Chapter 9 #2
“He didn’t have to,” I say. My cheeks burn. I remember his hand in my hair, the way my body reacted, stupid and hot and confused. “It was humiliating.”
Galina meets my eyes in the mirror again. For a second, something like sympathy flickers there. It’s gone almost immediately.
“His father liked to hurt,” she says. “Viktor liked to break things to see how they screamed. People, animals, everything.” There’s no softness in her tone now, only hard facts.
“Roman watched. Years and years, he watched. Then one day he picked up the knife himself because he decided it was better to be the one holding it.”
Forty. Forty-one. Forty-two. Forty-three.
The last button slides into its loop. I’m sealed in.
Galina turns me all the way toward the mirror. “Vot.”
The woman staring back at me doesn’t look like me at all.
Same eyes, sure, but they look darker with the makeup she somehow managed to put on my face while I was busy not crying.
My hair is twisted up and pinned, curls pulled loose around my face.
The dress fits perfectly, of course. The neckline skims the top of my breasts, enough to let anyone know what Roman Volkov is buying, and the sleeves are lace that hides my old lab scars.
I look… beautiful. Like I wandered out of someone else’s stupid Pinterest board.
I also look like property.
Galina lifts a veil from the dressing table. The tulle is so fine I can barely feel it when she pins it into my hair, but everything blurs.
“My mother would be horrified,” I say.
“Your mother would be proud,” Galina answers. “She would know you did ugly thing for good reason.” She adjusts the veil. “You are already planning how to kill him, aren’t you?”
I choke. “What?”
She snorts. “I have been watching Volkov men for sixty years. I know a murder plan when I see one sitting behind someone’s eyes.” Her hand lands on my shoulder. “Good. Keep plan. But don’t be stupid with it. Don’t let Vadim see it. He smells blood from three rooms away.”
A quiet knock sounds on the door.
“Time, Galina Ivanova,” Luka calls.
Galina offers me her arm. My legs feel like they belong to a mannequin, stiff and not entirely attached, so I take it. Her grip is strong. For a tiny old woman, she could probably drag me if I refused to move.
“Spine,” she says under her breath as we walk. “And teeth. Always teeth. Ne pokazyvay krov’. Don’t show them your blood.”
Easier said than done when my pulse is pounding so hard I can hear it in my ears.
* * *
The room they take me to is not a chapel.
It looks more like a war room.
Dark wood walls, high ceilings, heavy chandeliers dripping crystal. There’s a huge table in the middle, where people decide wars and who gets to disappear. Icons line one wall, saints painted in gold leaf, watching everything with calm little faces while the Volkovs ruin lives under their noses.
My dress rustles when I step through the door. The sound is embarrassingly loud.
Three men are in the room.
Roman is by the window, in a dark suit that fits him too well and a white shirt. I see the edge of a tattoo just above the collar. He stands with his hands braced on the sill, shoulders tense, staring out at the city.
He doesn’t turn right away.
When he hears my dress, he does.
The movement stops halfway, like someone hit pause. His eyes run over me from the veil to the neckline to the ridiculous skirt. His hand tightens on the window frame until his knuckles go white.
For one stupid second, he actually looks… stunned.
Heat races up my throat. My first thought is irrationally petty: good. Choke on it.
Then his face shuts down. Everything smooths out into that blank mask I’m starting to hate. He adjusts his cufflink like he’s in an ad for expensive watches and turns back toward the room, but his gaze doesn’t leave me.
He watches me walk all the way in.
The second man is already seated at the head of the table.
I know it’s Vadim before anyone says his name.
He has presence, the kind that bends rooms. His hair is silver and perfectly groomed, his suit dark blue and obviously tailored in some Italian place that sends champagne along with your receipt.
His hands are smooth, soft. The ring on his finger is a heavy gold with something old and military carved into it.
He looks at his nails.
“Anya Nikolayevna Morozova,” he says, and his Russian is pure Moscow theatre, smooth. “How punctual. I do appreciate a woman who understands schedules.”
His voice is pleasant. It makes my skin crawl.
He waves lazily at the chair opposite him. “Sit, devushka.”
The third man is thin and nervous and already halfway to sweating through his shirt.
Wire-rimmed glasses, receding hairline, a cheap tie that doesn’t match his expensive surroundings.
He stands as I approach and sets a stack of papers in front of my chair with hands that shake so badly one sheet skids halfway across the table.
“Sergei Vetrovin,” Vadim says, still not looking away from his nails. “Family lawyer. Also notary. Witness. And when needed, scapegoat.”
Sergei flinches like someone flicked his ear.
I gather my skirt and sit, trying not to knock anything over. The leather is cold under me and smells like smoke.
“Congratulations on the dress,” Vadim says, finally glancing up. His eyes are a strange yellow-brown, like honey that’s gone a bit dark. “Galina does know how to make a girl look expensive.”
I want to spit at him. Instead, I fold my hands in my lap, because they’re shaking again and I don’t want him to see.
The contract is thicker than any contract I’ve ever signed. I flip through it because I have to do something that isn’t stare at Roman or stab Vadim with my eyes.
The words blur. I catch phrases.
“Binding and irrevocable.”
“Canonical and civil.”
“Annulment not recognized by the Family.”
“Termination by death only.”
