Chapter 16
Anya
I found this room on my fourth day here, when I realized that exploring every corner of this enormous house was better than waiting for someone to tell me what to do and where to go. I may have been bought, but I refused to be a decorative object.
The entire house is full of spacious, cold rooms decorated to impress—not a hint of life anywhere except Olga's kitchen.
Until I found this room. It's small, with just two dark green velvet sofas arranged in an L, a coffee table with a chess game in progress, a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf packed with books, and a small round table near the window overlooking the side garden.
It feels like a sitting room from one of those Victorian houses in the period novels a former Bolshoi colleague forced me to read. The scent of old paper and wood fills every corner. Everything here seems designed to welcome and comfort the people who live in the house, not to dazzle visitors.
I decided this would be my place after asking Olga three times to stop making me eat in the formal dining room. She just looked at me coldly and replied:
“Stop bothering me, girl.”
She also refused to let me eat in the kitchen, saying it wasn't a place for the Pakhan's wife to have lunch. In the end, she just wrinkled her nose when I grabbed my own plate and brought it here.
“God endured and sent us to endure,” she grumbled, finally leaving me be.
The next day, she simply ordered me to wait for dinner in the reading room.
Since then, that's how it's been: she brings it, I eat it, and neither of us admits she lost the battle. It works perfectly.
Tonight I come downstairs lighter than usual, rereading Vanya Gurenova's email for the tenth time.
Wednesday.
I have until Wednesday to stop grinning to myself like an idiot every time I think about it. I push open the door, already thinking about which book I'll grab to read while I eat, when a presence catches my attention.
I freeze.
Maksim is there, sitting on one of the sofas.
His posture is so relaxed I almost don't recognize him.
My husband is without his mask, without his furrowed brow, without his phone or any kind of work in his hands—he's just there, leaning back on the sofa, one ankle crossed over his knee, lazily twirling a lighter between his fingers.
“Did you get lost?” I ask.
“This is my house.”
“Is it? It's been a week and a half since you've appeared in any room before ten at night. Knyaz' is ready to take your place in bed.”
Maksim snaps the lighter shut, the metallic click echoing through the room, and looks at me through narrowed eyes.
“He wouldn't dare enter my room.”
I shrug as if to disagree. One corner of his mouth twitches. It's so slight that someone less attentive wouldn't notice.
“Sit, Svetlana.” He rises as he speaks, moving to the round table by the window where Olga left two trays set for dinner.
Maksim moves behind one of the chairs and pulls it out, but doesn't sit—just stands there looking at me, waiting for me to come over.
I look at the pulled-out chair. At him standing behind it. Then at the chair again.
“A gentleman.”
“Sit before I change my mind.”
I do, and when he pushes the chair in for me, his face lowers. For a second, I feel his warm breath graze my neck, the heat radiating off him. The intoxicating scent of cigarettes, leather, and cologne fills the air, making me dizzy.
The moment is too brief, and soon Maksim pulls away and takes his own chair across from me.
Suddenly I feel exposed. The room is small, intimate, bathed in cozy half-light. That's what makes me love this place, but now it's exactly what makes Maksim's presence so unsettling. His gray eyes roam over me, cataloging every tiny detail.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“You were looking at me strangely.”
“You're wearing green.” He shrugs, as if that explains something. “I like it.”
I look down at the simple moss-green knit. There's nothing special about it—it's part of the many clothes that were laid out in the closet for me when I arrived. But his gaze and the brief compliment caught me off guard.
“You pulled out my chair and complimented my clothes.” I narrow my eyes. “Is this some new ambush tactic? Because you're not wearing your mask?”
“Eat, Svetlana.” He pushes one of the trays across the table toward me, but I can hear the amusement in his voice. “Olga will kill me if you go to bed without dinner again.”
“'Again'?”
“She complains.” He picks up his own bowl of steaming soup. “Every night, always the same thing: 'The girl doesn't eat, Maksimka, she's going to get sick, and then it'll be your fault. I didn't raise you to be a bad husband.'”
He rolls his eyes and I laugh out loud, because I can hear Olga saying exactly that, in her low, grumbling tone.
“I think it's adorable that she calls you that.”
“When my mother died, Olga took it upon herself to make sure I ate well. I've been hearing complaints every day for over twenty years.”
Maksim doesn't acknowledge the affectionate nickname, but it's clear he doesn't mind—or rather, that he enjoys the housekeeper's maternal fussing.
