I push. The platform slides. My abs immediately start screaming.
What the fuck is this torture?
"Good," Katarina says, though her smile suggests she's enjoying my suffering. "Now hold. Five breaths."
I hold. Muscles shake. Sweat breaks across my forehead.
I'm in shape. I train daily. I can spar for hours, run miles without stopping, fight multiple opponents without breaking rhythm.
But this? This is different. This targets muscles I didn't know existed. Requires control I don't naturally possess. Demands stillness when my body wants to move.
"Transition to the next position," Katarina commands.
I transition. Nearly fall off the machine. Catch myself at the last second.
Victoria makes a sound that might be a suppressed laugh.
"Something funny,kotyonok?" I ask through gritted teeth.
"Not at all," she says, but her eyes are dancing. "You're doing great."
Katarina puts us through a series of movements that feel specifically designed to humiliate me. Planks on an unstablesurface. Leg lifts with springs that resist every inch. Some kind of twisted side stretch that makes my obliques burn like fire.
I'm dripping sweat within twenty minutes. My shirt clings to my back, my chest. My legs shake during transitions.
And Katarina watches with barely concealed glee, calling out corrections in that accent that makes every instruction sound vaguely threatening.
Meanwhile, Victoria moves through the exercises like she's been doing them her entire life. Fluid. Graceful. Devastatingly attractive in ways that make concentrating on my own form nearly impossible.
By the time Katarina calls the class to an end, I'm wrecked. Muscles I didn't know I had are screaming. My abs feel like someone used them as a punching bag.
"Excellent work," Katarina says, though she's clearly addressing Victoria, not me. "Same time next week?"
"Definitely," Victoria confirms.
Katarina leaves the studio, and suddenly we're alone. Both of us breathless, both sheened with sweat, the air between us thick with heat and exertion.
Victoria looks at me with genuine concern. "Are you okay? You're not feeling dizzy or anything?"
The question stops me cold.
Not because I'm dizzy. I'm fine. My sugar is stable. I checked before we left the house and again in the car on my phone.
But she asked. Specifically about dizziness. The telltale sign of blood sugar dropping.
Which means she knows.
I wasn't certain before. Thought maybe she saw the insulin pump in the gym that morning, but couldn't be sure if she registered what it was.
Now I'm certain.
Victoria knows I'm diabetic.
She's the only person outside Maksim and Zakhar who knows this about me.
And I realize with sudden, startling clarity. I'm not threatened by her knowing. I trust her.
I close the distance between us. Cup her face in both hands. Feel the heat of her skin, the rapid pulse in her throat.
