Chapter 28
KATIE
Lidia agrees to meet only after Cherry promises that no Dymov car will enter the parking lot, no guard will sit inside the café, and Artur will learn nothing until she has left.
The conditions arrive through three calls over two days, each one placed from a different borrowed phone. Fear has stripped the contempt from Lidia’s voice, leaving a woman who checks every silence for footsteps and disconnects whenever Cherry asks for the buyer’s name.
By the morning of the meeting, I have slept badly enough that Artur notices before I finish buttoning my blouse.
He stands behind me in the bedroom mirror, fastening a watch around his wrist while his gaze follows my fingers. My body has no visible evidence of triplets, yet he watches me dress as if every button carries medical significance.
I tell him Cherry is taking me to the cosmetics supplier for stage adhesive and air that hasn’t been screened for pregnancy risks. Artur offers to come, claiming he can buy adhesive quietly, so I remind him that he purchased six thermometers yesterday and one wears a rubber duck.
His mouth shifts, but suspicion remains in his eyes. “Why that supplier?”
I expected the question, though preparation does nothing for the pressure rising beneath my ribs. Cherry praises the café pastries so often that my answer remains credible. Every fact would survive interrogation while the purpose of the trip remains hidden inside the story.
Artur proposes two men, so I invoke the freedom clause.
Because the current threat level doesn’t permit ordinary movement, he refuses to concede entirely.
In the end, we settle on one guard outside the parking lot, far enough away that Cherry won’t have to eat beneath a rifle; neither of us calls the result trust.
Artur crosses the room, stopping close enough that cedar soap warms the air between us. One hand settles at my waist while the other lifts my chin, placing the full pressure of his attention on my face.
“You check in when you arrive.”
The order would be easy to accept; refusing it risks making him inspect the plan more closely, but the habit matters because fear keeps turning requests into commands whenever I let it.
“Ask me.”
His thumb moves once beneath my lower lip. “Katie.”
“That remains my name.”
Artur’s fingers tighten at my waist before easing. “Will you message me when you arrive, then tell me before you leave?”
“Yes.”
He kisses me with restrained irritation, his lingering mouth a reminder of what waits if I return safely. Guilt enters the kiss despite my attempt to keep it outside, bitter at the back of my tongue because he asked while I continue withholding the reason.
The cosmetics warehouse occupies a converted furniture outlet beside a six-lane road, its blank beige facade giving no warning of the manufactured beauty inside.
Towers of hair extensions rise in colors no human scalp has produced naturally; mannequin heads stare through impossible lashes, and rows of polish shine like hard candy beneath fluorescent light.
The public café sits near the entrance at the center of that cheerful unreality.
It is the kind of place where anyone can purchase another face, which makes it perversely suitable for meeting a woman trying to disappear.
The drive has left nausea rolling beneath my sternum despite the ginger candies Cherry placed in the console, and every exhaust plume entering through the vents makes my mouth fill with sour saliva.
I keep one hand near the paper bag in my purse while the other rests low across my stomach, aware that the lives inside me have transformed a secret meeting from personal recklessness into a risk shared with three people who can’t object.
That awareness doesn’t make staying home possible: Artur’s world has already reached the clinic, the casino, and the apartment where I used to sleep without guards. Ignorance would leave us dependent on the judgment of men who keep deciding what I’m allowed to know.
Cherry parks beside the loading wing while my assigned guard remains across the road in an unmarked sedan. I send Artur a photograph of the warehouse entrance with a message saying we arrived, careful to keep Lidia’s car and the café sign out of the frame.
Inside, chemical sweetness from nail products mixes with espresso. Fluorescent light flattens every face, leaving nowhere for fear to hide.
Cherry orders tea for herself and ginger water for me, then chooses the table nearest the emergency exit.
Her dark hair is hidden under a black scarf, lipstick stripped from her mouth, and the absence of her usual shine makes her appear younger until her eyes track every customer entering the café.
Even disguised, she has arranged herself beautifully: plain gold hoops, fitted black sleeves, nails polished the color of dried cherries.
Fear has reduced nothing except the number of strangers allowed to notice.
