Chapter 26
Anya
The barre is cold beneath my hand.
I stare at my reflection in the mirror, no longer so afraid of what I see.
The days have taken on a new air of peace, tranquility, and purpose.
When I don’t go to the project to teach classes, like today, I spend most of my day moving between the dance room and the reading room, or looking for Ivan in the garden near the woods.
Even with the music playing softly through the room’s sound system and the repetitive movements of the steps, I can’t shake the constant thought:
Maksim.
My husband has been occupying a lot of my thoughts lately.
It’s irritating how I’ve gone from distant to eager to be with him.
Every day that passes, I feel like I know him a little better, and that’s how I know something is going on.
Something he’s not telling me, something that’s leaving him distracted.
He left too quickly today. This morning when I came downstairs, he was already standing by the kitchen counter, coat on, gulping down his coffee with his brow furrowed.
“You didn’t even sit down,” I said, leaning against the doorframe. “You look like a late intern.”
He almost smiled, but stopped halfway, as if his head was too full to let himself laugh at a silly joke. He walked past me, pulled me close by the nape of my neck, and pressed a kiss to the top of my head.
“I’ll be back tonight,” he says, his lips still pressed to my hair.
“Is everything okay?”
“I need to take care of some things,” he said, already pulling away, his face glued to his phone screen again. “Don’t wait up for me.”
And just like that, without another word, he disappeared through the door with a scowling Igor on his heels.
The change is subtle—I’d barely notice if I weren’t used to observing everything around me.
We still have hot nights and delicious mornings together, but there’s something in his colder gaze, in the way he clenches his jaw when he’s on his phone, and in the whispered conversations with the Circle members and sovietniks who frequent the house.
Last night, when we were in bed, I tried to ask what was going on. Lying on his back, Maksim stared at the ceiling with one arm folded behind his head, gazing at nothing. I ran my hand over his chest, down to the bear tattoo, and asked softly:
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t even turn to look at me.
“Liar.” I rested my chin on his shoulder. “You’ve had that closed-off look for days. You know you can talk to me, right?”
He turned, looked at me for a second, then pulled my body close to his.
“Work, Svetlana,” he whispered, his mouth trailing kisses down my neck. “Just work.”
His voice came out soft, but it was clear this was his gentle way of closing the subject. So he set about distracting me in the best way possible. He rolled on top of me and trailed kisses and bites down toward my breasts until he made me forget what I’d even asked.
It worked for a moment, but now the discomfort gnaws at me.
The truth is, I don’t even want to know the details.
Blood, debts, the orders he gives to the armed men who roam around here.
Maybe it’s stupid of me to want to remain in sweet ignorance about what exactly sustains all this luxury I live in, but I prefer it that way.
Still, seeing him so distracted and clearly irritated and not being able to do anything to help irritates me too.
I’ve never felt this for anyone—this need to support, to help, to see him okay.
I wish I could take some of that weight off his shoulders. Even if just for one night.
I finish the series with a relevé longer than my knee appreciates and lower myself carefully, breathing deeply.
“That’s enough for today,” I say to the empty room, picking up the water bottle from the floor and wrapping the towel around my neck.
On the way back to the bedroom, longing for a shower, I remember the project files.
Vanya gave me a pile of new applications yesterday—girls wanting to join the class—and I promised to return everything signed and organized at the next class.
I could leave it for later, but I know if I don’t do it now, I’ll procrastinate until dinner, and having to do boring paperwork when I’m tired will only make my mood worse.
I search through the nightstand drawers in the bedroom and don’t find a single pen. In the reading room, there was a pen holder with two, so old the ink had already dried. It seems the same monster that steals socks and hair clips also likes to eat pens in this house.
I march toward the only place I’m sure has working pens: Maksim’s office.
He’s not home now. After he left this morning, I haven’t seen any car returning to the property, so I know I won’t interrupt any meeting if I go in there.
I open the door and find the room exactly the way it was when I came here last time: dark, with that smell of paper, cigarettes, and leather that has become my husband’s trademark.
The dim light coming through the window illuminates the large, imposing desk with a state-of-the-art computer, papers, and some stacked folders.
“I’m just going to grab a pen.”
On top of the pile is my prize. A good pen, heavy, metal, and looking very expensive. I smile victoriously, and when I turn, ready to leave, I bump into the folders and they scatter across the floor.
“Shit.”
