The longer I sit with the idea that I could have a different life, the more I want it. That’s the part that scares me. It started as a spark. A tiny, reckless thought I barely let myself hold because even imagining it felt disloyal. Disloyal to my name. Disloyal to my father. Disloyal to the version of myself everyone expects. But that spark didn’t die. It caught. It’s spreading slowly, steady and hot, and I don’t know how to put it out without putting myself out with it.
I don’t love Konstantin. The truth sits there, calm and undeniable. Konstantin is familiar. Polished. Acceptable. We’ve known each other since we were children running through estates that were never really ours, watched by nannies and security and expectations. We’ve never kissed. Not properly. We’ve barely dated in any way that feels real. We’ve attended events. We’ve sat next to each other. We’ve played our parts. He looks at me like I’m already his. Like the paperwork just hasn’t been signed yet. There’s no pull in my chest when he walks into a room. No shift in the air. No awareness that feels like it’s crawling under my skin.
Roman is different. Roman looks at me and I feel it. Not something soft and naive. Something visceral. My bodyresponds before my brain does. There’s tension. Heat. Awareness. The kind that makes me conscious of my breathing, of the space between us, of the fact that I am not just a daughter or a future wife or a strategic alliance. With him, I feel like a woman. It’s unsettling. It’s dangerous. It’s intoxicating. And the worst part is that it’s honest.
How does my father expect me to marry Konstantin and spend the rest of my life performing a role I never auditioned for? To be the perfect made woman at his side. To smile at charity galas. To host dinners where the real conversations happen after I leave the room. To produce children who will be raised in the same polished cage and taught that love looks like duty and security looks like control. Is that it? Is that the whole blueprint? Marry well. Behave perfectly. Have heirs. Age gracefully. Fade into respectability.
There has to be more than that. There has to be more to life than being useful. More than being arranged into place like furniture. More than being valuable because of who I stand next to.
I think about Roman’s house again, about the way it felt to sit at a kitchen table without calculating how every word would be interpreted. The way Irina spoke to me like I was a person, not an asset. The way Roman didn’t demand gratitude, didn’t try to trap me, didn’t treat my presence like leverage. He didn’t try to keep me when I said I was going. He didn’t make me feel small for choosing my father. That alone says more than any declaration ever could.
Now I know what it feels like to be offered a choice. That knowledge won’t go away just because I’m back in my father’s orbit. It’s in me now. The awareness that I don’t have to accept the first version of my future that was handed to me. The awareness that I am capable of wanting something different.And once you’ve tasted that, once you’ve felt it settle into your bones, it’s impossible to pretend you’re satisfied with less.
I turn my face toward the window, watching the city blur past, and I feel the fire inside me flicker, then steady. I don’t know how this ends. I don’t know how to tell my father that the life he built for me feels too narrow. I don’t know how to stand in front of him and say that love, if I ever choose it, will not be negotiated across a table.
But I know this. If I go back and slip neatly into place again, if I marry Konstantin because it’s convenient and expected and clean, something in me will go quiet. And this time, I will hear it.
I sit with my bag on my lap, my fingers curled so tightly around the strap that the leather digs into my skin. I don’t loosen my grip. I don’t trust myself to. The burner phone Roman gave me rests inside, small and solid, pressing faintly through the fabric like it has weight beyond plastic and metal. I’m hyperaware of it. Of what it means. Of the fact that it exists at all. My pulse hasn’t quite settled around the truth that I chose something back there. That I stood in a driveway between two men and said words that cannot be unsaid.
Beside me, my father says nothing.
He sits perfectly straight, coat smooth, posture unyielding, hands resting on his thighs like he’s carved from something expensive and immovable. He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t look at the neighborhoods sliding past the tinted glass. He looks forward, always forward, like the future is something he grips by the throat. His silence is not hollow. It’s dense. Packed with judgment, expectation, calculation. It fills the car more completely than any argument could.
I find myself staring at the back of the driver’s head, at the rigid line of his shoulders, at the way his hands sit steady on the wheel. He hasn’t glanced at me once, not in the mirror, not in passing, but I feel watched anyway. As if every breath I take is being noted and stored. As if the air itself belongs to my father.
When my father finally speaks, he does it in Russian and without turning his head.
“Are you in pain?”
The softness of it almost undoes me. It’s too careful. Too measured. It lands somewhere in my chest and tightens there.
“No.”
It’s not the kind of lie meant to deceive. It’s the kind meant to survive. My wrists throb when I move them the wrong way. My ribs protest if I inhale too deeply. My body is a quiet ledger of what happened, bruises fading from angry to yellow, tenderness settling into bone. But I will not unpack that here. Not in this car. Not with a driver and an agenda and my father’s expectations folded neatly beside him.
He exhales slowly. Controlled. “You should have told me sooner.”
“I called as soon as I could.”
His jaw flexes, but he doesn’t contradict me. He can’t. Instead, he says my name, and the way he says it feels different. Heavier.
“Anastasiya.”
I keep my gaze on my hands. “Papa.”
“You did not obey.”
There it is. Not raised. Not dramatized. Just placed between us with precision. A fact. A failure.
I force myself to lift my eyes and meet his. I will not look down like I did in that warehouse. I will not shrink in this car.
“I know.”
His gaze is steady. Dark. Intelligent. Sharp enough to cut when he wants it to. There’s something else in it too, something worn thin at the edges, but he would never name it.
“You dismissed your security.”
“I know.”
