Anya Chapter
The shower runs hot enough to fog the mirror, and I’m sitting on the edge of the bed in nothing but Roman’s black button-down, watching steam curl through the cracked bathroom door while my husband hums something low and Russian that I don’t recognize.
We are alive.
Forty-three hours since Roman pressed his forehead to mine and told me he wasn’t letting go.
He hasn’t.
“Anya.” His voice carries over the water. “Stop staring at the door and come here.”
“I’m not staring.”
“You’ve been staring for six minutes. I can feel it.”
I smile even though he can’t see it, and the expression pulls at muscles I forgot I had. My face hurts. My throat hurts. Every inch of me aches like I’ve been thrown off a building.
“Your bandage needs changing,” I call back. “You shouldn’t even be showering. The wound is going to get infected if you keep—”
“Then come change it.”
“Roman.”
“Anya.” He draws out my name, three syllables of low heat that curl through the steam and settle somewhere behind my ribs. “Get in here before I come get you, and I promise you won’t like the mess I make dragging you across this floor.”
“You can barely lift your arm.”
“I can lift you just fine. Want to test it?”
I don’t answer, but I’m already standing, already crossing the worn carpet toward the bathroom door, already feeling my pulse pick up speed because apparently, almost dying just makes me want him more.
The steam hits my face when I push the door open.
Roman stands under the spray with water streaming down his chest, his head tipped back, his eyes closed.
The gauze I taped over his ribs this morning is soaked through and peeling at the edges, and the skin around it is angry red in a way that makes my stomach twist.
“You’re going to give yourself sepsis,” I say.
He opens his eyes. Gray and steady and fixed on me with an intensity that hasn’t dimmed since the night he signed our marriage contract.
“Then save me, doctorushka.”
“I’m a toxicologist, not a surgeon.”
“Close enough.” He reaches out, water dripping from his fingers, and hooks two of them into the open collar of my shirt.
His shirt. The one I stole from his bag because it smells like the warmth of his skin, and I needed something to wrap around myself while he slept.
“Take this off and get in here. I’ll let you play doctor all you want. ”
“Your wound—”
“Can wait five minutes.” He tugs, gentle but insistent, and I step closer because I can’t seem to stop stepping closer, can’t seem to remember why I ever wanted distance from this man. “I almost lost you twice in two days. Let me feel you breathing.”
My fingers find the buttons. I work them open slowly, watching his eyes track the movement.
“Mishka called while you were sleeping,” I say, because I need words or I’m going to dissolve into the steam. “He wants to know when we’re coming. He’s been practicing his Russian so he can talk to you without me translating.”
Something shifts in Roman’s expression. Softer. Almost vulnerable in a way I’ve only seen twice before—once when he played his mother’s violin at three in the morning, and once when he held me in the water and told me to kick.
“What did you tell him?”
“That we’d be there soon. That you’re—” I hesitate, the shirt sliding off my shoulders to pool on the wet tile. “That you’re looking forward to meeting him.”
“I am.”
“He’s nervous. He thinks you’re going to be scary.”
“I am scary.”
“Not to him.” I step into the shower, and the water is almost too hot. Roman’s hands find my waist immediately, pulling me against his chest so the spray drums against my back, and his mouth hovers an inch from mine. “You’re going to be his brother. His family. You don’t get to be scary to family.”
He kisses me instead of answering. Slow and deep and thorough, that makes my knees weak and my brain go quiet.
I love him.
The thought surfaces unbidden, and I don’t push it down. I let it sit. Let it breathe. Let myself imagine what it might feel like to say those words out loud to a man who signs death warrants with the same hand that’s currently cradling my jaw.
“Roman,” I whisper against his mouth.
“Hmm.”
“I need to change your bandage. I’m serious. The wound looks—”
“Later.”
“Now.”
He pulls back just enough to look at me. “Five more minutes,” he says. “Then you can torture me with antiseptic all you want.”
I lean up and press my lips to the corner of his mouth, and his grip tightens on my waist, and the steam wraps around us both. For one perfect suspended moment, I let myself believe this might actually work.
The hotel phone rings from the bedroom.
Roman’s head turns toward the sound. His hands don’t move from my body.
“Ignore it,” he says.
“It might be Luka.”
“Luka left for medical supplies an hour ago. He won’t be back until tonight. And he’d use the secure line, not the hotel switchboard.”