Family with a capital F.
There’s a dark smear on page three, right by the line that says Groom. It takes me a second to realize it’s blood. Fresh.
Roman’s signature sits next to it, neat and controlled.
Roman Viktorovich Volkov.
My stomach flips.
He bled on this paper. On purpose? Accident? Both are bad.
“Roman has already signed,” Vadim says. He taps the page with the back of his fingernail and makes the paper jump. “He’s very eager to secure his future. It’s sweet, really. Almost romantic.”
I look up at Roman.
He has moved away from the window now and came closer to the table, but he’s keeping his distance, back against the paneled wall, arms folded, biceps bulging across his chest. His eyes meet mine for one second.
Something unreadable flickers there.
Then he looks away, jaw tight.
“What happens to Mishka if I don’t sign?” I ask.
Vadim smiles. It makes me sick. “We have other options for your brother. My other nephew, for example. Yuri Chernov. He’s very interested in talented, gifted boys, trains them.”
He says “trains” the way some people say “breaks horses.”
My hands curl into fists in my lap.
“Training program is intense,” Vadim continues, like he’s talking about a workout.
“Long hours. No sleep. Constant pressure. Some minds handle it. Some…” He tips his hand back and forth.
“Not so much. The last one lasted six months before his head snapped. Interesting sound.” He chuckles to himself.
“After that he couldn’t count to ten without screaming. Very sad.”
Holy shit.
My lungs lock.
“She signs,” Roman says suddenly. “Mishka goes to Belgium. There is no ‘Yuri’ option on the table.”
Vadim glances at him. “You’re very sure of yourself tonight, Romochka.
” He leans back in his chair, links his fingers over his stomach.
“But you are correct about one thing. There is no third option. Either she signs and her brother becomes a little Belgian, or she refuses and we see what Yuri can make from him.” His eyes slide back to me.
“Do you want to test whose patience is longer? Mine or yours?”
Sergei shifts beside me. The movement makes his glasses slip down his nose. He pushes them up with a jerky motion and wipes a hand on his trouser leg.
“Page seven,” he mumbles, almost too quiet for me to hear. “There’s… there’s also the clause about… verification.”
My focus snaps to the paragraph his finger is hovering over. The letters swim, but I piece them together.
Verification by a qualified third party that the marriage has been consummated…
My stomach roils.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I whisper.
Vadim doesn’t even pretend to be embarrassed. “We are a traditional family,” he says. “We like to know contracts are fulfilled in every sense.” He shrugs one shoulder. “Purely symbolic, of course. A doctor we trust attends, confirms, and leaves. You wouldn’t even have to stop what you’re doing.”
For a second, I genuinely think I might throw up on this very expensive table.
“Nyet.”
The word cracks through the room like a gunshot.
Roman has pushed off the wall and is moving before anyone else even reacts. One second, he’s across the room, the next, he is at the table, looming over Sergei. His hand slams down on the paper so hard the ink bottle wobbles.
“There will be no examination,” he says. “No doctor. No third party. No one touches her.”
His gaze flicks up, meets Vadim’s over my head.
“And anyone who tries,” he adds softly, “loses the hands they use to do it.”
I can feel his other hand on the back of my chair now, fingers curling over the carved wood. He’s close enough behind me that I can feel the heat of his body through the veil, through the dress, through my skin.
Vadim watches him for a long moment. Something sharp and ugly passes through his eyes, then smooths out again.
“Possessive,” he says, amused. “How very interesting.” He flicks his fingers at Sergei. “Strike it.”
Sergei grabs his pen and scratches the paragraph out so hard he almost tears the paper. His hands shake the whole time.
Roman’s fingers leave the back of my chair. He straightens slowly, fixes his cuff again, and steps away. This time, he doesn’t go all the way back to the window. He takes a position at my side instead, a little back, where he can see Vadim.
“Sign,” Vadim says, as if nothing happened. He pushes a pen toward me with two fingers. “We are wasting time, and I have other things to do tonight.”
There’s a small cut on my palm from where I must have clenched my hand around the corner of the page earlier. Blood beads up, bright red against cream paper.
It smears a little as I pick up the pen.
Roman’s signature looks so calm next to my shaking hand.
I think of Mishka. I think of Yuri and his “training program.” I think of Roman’s hand in my hair and the way my body betrayed me on that office floor.
I think of the lab he promised me.
I think of poison.
“Gde podpisat’?” I ask. Where do I sign?
Sergei points to the line with a trembling finger.
I press the pen down. The nib drags through the smear of my blood before it hits paper. My name comes out neat, somehow, as my hand belongs to a calm stranger.
Anya Nikolayevna Volkova.
The second I finish the last letter, something in my chest snaps.
Vadim smiles like he just won a game where no one else knew the rules. “Pozdravlyayu,” he says. “Congratulations. The Wolf has a wife.”
Roman’s jaw clenches.
I put the pen down very carefully, because if I let go too fast, I think I might throw it at someone’s face.
Anya Morozova is gone on this paper. Dead in the ink.
Anya Volkova sits there, hands still shaking, and quietly rewrites a mental formula.
Not if I kill him first.
I look up and meet Roman’s eyes. He holds my gaze for exactly three seconds.
I’m not afraid of the big, bad wolf.