Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Xeniya Morozova
Sixteen Years Ago
Iwanted to be like all the other girls. To belong.
I had intentionally left New York City and Severin behind, so I could find myself outside of the Bratva. So I could be a normal girl.
But the wall of high-end dresses at the luxury boutique store mocked me—sparkling under the lights, each one a reminder that I wasn’t a normal girl. I wasn’t designed to be soft or feminine. I was sculpted by cruel men to be a killer and the best hacker the Bratva had ever seen.
So I didn’t know how to dress myself or apply makeup. I spent my childhood learning how to fight instead.
Still, I wanted to learn.
College was supposed to be my chance to reinvent myself, wasn’t it?
I could be anything I wanted, which was why I started going by Sienna—mostly because my college professors and classmates struggled with the very Russian spelling of Xeniya, which had a K in it and was technically my legal name.
So I put them all out of their misery and told them to call me Sienna.
It was close enough and very much not Russian.
“Oh, you have to be fucking kidding me.” My sister’s voice stormed from the very high-end fitting room.
Shock cracked through the client advisor’s composed professional mask, judgment following close behind—but she buried it just as quickly, replacing it with a careful smile when her eyes met mine.
The Morozov name was well known, even here in Chicago. It meant something, and our black cards meant more, and our reputation for violence mattered the most.
My gaze flicked away from the advisor to my childhood friend, Ekaterina Kaloshin. She was a closer friend to my sister than she had ever been to me, but she came with me to college anyway.
Her brother came, too—Kazimir, my best friend aside from Severin.
Katya sighed. “What is it now, Nika?”
“I just got my fucking period. I know it happens every month, but it’s still annoying… and it always surprises me.”
Nika was always dramatic. It was chiseled into her bones. So this wasn’t surprising, and I’d heard this many times before.
Nika had ADHD. If something wasn’t important or exciting, it simply didn’t exist to her, like her period. Tracking it wasn’t important to her, so she didn’t put the systems in place to remember.
I, on the other hand, tracked mine like it was a job. I was terrified of teenage pregnancy and ruining my future.
Not that I was fucking.
I was still very much a virgin, but I was determined to fix that this year. The only problem was that the one person I’d ever wanted was across the country in New York City.
“Do you want a tampon or a pad?” I asked, rifling through my purse.
I always kept both in my purse. Tampons were very effective at staunching bullet wounds, and my friends were not very responsible, so I kept the pads for them.
“A Super Plus tampon, please,” Nika called, and I walked behind the curtain and handed her just that.
“Oh, and take this.” Nika held out her bloody thong.
I shook my head, rolled it into a ball, and shoved it into my bag.
“Do you have an extra pair of underwear?”
“Yeah, I just keep them in my purse,” I said dryly.
“Oh, good.”
“She was joking, Nika,” Katya said, pushing open the curtain, too.
“Oh…”
“I found some,” Abigail, my freshman-year roommate, said, running into the dressing room with a pair of expensive but not overly lacy underwear. “I started looking as soon as she yelled.”
I laughed. Abigail was always a problem solver.
It was why I liked her and why I let her convince all of us to rush sororities during my second year at the University of Chicago. Nika was instantly sold. It took me longer to warm up to the idea. But I was reinventing myself… so why not?
I was a normal college student. Now if only I could take to my friends’ lessons on makeup and fashion just as fast.
After Nika’s dramatic outburst, we spent seven hours—seven—shopping. We bought ourselves entirely new wardrobes. Mine leaned heavily into blood-red and a winter palette. But Nika and Abigail convinced me to buy some softer blues, too, and greens that matched my eyes.
The makeup lessons went less well, but after three days of preparation, we were ready to begin rush.
I had no expectations of getting into a sorority, but Nika and Abigail wanted to get into Kappa Xi. Katya was just along for the ride, like me.
Sorority houses were scattered around campus and were unofficial. Many girls, however, lived together in large brownstones near Hyde Park. Kappa Xi had a large house there, where they hosted us during rush.
Ivy climbed the brownstone walls as I walked up the path to the front door. I pinched my eyes shut for a second, bit my bottom lip, and repeated my chant in my head.
Smile. Be normal. Don’t scowl. Don’t be murderous. Just keep smiling.
Just keep smiling.
I let the mantra ring in my head as I reached the door, and a cute, petite blonde girl answered, “Welcome to Kappa Xi. I’m Rachelle.”
“Hi,” I said, my eyes darting around the entrance and then back to the girl, my smile faltering. “I’m Sienna.”
Rachelle reached out and shook my hand, her grip warm and inviting. “Nice to meet you, Sienna. I love that name. Where does it come from?”
My heart sank, and my smile dropped for a moment. Hell, if I knew where the name came from.
I sucked my bottom lip between my teeth. “I think it comes from Siena, Italy.”
“Oh, that’s so cool.”
“Yeah…” I trailed off, not knowing what to say. “I’m from New York City, though.”
“Oh, awesome.” She smiled, scrunching her nose playfully. “I’ve always wanted to visit New York. So what are you studying, Sienna?”
“Cybersecurity.” When she clearly didn’t understand, I added, “Computer science.”
Her brows lifted, surprise painting her face. “Oh, wow. That’s impressive. I could never.”
I gave a small shrug. “I like it.”
“You’re so pretty for that major.”
My forehead crinkled, but I forced out, in the most lighthearted tone I could muster, “Are computer science girls supposed to be ugly?”
“Oh, no, of course not. It’s just rare to see one.”
I nodded. “My orientation was a sausage fest.”
Rachelle snorted. “I bet. Any of them cute?”
My fingernails bit into my palm, but I kept my fake smile in place. The truth was, I hadn’t even noticed them. I didn’t often think of boys in that way. Yes, I was straight and attracted to them, but I’d spent so much time growing up with them that they had become nuisances.
I knew boys way too well.
I was one of them.
And the only boy to ever stir anything inside of me was Severin Volkov… Well, and one other.
But I couldn’t say that, and I had to say something, so I settled on, “A few of them were pretty attractive.”
“Awesome.”
After some boring small talk, Rachelle passed me on to another sorority member, and on and on it went. All the conversations were much the same, and I tried not to stand out too much. But I was starting to realize my answers were too short and too confident.
The situation fazed me, but I wasn’t afraid of them. I wasn’t intimidated. I was intimidating, which was the problem.
Throughout the process, I was convinced I wouldn’t get picked, but surprisingly, all of us moved on to bid day with Kappa Xi as our first choice.
And surprisingly, we all got in.
Things moved quickly after that. All of us moved into a big brownstone house with thirteen other Kappas and started our pledge quarter at UChicago. There wasn’t much hazing, and even the stuff we did have to do was nothing compared to the Bratva’s Gauntlet.
I still had scars from that.