“It might be—”
“Anya.” He tips my chin up with wet fingers, forcing my eyes to his. “Whoever it is can wait. You’re the only thing that matters right now.”
The phone keeps ringing. Shrill. Insistent.
“Fuck.” I pull back, and his hands slide reluctantly off my hips. I step out of the shower with water streaming down my legs and grab the towel he left on the counter. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
I wrap the towel around myself and pad barefoot into the bedroom, dripping on the carpet, already annoyed at whoever decided forty-three hours wasn’t enough time to let us breathe.
The hotel phone sits on the nightstand. I pick it up.
“Front desk, Mrs. Volkov. I have a call transferred for you. The gentleman says it’s urgent family business.”
Before I can answer, the line clicks over.
“Check your messages.”
Vadim’s voice slithers through the speaker, and my grip tightens on the receiver.
“How did you find us?”
“I find everything eventually. Surely you’ve learned that by now.” A pause. The soft clink of ice against crystal. “Open the file I sent to your phone. Then we’ll discuss whether my nephew’s little war means anything beyond theater.”
“I’m not interested in your games.”
“This isn’t a game.” His tone doesn’t change. I’m terrified now. “This is a gift. Consider it a wedding present, delayed but appropriate.”
“Fuck your gift.”
“Such language from a scientist.” He sounds amused. “Open the file, Anya Nikolayevna. I’ll wait.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“You won’t.” Ice clinks again. “Because you’ve spent seven years wondering what really killed your mother, and I’m offering you the answer. Free of charge.”
My blood goes cold.
“What did you say?”
“Tatiana Nikolayevna Morozova. Admitted to Klinika Dvadtsat’ Tri on March fifteenth.
Died six weeks later of ‘complications from experimental treatment.’ You were eighteen.
You held her hand at the end.” Another pause.
“She was lying on her left side when they found her. Facing the window. They often do that, the ones who are trying to escape. The ones who still believe there might be something beyond the pain.”
Left side. Facing the window.
The detail I never told anyone. The image that haunts me every time I close my eyes.
“How do you know that?” My voice comes out strangled. “How the fuck do you know that?”
“Open the file.”
The line goes dead.
The shower is still running. Ten feet away, Roman washes my scent off his skin while I stare at my phone on the nightstand, and something cold starts spreading through my chest.
The notification glows. One new message. Unknown sender.
My thumb opens the file before the rational part of my brain can stop it.
The document loads slowly. Cyrillic text. Clinical formatting. And the header at the top makes my vision narrow to a single burning point.
Fentanyl Protocol. Human Trial Authorization.
“No,” I whisper. “No, no, no—”
The date. Seven years ago. The year my mother stopped recognizing my face. The year she started scratching at her arms until they bled. The year I held her hand in a room that smelled like jasmine and watched her slip away piece by piece.
I scroll down, and my mother’s face stares back at me.
The hospital gown hanging loose on shoulders that used to hold me. Hollow cheeks that used to press against mine when she sang me to sleep. Eyes already half-gone to whatever poison they were pumping into her veins.
Subject Name: Tatiana Nikolayevna Morozova. Trial Protocol: Fentanyl Compound Stability Assessment. Authorization Level: Priority One.
“Blyad.” The word tears out of me. “Oh god. Oh fuck—”
I keep scrolling to the signature field.
Authorization granted by
The handwriting I would recognize anywhere. The sharp downstroke on the R. The aggressive flourish on the V. The same arrogant scrawl he used to sign our marriage license, while I told myself I would kill the monster standing beside me.
R. V. Volkov.
The phone slips from my fingers.
I catch it before it hits the ground, but my hands are shaking so badly now that the screen blurs and I have to blink, have to force my vision clear, have to keep looking at his signature.
Twenty-five. He was twenty-five years old when he signed this. Already the heir. Already making decisions. Already looking at a list of test subjects and seeing my mother’s name and writing his approval like she was nothing, like she was disposable, like she was—
Bile surges up my throat.
I barely make it to the wastebasket before my stomach empties. Everything comes up in burning waves while my body tries to purge what my mind can’t process. My mother’s hollow face. Roman’s signature. Everything that proves he knew, he fucking knew, he KNEW—
“Net.” I’m sobbing between heaves. “Net, blyad, net—”
The phone buzzes against the carpet.
I grab it with trembling fingers.
She was conscious for most of it. The compound takes time to work. I thought you should know.
I throw the phone across the room.