And Maxim Volkov walks in.
Every bit as handsome as I remember him from when we were younger. Maybe even more so with that look of confidence that comes with age and success. The pictures of him online still do him justice. Dark hair perfectly styled, sharp cheekbones, a custom-tailored suit that probably costs more than my yearly dance salary, and eight years since the last time I saw him in person at my mother’s funeral, where I remember explicitly telling him that I hate roses. He wears his privilege like another layer of clothing—expensive, effortless, utterly assumed—but I know what he’s trying to cover up with it. A long line of mobsters just like my own that started the transition into the political circle a couple of generations earlier.
His grandfather saw the writing on the wall when mine thought he could buy enough people to have the “writing” pressure-washed off. Unfortunately, politics is the wave of the future.
“Katerina.” He smiles, slow and practiced. “You look well.”
“Maxim, I’m surprised to see you here. Are you in town for business?”
He nods. “I guess you could consider it a little of both, but mostly this visit is for personal reasons. Something I should have done a while ago. You were magnificent tonight.”
All the breath leaves my lungs.
“Maxim.” My voice comes out flatter than I intended it to. “What are you doing here?”
He steps inside, closing the door behind him with a soft click. In one hand, he holds a massive bouquet of deep red roses. In the other, a sleek black box, too big to be an engagement ring… thank God. It would be awkward to have to turn him down… this time in person. He certainly didn’t need to come all this way to be rejected for my hand. Besides, my finger already has a ring on it. A ring I intend to keep if Scottie wants a life with me.
He hands me the roses, the scent of the flowers hits me, heavy and suffocating. Funeral home and church, and fake condolences from strangers, and the day I buried my mother. I hate roses–despise them, though it’s not their fault that our mansion was covered in them for months after her passing. Everyone wanted to suck up to my father by sending a bigger boutique than the last person.
Men of power or of no power, who never even knew my mother. Not that my father noticed any of their “contributions”. He was a walking zombie in a sharp suit for a week after her passing—didn’t eat, didn’t sleep. As if he never considered that his willpower and money alone weren’t enough to keep her alive. We never discussed it, but Russian men in his line of work aren’t supposed to show emotions, so he never did. Something died in my father the day we buried her, and he buried that part of him with her.
My fingers curl into my palms.
Instead, I prefer tulips. The kind my mother used to grow in her garden. Even in the harsh Russian winters, the spring would bring their happy faces, and my mother was always so elated when the first one would break through the tough terrain.
“Remember to be a tulip, Katerina,” she told me when I was only seven.“Bright and beautiful no matter where you are planted.”
There was only one person who brought me tulips the day my mother died. Only one person who understood. My Grandmother. She knew the symbolism it meant to me.
“You danced beautifully,” he says, and I can’t tell if he means it or if it’s just another polite phrase he was trained to say. “I always knew you belonged in the spotlight.”
“Did my father send you?” I ask, cutting straight to the point, turning to drop the roses on the vanity so I don’t have to touch them anymore.
“No.” His smile doesn’t falter, but something flickers in his eyes when I turn back around. “I came because I wanted to. Watching you on that stage tonight… it reminded me why I’ve been patient.” My father mentioned Maxim’s crush, and now I’m wondering if that has truth to it.
“I didn’t realize you were the patient type,” I say calmly.
He chuckles. “For some things, yes. For others, no.”
He steps closer.
“I still want to see a union between our families,” he says. “Your father still wants that, too. But that’s not the only reason I want to marry you. I’ve always had a feeling that you and I would make a good fit, once the time was right.”
I stare at him. “I’m already married.”
“To a hockey player,” he says lightly, as if that explains everything. “A temporary arrangement, from what I’ve heard.”
My heart spikes. Who did he hear that from? “There’s nothing temporary about my marriage,” I say, lifting my left hand to show Scottie’s ring. The memory of our wedding day and Scottie saying that the ring was meant to ward off men in the audience who thought they might have a shot with me, comes back to full circle.
He barely glances at the ring and then looks away. “A simple signature on a divorce decree would solve that problem. We could make a good team, Katerina,” he continues, as though he didn’t just casually slice open my biggest secret. “You and I. You belong in ballrooms, in mansions, on mega yachts, vacationing all over the world. Not,” his gaze drops briefly to my taped, bloody feet, ”…destroying yourself to be the entertainment.”
Entertainment? Anger burns under my skin.
“Being ‘the entertainment,’” I say quietly, “is my choice. Being a wife to someone like you never was.”
He exhales as though I’m being unreasonable.
“If this is about security,” he says, “about what kind of life I can give you… Perhaps this will help.”
