ANYA — Volkovskaya Bedroom, 1923
The dress Roman picked is the exact color of arterial blood.
I know that because I’ve seen it before.
Same deep red, same glossy shine. University, first autopsy observation, the pathologist’s scalpel slipped, and the aorta said “fuck you” and painted the tiles in a perfect spray.
I remember standing there with my notebook and my cheap sneakers. Now that color is painted on my body.
The silk clings everywhere. It’s technically modest—high neck, long sleeves, hem brushing my ankles—but there is no room for underwear under this thing. I tried. Every single line showed.
So here I am. No bra. No panties. Just my bare skin under a stupidly expensive dress, nipples tight against the lining, the cool silk sliding over my ass when I move.
Roman’s taste is expensive. His mother, according to Galina, loved Russian designers, old houses with names. For me, he went Italian. Imported. Custom. Something expensive to wrap around what he bought.
“You look perfect.” His voice comes from behind me, and I still jump a little, because my body is a traitor and responds to him before my brain catches up.
I don’t turn because I can feel him without looking—heat against my back, that cedar-smoke cologne threading through my lungs.
“Exactly how I need you to look tonight.”
“Like bait?” I watch my own mouth in the mirror as I say it. The red lipstick was Galina’s idea. “Or like a warning label?”
“Like mine.” He comes up behind me, and for a second we’re just…
there. Me in blood-red silk, him in charcoal that eats the light.
His jacket fits his shoulders too well. The open white collar shows the dark ink against pale skin, and the old Patek on his wrist glints when he moves his hand.
He looks like money. And violence. In a Brioni suit.
His hands settle on my waist. His fingers dig in just enough to feel like a test—how much give there is under the silk, where my hip bones sit, how the dress rides over the curve of my ass. It’s possessive in that quiet way he does everything.
“The Chechens are predators,” he says, eyes on my reflection rather than my face. He smooths a non-existent wrinkle at my hip. “Dmitri especially. He’ll be charming. He’ll listen. He’ll make you feel like you’re the only person at the table whose words matter.”
“That sounds familiar,” I mutter. His eyes meet mine in the glass for a second. Flat. Dangerous. Then his hands move up to my shoulders and turn me to face him. He’s too close. He always is. He doesn’t have a respectful distance setting.
“Every compliment is reconnaissance,” he says quietly.
“Every question is a probe. Every smile has teeth. He’ll look like the better option.
He’ll make it sound like he’s offering rescue.
” His hand slides from my shoulder to my throat, fingers curling there with terrifying gentleness.
“He’s not.” My pulse kicks under his palm.
I know he feels it. It might as well be Morse code: fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
“I’m not stupid,” I say.
“No.” His thumb strokes once along the side of my neck.
“You’re not stupid. You’re furious, grieving, and so goddamn stubborn you’d rather burn down the house than admit the structure is keeping the wolves out.
” His gaze holds mine, steady. “Which is why I need you to listen even if you want to do the opposite of everything I say.”
He’s not wrong. I hate that he’s not wrong.
“You stay close to me,” he continues. “You don’t drink without me. You don’t leave the table without me. You don’t talk without me. You don’t try to impress anyone. If you feel unsafe for even a second, you come to me.”
“And then what?” My voice is sharper than I intend. “You kill someone in the dessert course?”
“If I have to.” He doesn’t blink. “Whatever happens, it happens on my terms, not his.”
His hand drops away, and I can breathe again. Sort of.
He moves to the dresser, picks up a velvet box I hadn’t noticed, and brings it back.
“Turn around.”
I turn. The mirror catches all of it: the dress, the ugly line of tension between my shoulder blades, and the man standing behind me holding a piece of jewelry that could pay off my father’s debts twice.
The necklace is obscene. Diamonds and rubies, platinum like liquid ice, deep red stones that match the dress exactly. They look like frozen drops of blood hanging in the air on thin wires.
“This belonged to my mother,” he says, lifting it out. For the first time since I met him, his voice actually sounds… softer. “She wore it to every major negotiation, every dinner where she needed them to remember she was a Volkova before she was a wife.”
The metal is cold when he lays it against my collarbones, his fingers brushing my skin as he fastens the clasp at the back of my neck.
“She said it brought her luck,” he adds. “My grandfather had it blessed.” One corner of his mouth lifts without any humor. “Ammo still reached her anyway. But it missed her heart by a centimeter.”
“Comforting,” I say dryly.
