She says his name like a diagnosis.Vadim. Terminal.
I don’t move. My fingers dig into the bedpost.
She comes closer, hands on her hips, and looks me over properly this time. “Listen,golubushka. Little dove. You are thinking old witch helps monster grandson trap sweet innocent girl. Devil with apron.” She snorts. “Maybe you are right. I have been in this house too long. I have seen too many bad men and too many stupid women.” Her eyes lock on mine. “If you want to hate me, hate me after we get you dressed. Because if you make Vadim wait, you won’t like the story that comes next.”
She reaches for my coat.
I flinch back so fast my heel catches in the rug. I almost go over and have to grab her shoulder to steady myself. Her bones feel small and hard under my hand.
She sighs, long and theatrical. “Arms up, devushka. I have delivered calves with less drama.”
A hysterical laugh bubbles up in my throat. I swallow it.
Fine. Survive now, break down later.
I shove my arms up. She pulls my coat off and folds it over a chair. Then she yanks my T-shirt over my head before I can protest, and suddenly I’m standing there in my bra in front of a stranger who looks like she could kill a man with a teaspoon.
“Good,” she says, like I’m livestock. “No bruises. Some men like to show off on wedding day. Roman is not stupid.” She unclasps my bra too; she doesn’t care about modesty. “Slip.” She holds up a white slip and waits.
My face burns. My skin feels too tight. But I pull the slip on because I have no other moves right now, and standing here arguing topless with Roman’s grandmother is not the hill I’m dying on.
“Do you know about my brother?” I ask, voice barely above a whisper. “Mishka. When does he leave, Luka said seven…”
“Private jet.” She starts unknotting my messy bun with surprisingly gentle fingers. “Seven in the morning. He sleeps at a secure house tonight. You will not see him.”
I freeze. “What?”
She meets my eyes in the mirror. “Clean break is kinder. He is fourteen. He’ll understand.”
“No.” My throat closes around the word. “I need to say goodbye. I need to tell him—”
“You need to stay alive,” she says. “You start begging for last meetings and goodbyes, Vadim smells weakness. He likes weakness. He plays with it.” Her fingers keep working my hair, separating it, smoothing it. “Your brother gets on that plane and never comes back. That is the gift. Do not ruin it by trying to drag him into this house one more time.”
My chest aches. For a second, I see Mishka as he was three weeks ago, hunched over his math homework at our tiny kitchen table, chewing on a pen cap while he argued with a YouTube lecture about integrals. He had chocolate powder on his cheek from my failed attempt at cocoa. He smelled like cheap deodorant and teenage boy.
I’ve raised him alone since I was eighteen, while studying in Switzerland and waiting tables. He’s the only family I have, save for my father, but he doesn’t count, not after showing up drunk at Mama’s funeral.
Tears burn behind my eyes. I blink hard. No. Not in front of her.
“Arms,” Galina says again, softer now.
I lift them. She slides the dress over my head. The silk is cold against my skin and heavier than it looks. It settles around me like water.
She starts on the buttons.
I feel every single one of them close along my spine, a steady, relentless series of clicks.
“One, two, three,” she mutters under her breath.
I count with her in my head because numbers are still the only thing that makes sense. Four. Five. Six.
“You beat him at chess,” she says casually.
“What?” My voice squeaks.
She smirks at my reflection. “You think the walls here do not talk? By the time I came upstairs, kitchen already knew. Kitchen told drivers. Drivers told security. Now even gardener knows that chemist girl wiped the board with Roman Viktorovich.”
Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen.