I crouch down fast to gather everything. The papers have scattered across the thick carpet and landed under the chair. I scoop them up in a rush, focused only on getting the sheets back in order, until the words stamped at the top of a page catch my attention.
Investigation — Svetlana Voronova
My hand freezes mid-air.
What could there possibly be to investigate about my life that he doesn’t already know?
My foolish heart screams that it must be a coincidence—another Svetlana Voronova. After all, my name is Svetlana Nikiforova now. But it’s way too naive to think it’s not me.
Below my name, another line screams at me.
ACCIDENT MAY 2021
My heart races so fast I think it might leap out of my chest. I take a deep breath. Then another.
Anya, just put the folder back and leave.
I repeat it several times like a mantra.
Now that I’ve finally found what feels like happiness, I don’t know if I should dig into the past again.
But I can’t help myself. I remember the waking nightmares where I relived that night over and over.
I remember the unbearable pain of physical therapy.
The agony of losing my place in the most prestigious ballet company in the world.
K-7-9
The beginning of the license plate etched into my mind like a horrible, permanent tattoo.
I spent five years waiting for an answer no one would give me. The police treated the whole thing as an accident, almost as if I’d thrown myself in front of the car on purpose. And just like I pretended to move on, everyone forgot. I became just the poor girl who lost her career to an injury.
I refuse to keep being that version of myself, which is why I pick up the folder.
The first pages are just photos. Several shots from different angles of the route I walked every day.
The intersection near my old apartment in Moscow, various streets along the way to the Bolshoi Theater, the employee entrance in a small alley beside the building.
On this last one, there’s a large red X marked in the corner, indicating the spot.
A chill runs up my spine, spreading to my arm, which goes cold as I set aside the image of the exact place where that car hit me.
The next one is an enlargement of a black sedan. The image is a bit blurry and the driver appears to be wearing a cap, but an inscription below reveals everything:
Driver identified: Volkov, hired professional.
Unregistered vehicle, cloned plate K-7-9-P-Y.
K-7-9.
Those same numbers that have haunted me for five years. The last thing I saw before I blacked out from pain on the dirty asphalt.
Eventually, I accepted I’d never know the rest of that plate, and somehow—reluctantly, bitterly—I stopped thinking about it. Until today. I keep reading, too nervous to stop now, desperate to know what really happened that day.
Order given by Pavel Demidov, Moscow brigadier — Orlov Bratva.
Motive: collection regarding Aleksei Voronov’s debt.
Execution: targeted physical damage, no intention to kill.
No intention to kill.
It’s almost laughable. They didn’t want to kill me—just destroy everything that mattered to me. And for what? Anyone with half a brain could see my parents didn’t care about me. If this attack had any effect, it only made my father desperate knowing his ATM was injured.
Because that’s how they’d always treated me since I started my professional career: like a bank.
I’m still kneeling on the carpet, folder in hand, sheets scattered around me. My knee protests under my weight. The knee that was destroyed by a man named Volkov, on orders from someone called Demidov.
Names I’ve never heard before. And yet, they changed my life forever.
A desperate silence washes over me. There are no tears fighting to escape, just the crushing realization that my father knew. My mother probably knew too, and still they chose to keep using me. Draining every penny I had and giving me nothing in return but insults and complaints.
My dry eyes land on one last inscription, small, at the top of the page. A date. Probably from when this report was prepared or delivered to Maksim.
Over a month ago.
Before he gave me the bracelet that belonged to his mother. Before we threw our pride aside and finally gave in to desire. Before I accepted that I could have a little peace and finally be happy.
The door opens.
As if summoned by my anguish, Maksim appears. His eyes lock on me, surprised to find me in his office, sitting on the floor surrounded by papers from a folder I shouldn’t even know exists. He’s still wearing his coat, phone in hand, which tells me he was just passing through.
Maksim looks at me, then at the papers, then back at me.
“Svetlana…”
He starts, but the icy look I shoot him makes him stop.
Something in his face crumbles—it’s quick, but I catch the regret.
Neither of us moves.
The silence stretches long enough for me to feel every beat of my heart pounding against my ribs. Maksim takes a step forward, slow and hesitant, as if I were a cornered animal.
“Anya…”
His voice is low, guilty, using the nickname I’d asked him so many times to call me. Now it only makes me angry.
Everything makes me angry.
“When were you going to tell me?”