I smooth a trembling hand down my leotard and grab my wrap sweater, tugging it on as if fabric will help me brace for impact. I nod once to the ballet master, who steps back without question—because even he knows when royalty walks into a room.
My grandmother doesn’t shout. She doesn’t make a scene.
She simply exists,and the room bends around her.
“Babushka,” I say quietly, stepping past the other dancers, and then she turns and leads me into the hallway.
She turns back to me in the lonely hallways, her eyes sweep over me—the same gray-blue eyes that Luka and I inherited, only hers have seen things I can’t imagine. She assesses me quickly, far too shrewd for a woman in her seventies.
“Door,” she says to the bodyguard, flicking two fingers sharply with a Russian accent.
He pivots, scanning the hallway before closing the studio door behind us so that the other dancers can’t hear us.
Then, my grandmother lifts her chin and smiles. It’s small, but it’s better than most get. My grandmother doesn’t have warm thoughts about many. I know I’m one of a small group.
“Katerina,” she says. “Look at you.”
I swallow, unsure what version of her I’m about to get.
The warm one—the one who used to braid my hair before school, humming old Russian lullabies when I was a little girl.
Or the cold one—the one who taught me how to stand still in front of powerful men and lie with my eyes when the truth was too dangerous?
Both live inside her. Both helped to shape me into the mob princess I was supposed to be.
“Babushka,” I murmur again, softer now.
She steps closer, and I have to stop myself from retreating.
“So,” she says, not bothering with pleasantries. “Your father is very disappointed.”
The words hit hard, but I knew they would. Still, it’s hard to say I was prepared for them.
I straighten my spine. “That’s nothing new.”
Her mouth twitches. Just barely amused. “No. Perhaps not.”
Her gaze flicks to my left hand.
To my ring.
“He is disappointed,” she continues, “because you have not returned to Russia. You have not fulfilled your duties and instead have married without his consent to a hockey player instead of the man he has chosen for you. You have embarrassed him.”
The old me, the girl raised to please, to obey, shrinks instinctively.
But the woman I’ve become…The one who wakes up tangled in Scottie’s arms, who dances because she loves it, not because someone demanded perfection…That woman stands straighter.
“I didn’t marry for my father’s approval,” I say. “I married because I fell in love.”
My grandmother blinks once.
That’s it. She doesn’t fake a gasp or outrage. Instead, she studies me with curious yet well-trained eyes to be able to seea person’s “tell”, the racing of their pulse, the sudden licking of lips and shaking of their head when they tell a false truth but give it away.
“We will see,” she says calmly. “That is what I am here to determine.”
Fear lodges under my ribs, sharp and immediate. “Determine?”
She moves past me, inspecting the empty gray, boring hallway with a faint look of distaste, as if the floors aren’t polished enough for her, and the air not refined enough.