“In this family?” His hands come to rest on my shoulders again. “It is.”
We look at ourselves in the mirror. We look… good. That’s the worst part. We look convincing. Power couple. Old money and new blood. I hate how easily we pass for that.
“If anything happens tonight,” he says, eyes on me, “if you get scared and decide to test me instead of trusting me… understand everything you do lands on me.”
“I heard your little speech,” I say. “I’m not promising anything.”
His jaw tightens. His hand squeezes once on my shoulder, not gently. “Anya—”
“You bought my life,” I say, meeting his eyes in the glass. “You didn’t buy my obedience on command. I’ll survive that dinner my way.”
For a second, I think he’s going to lose it. Just snap. His eyes go darker, a muscle in his cheek jumps, his fingers flex like he’s picturing them around my throat. Then he exhales and lets go.
“Sadis’,” he says. “Sit down. One minute before a journey. We don’t tempt fate.”
I blink. “What?”
“It’s a tradition.” He nods toward the bed. “We sit. We think. We go. My mother never left the house without doing it. Neither do I.”
The absurdity of it almost makes me laugh. The Wolf of Solntsevo, scheduling pre-homicide quiet time because Mama said so.
But he’s already lowering himself to the edge of the mattress, and I’m not stupid enough to push on this particular weirdness, so I sit too.
Our arms brush. My heart is hammering. He just sits there, counting under his breath, lips moving slightly.
I follow the rhythm of his breathing, because if I don’t focus on something, the panic in my chest is going to climb my throat and use my mouth like a geyser.
After a minute, he stands. “We leave now,” he says.
* * *
The War Room is exactly what my nightmares would have designed if they’d had a budget.
One wall is all maps—Moscow cut into colored zones like someone dissected the city and labeled each piece. Names are printed over them in Cyrillic and Roman script, little flags of territory. Solntsevo blue. Chechen red. Nice friendly orange where they overlap.
The table itself is ridiculous—huge, old wood. The crystal overhead throws fractured rainbows across prison tattoos and gold teeth and hands that have clearly wrapped around a lot of throats.
Guns lie on the table like part of the place setting. No one even pretends to hide them.
My brain does what it always does when the situation is overwhelming: registers details. A scar on the bald guy’s scalp. Prison ink on the knuckles of the thin man in the cheap suit.
Roman’s hand stays at the small of my back, steering me, and I hate that it helps. I hate that the solid weight of him behind me is the only thing keeping my knees from shaking.
“Roman.” Vadim doesn’t look up from his steak when we reach the head of the table. He saw us the second we walked in. He’s just making a point. “And our new bride. How radiant you look, Anya Volkova.”
The name still sits wrong in my ears. My mouth wants to say Morozova, and my throat locks around it like it’s become contraband.
“Spasibo,” I manage.
Roman pulls my chair out. His hand brushes the back of my shoulder as I sit, and I know it’s for the audience, but it still sends a hot little spike right down my spine.
Vadim raises his glass. “To family.” No one here means the same thing when they say that word.
We’re halfway through the first course when the Chechens arrive. The room doesn’t go quiet, exactly, but the tone shifts. Everyone sharpens. Conversation narrows. Roman’s hand, which has been resting on my thigh under the table, flexes just once.
The first men in are soldiers. I can tell by the way they move—like they expect incoming fire at any second.
One keeps his hand inside his jacket the entire time, fingers no doubt wrapped around a grip.
Another has a face like someone took a knife to it and didn’t bother to stitch properly afterward.
His left eye is clouded and useless. He sees me with the right one and grins, slow and lazy, showing three gold teeth.
I look away. Fast. Focus on my napkin. On my fork. On literally anything else.
Then the man they orbit steps through the door.
Dmitri Volkov looks like every girl’s bad idea.
Blond, but not soft. Amber eyes like Vadim’s, but warmer.
Young, maybe thirty. Tall, but not in a heavy way like Roman.
More like a weapon—lean muscle, tailored suit, easy smile that would probably make women in normal restaurants forget what they were mad about.
He looks straight at me first.
His gaze tracks me from head to toe, and it’s not subtle. He takes in the neckline of the dress, the way the silk clings to my hips, the necklace sitting heavy against my throat. It feels like he’s using fingers instead of eyes.
Roman goes very, very still beside me.
“Roman Viktorovich,” Dmitri says, tone warm, accent softening the Russian. “We finally meet again. And this must be your famous wife.”