Cherry warns that Lidia may not come, although three calls from borrowed phones suggest commitment beneath the theatrics. I turn the paper cup between my palms, breathing through the sharp ginger rising from the water. If Lidia sold my address, drama is no longer her worst quality.
The emergency door remains closed for another eleven minutes before Lidia enters through the main aisle wearing loose jeans and a baseball cap. I recognize her walk first, the dancer’s balance still present beneath every attempt to disappear.
She stops when she sees me.
The last time we shared a room, contempt sharpened her posture while jealousy made her voice louder. Today her shoulders curve toward her chest, with the nail on one thumb bitten until blood beads beside it.
Cherry pulls out the third chair. “Sit down before somebody notices you pretending not to be Lidia.”
Lidia sits without answering, her gaze moving across the windows, the exit, then every man in the café before stopping on my stomach.
“There’s nothing to see yet,” I say.
Color drains from her face. “You’re pregnant?”
“That information doesn’t leave this table.”
She looks toward Cherry, who gives a small nod, then presses both hands between her knees. “I didn’t know.”
“You knew where I lived.”
The words reach her without volume, making Lidia close her eyes briefly before facing me again.
“I copied the address from George’s office,” she says. “Your new-dancer paperwork was still on his desk after the shooting. George left the office to help lock down the club, and I photographed the page during the confusion.”
Before sunrise, a man contacted Lidia through a private account, claiming that a gossip site wanted proof of where Artur Dymov’s new favorite lived.
Beside Cherry’s, my address appeared because she was my emergency contact.
Already in the account’s possession were my full name and the club schedule, so Lidia sent her photograph that morning.
Around six that evening, an older man collected a printed copy.
The apartment attack began shortly after eleven that night. The hours form one unbroken line from George’s desk to armed men learning exactly which building and apartment to enter. How they obtained the maintenance key remains inside the burner Lidia hasn’t brought.
The detail returns George’s office to me with painful clarity, from costume invoices stacked beside the computer to the cracked leather chair where dancers waited when a client crossed a boundary. The records were ordinary workplace clutter until Lidia converted one line into a map for armed men.
The café continues around us: milk screams beneath a steam wand, plastic bags scrape across the tile, and someone tests a bottle of hairspray two aisles away. My body responds as if the apartment attack is beginning again, heart hammering while metal gathers across my tongue.
“How much?” I ask.
“Two thousand.”
Cherry’s chair moves sharply against the floor.
Lidia flinches. “I thought they would photograph her building, maybe embarrass her. I thought Artur would see she lived above a broken sign in a neighborhood he wouldn’t park in, then lose interest.”
“You wanted me humiliated.”
“Yes.” Her gaze remains on the table. “I didn’t want men inside your apartment.”
The distinction matters without absolving her; I remember broken plaster under my knees and Artur checking my body while armed men searched the rooms around us.
“Describe the buyer.”
Lidia lifts her head. “I never met the man who sent the first message. An older man collected the copy near the club. Gray hair, expensive coat, accent I couldn’t place. He wore a gold ring with a black stone split by a red line.”
“Anything he said?”
“He told me the Dymovs remember blood longer than names. I heard the same words at Misha Dymov’s memorial event when I worked the upstairs bar.”
Cold spreads across my arms despite the warm cup between my hands. Artur once described the yearly memorial as private enough that every server required family approval.
Lidia reaches into her bag, making Cherry stiffen before she produces a folded magazine page.
The photograph shows a Dymov casino anniversary from twelve years earlier, before Misha’s death.
Ivan stands beside Artur near the center, while an older man waits several feet behind him wearing the ring Lidia described.
“I found it after the apartment attack,” she says. “The man with the ring never appears in public photographs except near Ivan.”
“Why did you wait?”
Her mouth opens, though no answer comes before she looks away.
I lean closer. “They attacked the club, broke into my home, then planted explosives beneath a casino. You recognized a connection after the first attack, so tell me why you waited.”
“Because I was afraid.” The admission leaves her hoarse. “Because I thought Artur would kill me before I finished the first sentence, and because part of me still hated you for receiving in one night what I had wanted for years. I kept hoping the connection meant nothing.”
“It meant enough to bring you here.”