ANYA — Volkovskaya Bedroom, 1923 #2
He comes closer.
Roman stands automatically. The chair scrapes back; his hand leaves my thigh and drops out of sight. I imagine it hovering near his gun; I don’t have to look to know.
“This is Anya,” Roman says. His voice is flat. “My wife.”
“Charming.” Dmitri offers his hand to me.
It’s stupid how much that simple gesture makes my heart speed up. Not because I’m intimidated by one man with pretty eyes, but because every single set of eyes in the room is on us now.
If I refuse the offered hand, we start a problem. If I take it, we’re already in one.
I take it. His palm is warm. Grip firm. He holds just a second too long, and his thumb drags once across my knuckles in a stroke that is absolutely intentional.
“Welcome to the family, Anya,” he says, “If you ever need saving from the big bad wolf, you know who to ask.”
I pull my hand back before I can stop myself.
Roman’s fingers clamp onto my thigh under the table again the second I sit. Hard.
“Breathe,” he murmurs.
Fuck you, I think, which apparently my body translates to clench harder around his hand, great idea.
Dinner is a slow-motion car crash. The Chechens eat like they’re still in some mountain village with no witnesses.
Meat ripped with hands, bones cracked, wine gulped.
One of them yanks a server in by the wrist and buries his face in her hair, inhaling.
She doesn’t flinch. That calm is not natural; it’s learned. No one stops him. This is normal here.
I cut my steak into small, equal pieces because I need something I can control. Dmitri sits directly on my other side. His cologne is citrus and smoke, lighter than Roman’s, but it still curls into my nose and sits there.
“So, Anya.” His Russian is smooth, obviously educated. “I hear you’re a toxicologist. That is not a hobby one stumbles into.”
Roman’s hand tightens on my thigh. Warning. Don’t engage.
“My mother died in a lab accident,” I say before I can stop myself. “Chemical exposure. I wanted to understand what killed her.”
I grab the napkin between my fingers. Tear. Tear. Tiny shredded pieces gathering in my lap like snow.
“How poetic and very Russian,” Dmitri says, watching me over the rim of his wine glass. “To devote your life to the thing that destroyed you.”
“It didn’t destroy me,” I say. “It gave me data.”
“Data,” he repeats, amused. “Spoken like a true scientist. And now my cousin has you in his house, with a lab. I imagine your data will be very useful to him.”
“My work is my own,” I say. Roman’s fingers dig in. “I’m continuing my research. That’s it.”
“Hmm.” Dmitri leans slightly closer. “And what are you researching, exactly?”
I should shut up.
I should shut. The fuck. Up.
“Synthetic opioid derivatives,” I say. ”
Roman’s grip on my thigh turns brutal. “Enough,” he says, soft but sharp. “She doesn’t discuss her work at the table.”
“Of course,” Dmitri says easily. “Forgive me. I forgot we are in such sensitive company.”
Vadim laughs down the table, knife scratching against plate. “Let the girl talk,” he says. “She’s not porcelain. Anya, you mentioned incapacitating predators earlier. What was your professional opinion?”
I look straight at Vadim. “It depends on the predator,” I say. “Some need fast. Others need time to understand they’re dying.”
Silence spreads down the table like a ripple. Roman’s fingers crush my thigh. Hard. My lungs forget how to function.
Dmitri smiles, slow and delighted. “And which category would my cousin fall into, do you think?” he asks.
Roman’s chair slams back. There’s a blur of movement, and suddenly he’s on his feet, one hand fisted in Dmitri’s expensive jacket, the other under the table where I know exactly what he’s holding. I know where his finger is.
“Say that again,” Roman says, voice low and lethal. “Provoke my wife. Provoke me. Try it.”
The whole room rearranges itself around the two of them. Chechen men reach for their waistbands. Volkov men appear from the walls as they grew there. Glassware trembles. A server drops a bottle; red wine explodes across the marble floor like another arterial spray.
Dmitri does not stop smiling. “She’s interesting,” he says calmly, like there isn’t an actual gun pressed where I know his liver sits.
“And she deserves to be more than a pretty piece of bait at your table.” His eyes flick to me, then back to Roman.
“If you’re not careful, cousin, someone else will appreciate that. ”
“Roman.” My voice comes out thin and scared and not nearly loud enough. “Please.”
His gaze switches to me. All that fury. All of it.
Vadim taps his fork against his glass. Once. “Enough,” he says. “No one is dying over dinner. Not tonight. Roman, sit. Dmitri, learn when to shut your mouth. We have business to discuss.”
