, “Bad news?”
He looks at me for a long second.
Then he says, “Yes.”
There’s blood on the cuff of his shirt.
Not fresh. Not much. Still, I see it.
He sees me see it.
For a moment, the whole thing is there between us again. Who he is. What he does. The fact that I’m standing barefoot in his house wearing borrowed clothes while he comes back from God knows what with blood on him.
I should be horrified.
I am. But I’m also angry. And scared.
And sick of being the only one shaken by the truth.
So I step closer, grab his wrist, and say, “Wash your hands.”
He looks down at me.
No one else in that house would speak to him like that. I know it the second I say it.
Ruslan turns on the tap, and I wash the blood from his hand myself. Neither of us says a word. When it’s gone, he turns his wrist and catches my fingers.
The kiss that follows is not tender. It tastes like fear and anger and the kind of want that has stopped asking permission to exist. He lifts me onto the counter beside the sink, and for a few minutes the laundry room becomes another place I will never be able to think about normally again.
Later, he carries me back upstairs because my legs are unsteady and he’s smug enough not to pretend he doesn’t notice.
“I can walk,” I say.
“I know.”
“Then put me down.”
“No.”
“You’re unbearable.”
“Yes.”
I laugh against his shoulder before I can stop myself.
That surprises him.
It surprises me too, because for a few seconds, it feels simple. Just him. Just me. Just his hand under my thigh and my face against his neck and the sea crashing somewhere beyond the windows.
That simplicity never lasts long. But when it comes, I take it.
On the fourth morning, the rain finally stops.
I find him in the kitchen, reading something on his phone while drinking coffee. He’s dressed for work, which in Ruslan terms means dark trousers, white shirt, sleeves rolled to his forearms, expression unreadable.
“Do you ever wear normal clothes?” I ask.
He glances up. “These are normal clothes.”
“For a funeral director, maybe.”
His mouth moves slightly. “You’re in a mood.”
“I’m unemployed and possibly under house arrest. Moods are all I have left.”
“You’re not under house arrest.”
“Can I leave?”
“Not alone.”
“Then it’s house arrest with ocean views.”
He sets the phone down. “Do you want to go outside?”
I blink. “What?”
“The beach,” he says. “You keep looking at it.”
I feel suddenly, stupidly exposed. “I wasn’t asking.”
“I know.”
“I don’t need you to entertain me.”
“I know that too.”
His calm irritates me, mostly because I don’t know what to do when he offers me something without making it sound like a command.
I look toward the window. The sea is gray-blue today, rough but beautiful, the beach empty except for gulls picking at the wet sand.
“Yes,” I say eventually. “I want to go outside.”
He nods once, like that settles it.
Ten minutes later, we’re walking along the shore with two of his men far enough behind us to pretend they aren’t guards. I hate how much I love it.
The air smells like salt and cold water. The wind pulls my hair loose almost immediately. I take off my shoes because the sand is damp and firm near the waterline, and Ruslan watches me like he has never seen a woman do something so ordinary.
“What?” I ask.
“You’re barefoot.”
“Very observant.”
“It’s cold.”
“I like it.”
“You like cold feet?”
“I like feeling where I am.”
He looks at me after that, but he doesn’t make fun of me.
We walk in silence for a while. Not awkward silence. Not comfortable either. Something in between. The kind of silence two people have when there are too many things to say and no safe place to start.
Eventually, I ask, “Is Ruslan Karelin your real name?”
He looks at me. “Yes.”
“Is there a version that isn’t real?”
“There are versions people use.”
“Like what?”
“Mr. Karelin. Boss. Pakhan.”
The last word sits strangely in the air.
I look at the water. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“You don’t know?”
“I have Google. I haven’t been brave enough to use it.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “It means I lead.”
“That’s a polite way to say it.”
“Yes.”
“Try again.”
He exhales through his nose, almost amused. “It means men answer to me. If there is a war, it’s mine. If there is a betrayal, it’s also mine.”
“And if there is punishment?”
His eyes stay on the water. “Then I’m the punisher.”
I wish I hadn’t asked.
I’m glad I did.
Both things can be true, apparently.
“Have you always been this?” I ask.
“No.”
“What were you before?”
“A son.”
The answer is so flat that I look at him. His face gives me nothing.
“What happened?”
“My father died. Then the men who hated him tried to take what he built. They thought I was too young to hold it.”
“How old were you?”
“Twenty-six.”
I try to imagine him at twenty-six. Younger than he is now, but not soft. I don’t think Ruslan was ever soft.
“And you held it,” I say.
“Yes.”
“What did it cost?”
He looks at me then. For a moment, I think he won’t answer.
Then he says, “Most things.”
I don’t know what to say to that. So I don’t say anything. We keep walking until the house looks smaller behind us and the guards keep the same distance like shadows pretending to be polite.
After a while, he asks, “Why did you come to the city?”
The question catches me off guard.
“What?”
“You said you couldn’t afford to stay. That means you came for a reason.”
I kick at a shell half-buried in the sand. “Everyone comes to the city for a reason.”
“I asked yours.”
I want to make a joke. Something about better coffee or public transport or bookstores that stay open past six. But he doesn’t ask questions often. When he does, he listens to the answers, and that makes lying feel strangely difficult.
“I came after a breakup,” I say.
His attention shifts fully to me. “A man.”
“No, Ruslan. A tragic falling-out with my cactus.”
His mouth almost smiles. “A man.”
“Yes. A man.”
“What did he do?” The question is too calm.
I give him a look. “You sound like you’re asking for an address.”
“I didn’t ask for one.”