“She's a world-class complainer. Reminds me a lot of my grandmother Aleksandra.”
I resist the urge to touch the pearl earring that was hers. Whenever I think of my grandmother, I feel that familiar ache. The grief doesn't consume me anymore like it did when I learned she'd died from a massive heart attack, but still, I miss her.
“Igor says if there were a world championship for complaining, Olga would take the gold.”
I laugh, watching Maksim dip a piece of bread in the Shchi[18] broth and imitate his movement.
“Has Olga ever heard Igor say that?”
“Oh, of course. Igor loves irritating his mother—it's a hobby of his.”
I let that sink in. Olga is Igor's mother—that brute who looks like a Viking lost in Russia.
Wow. I wasn't expecting that.
“He got a wooden spoon beating last week for walking into the kitchen with dirty boots,” Maksim continues. “Six-foot-six of solid muscle, a guy who can hit a target from half a mile away, getting scolded by his mother for dirtying the floor she'd just cleaned.”
“No way.”
“Yelena filmed it.” His smile is wide now, crinkling the corners of his eyes. “She sent it to our group chat. According to Yuri, it's been archived as Circle heritage.”
I'm captivated by what I'm hearing. Not just by imagining the priceless scene of Igor getting beaten by his mother, but mainly because all of this is coming from Maksim.
This time there's no contractual distance, no pride or expectations between us.
He's just here, smiling and showing me a piece of his life that almost no one gets to see.
Maksim is opening a door, letting me glimpse his family.
My chest warms, but the warmth comes with a pang. Envy, of course. But I don't want to think about everything I never had and never will.
I watch the movement of his hands, the tattooed forearms, the knuckles, the way he holds the spoon with an almost domestic ease that contrasts with everything else he is. There are moments when I can forget—for a few seconds. Not long, but a few.
“The project got back to me,” I say. “Dreaming on Pointe. They invited me to see the space on Wednesday.”
“Where is it?”
“Admiralteysky District, downtown.”
“I'll send someone with you.”
“I know.” I pick up the bread, break it in half. “You already said that, and I'm not going to argue about something we've already agreed on.”
Maksim looks at me for a second as if he still expects me to start a fight. When he realizes I won't, the corner of his mouth twitches.
“Good.”
I can't deny that I'm a little irritated by that response.
Good.
As if he were validating my good behavior like a dog—or a bear, in his case, given his peculiar taste in pets. I swallow my irritation. It's not the time for that; I have other terms to negotiate.
“But I want to go in a car that doesn't look like a tank. It's a social institution, Maksim. Not a military operation.”
“A car doesn't have to look armored to be armored,” he says flatly.
“All the cars here are armored?”
“All of them.”
I process this while dipping the bread in the broth. The version of me who spent five years in Vysotsk thinking the biggest danger in the world was the school's cement floor feels more and more distant.
“You're going to need a permanent security detail,” he continues in that authoritative tone. “For when you go out. Someone who stays with you whenever you're off the property.”
“Understood.”
“And a car.” A pause. “You'll need someone to drive you, if you don't want to drive.”
“Well, driving presupposes that a car exists, and there's never been a car in my life.
So there's no driving. There's also no license, by the way.
I never needed one because I never had a car or the money to get one.
And also time. I never had time to learn—even if I'd had the money, I wouldn't have had the time.”
I finish speaking a little breathless and embarrassed by my rambling. I don't like exposing my flaws like that.
When I look up, my husband is watching me with an amused expression that only irritates me more.
“That was a very long explanation to say you don't know how to drive.”
“It was. But it was very complete.”
Even with my dry response, the mood doesn't turn heavy. It's one of those moments where we let an unwanted vulnerability slip through. Uncomfortable, but it passes.
“I can teach you.”
I hear his deep voice say, making me look at him quickly. Maksim isn't looking at me, but at the window. His jaw is slightly tense, looking as uncomfortable as I feel.
“You?” I ask.
“Or I’ll send someone.” Now he looks at me. “Whatever you prefer.”
I want it to be you.
That’s what I think, but I’ll never say it.
“I’ll think about it and let you know,” I respond, turning back to my broth before my face gives something away.
The atmosphere didn’t get completely tense, but it wasn’t as pleasant as before, so I looked around for an out. On the coffee table between the sofas sat something as safe as talking about the weather.