For three seconds, Roman doesn’t move. Then he slowly releases Dmitri’s jacket, holsters the weapon under the table, and drops back into his chair. His hand finds my thigh again. The pressure is steady, punishing.
“Stay away from my wife,” he says to Dmitri, calm now in that terrifying way. “Don’t talk to her. Don’t look at her. Don’t think about her.”
“Of course,” Dmitri says. “Assuming she does not poison you first.”
He stands, smooths his jacket, and eventually the conversation limps back into something like normal.
My appetite is gone. My pulse is not.
When dinner finally ends, my whole body feels like I’ve been clenched for hours.
“Luka will take you back to our rooms,” Roman says, still not looking at me. “Go.”
I stand. My legs are shaking, but I make it to the door.
Just before I step through, I look back. He and Vadim are squared off at the head of the table, wine stains on the floor between them.
Roman’s shoulders are tight. His hands curl into fists at his sides, and I know, with that cold clarity I reserve for lab work, that I have just made his night a hundred times harder. I lit the fuse. Now I get to wait and see what explodes.
* * *
I’m still in the red dress when I hear the door. I told myself I was going to change, that I was going to get out of the silk and into something with actual fabric and underwear and dignity.
Instead, I went straight to the window and stood there, looking at Moscow lights and pretending I could pick out the plane that took Mishka away from all of this.
The door hits the wall, making the frame shake. Roman enters. Tie gone. The top buttons of his shirt undone. Hair is a little less perfect. Eyes flat.
He closes the door very gently behind him. That’s somehow worse than the slam.
We stare at each other. The silence is heavy and mean. My heartbeat is so loud I’m sure he can hear it.
“Take off the necklace,” he says finally.
My fingers go straight to the clasp as they belong to someone else. The metal is warm now from my skin, but the second it leaves my body, I’m colder. Smaller. I lay it carefully on the dresser because if I drop his dead mother’s necklace, I will not survive the night.
“The dress,” he says.
I reach for the zipper at my lower back. My hands are shaking. The stupid little tab slips. I can’t get a grip.
He crosses the room in three long strides. “Turn around.”
He doesn’t wait to see if I obey. He just takes my shoulders and moves me, rough enough that my heels skid on the floor.
His fingers find the zipper immediately.
The sound as he drags it down feels obscene in the quiet room.
The dress loosens around me, silk slackening, cool air hitting the strip of my spine.
“Let it fall,” he says.
“Roman, I was just—”
“Let. It. Fall.”
I swallow and let go. The silk slides down my body, catches on my hips for a second, then drops to the floor.
There is nothing between his eyes and my skin now.
The heels keep my back arched, my chest forward, my ass lifted. Great design if you’re going for “fuckable statue.” Less great for standing naked in front of the man who owns your life.
My arms twitch up automatically to cover myself. He catches both wrists before I make it.
“You put yourself on display,” he says quietly. “At dinner.”
“That is not what I—”
“Now I look.”
He lets my wrists go, stepping back just far enough that I can’t grab anything to cover myself without making things worse.
He circles me, checking every inch of me.
My skin prickles everywhere his gaze touches. I feel more naked than if he’d put his hands on me.
“You disobeyed me,” he says. “I gave you simple rules for tonight. You broke everyone.”
He comes back to face me. “I told you not to engage with Dmitri. You did.” His eyes hold mine.
“I told you not to answer personal questions. You told him about your mother and why you study poisons.” His jaw flexes.
“You discussed your research. You made yourself a target. And then you threatened to kill me in front of a room full of men who would love to help you try.”
“I didn’t threaten you,” I say, even though yes, I pretty much did. “We were talking hypothetically.”
“You were showing off,” he says flatly.
His hand moves, sudden and fast, and clamps around my throat. “You made me look weak.”
His thumb drags once along my jaw, and the tenderness in that small movement makes my chest ache worse than his grip.
“On the bed,” he says. “Face down.”
Fear hits, making me sway. My feet don’t move.
“Roman—”
“On. The. Bed.”
I go. What else can I do?
My legs feel weird, like they don’t belong to me, but I manage to walk to the bed and climb up, lying down on my stomach. The sheets are cool against my chest, my thighs. I can smell him in the fabric, and it does stupid things to my already scrambled brain.
Behind me, a drawer slides open. I turn my head and see the belt in his hand.
Fuck, he has to be joking, right?
“No,” I say, panic punching through the numbness. “Roman, don’t—”
“Wrists above your head,” he says.
I don’t move. I can’t.