When she leaves, the room is mine again. I sit up and set my feet on the cold rug. It feels like punishment, then like a blessing. I pick up the juice because Yelena's faith is sacrosanct. I sip, wince, and smile despite myself. The world settles another inch.
My phone lies face down where I left it. I flip it over. Reza's name crowds the screen with a string of texts I should answer. I hold the phone, then set it down again. The silence is an indulgence, and I'm not yet ready to end it.
I stand at the window and rest my forehead against the cold pane, then pull back and pretend I did not. My grandmother would scold me about marks on the glass. The cardinal hops closer as if to saylisten. The branch wobbles under his red righteousness, then he steadies, a small king with a sense of humor.
I try to see only what is in front of me—blue sky, brick warmed by light. The tiny white line along the parapet where the sun scours snow to glass. I decide to be exactly here for thirty full seconds. I make it to eighteen and smile because that is, by my standards, very good.
The smile lingers, and my body remembers faster than my mind permits. I breathe in cedar and winter light and the ghost of his cologne on my wrist. The room tilts by a degree only I can feel. My heart goes quick, an honest drum. I press my fingers to my mouth and find it smiling again.
Last night unfurls in small flashes, not a parade but a constellation—his hand closing over mine and guiding, his voice roughened by restraint, the way he read my breath and answered it, the certainty in his touch when I curled toward him and asked without speaking. Warmth gathers low and sweet, a tender ache like the bloom of a new bruise where pleasure has left its signature. My knees feel untrustworthy in the nicest way. Heat climbs my throat and settles under my skin, and I'm suddenly aware of every place he held me steady, of how easily I opened when he set the pace and waited for my yes. I have never trusted steel to be gentle. I did, and it was.
Yet I know this is not love, only sweetness that tempts me toward more. I think of my mother moving through mornings like a house of silk, perfume a soft wound. She made rooms feel seen until walls built by men tightened as she grew. She was left with good China while silence ate her voice. I don't believe she forgave my father, but she forgave me for not knowing how to help. I set my palm to the glass and vow not to repeat it, even if the world prefers lineage to choice.
The knock comes with the particular rhythm of men who are trained not to announce themselves. For a ridiculous second, I lift my chin like an empress and then drop it because I'm a woman in a sweater with a braid that has decided to be ungovernable. I open the door a hand's width.The guard on the other side looks at my shoulder instead of my face in the respectful way they learn if they want to avoid broken bones.
"Miss Kirov," he says. "Your father requests you in the chapel."
Of course he does. Of course the summons comes when my hair looks like I wrestled the wind. The little bones around my heart clack against each other like tiny cups, then stack themselves neatly. I'm practiced at putting on a self that will pass where it needs to pass. I pull on a soft black dress and a cardigan that looks innocent and is armor in the language of grandmothers, tighten my braid with a ribbon so red it is almost ridiculous, and slide my feet into flats because I prefer to stand my ground without worrying about my ankles. I touch the crucifix at my throat. It is where it always is, like a hand.
The path to the chapel drops out of the bright hall into the cool, polished hush of the older wing with dark mahogany paneling. The staircase turns with quiet grace, a thick runner swallowing sound. A porcelain vase holds winter branches on a marble console. Above this, oil portraits in gilt follow me, unsmiling, to the chapel door. It is carved and heavy, a piece of Russia an artisan once smuggled into Boston plank by plank. It opens with the smallest groan, the polite complaint of age.
Inside, the air is thick with incense and old wood polish, scents that carry prayers like beads on a string. Oil lamps throw soft halos across faces that look down with patient, gold-leaf mercy, a quiet piety that feels more like light than rule. Candles stand where my grandmother taught me to set them for birthdays, for saints' days, and for the smallsorrows kept unspoken so breathing stays simple. My father stands at the rail as if the chapel grew him, long black coat, hands clasped behind his back in that priestly posture that can be humility or control depending on the day.
He turns when the door clicks shut. He doesn't smile or scowl. He takes me in with one slow pass of the eyes that would insult me if I did not love him, and then he nods once.
"Valya," he says. "Come."
I walk up the aisle and take the place opposite him. My gaze falls on the little lavabo at the back that glints like a shallow spring, as if a bird might come at any moment to dip its beak and be satisfied.
"You sent for me," I say, pretending this is theater, not life. We are two people and a dynasty, with arguments postponed because guests listened and icons seemed to blink.
"I did," he answers, voice measured. "There is no need for ceremony between us. You will marry Dmitri Volkov."
I hear the wick spit as his words strike. The chapel holds its breath. A sound I did not intend escapes, closer to a laugh than sense. "Excuse me?"
"You will marry Dmitri," he repeats, as if repetition could make it into something other than audacity. "It will be a sacred Bratva wedding on Christmas Eve. You will exchange blood vows by candlelight, before a priest, with God as witness."
"You brought me to church to tell me I'm a contract," I say, and the humor leaks from my mouth before I can sharpen it. "Father, you cannot be serious."
He sets two fingers on the rail. "I'm serious," he says. "The matter is settled."
"It is my life," I say, calm for someone reconsidering silence in favor of arson. "We don't barter women. Not in my century."
"No, we don't barter," he answers. "We bind."
I snort. "Beautiful word for a leash."
"Don't be foolish," he says. "This is legacy and protection, the old ways that kept us alive when men like Vetrov sharpened knives on stones. Enemies circle. The new breed would break us and sell the crumbs as innovation."
"Marry me to your soldier, and the crumbs become a loaf," I say, clever mouth unlatched. "We will be a bakery."
He exhales, a man who has carried weight so long, he forgets air. "Dmitri is not merely a soldier. He believes as we do. He understands vows, words before God that don't bend."
"And how will he protect me?"
"When I no longer can, he will."
The sentence slips under my ribs. I straighten.No. Not like this.
