What else would I do? Run back to the half-naked Russian crime boss whose bedroom I accidentally invaded?
The image of Konstantin standing there—towel slung low, water droplets still clinging to the tattoos that snake across his chest—flashes through my mind uninvited.
I shove it away. Hard.
I don’t need that in my brain. I need clean thoughts. Quiet thoughts. Tax return thoughts.
Instead, I get a second dose of silent judgment from the child beside me. She doesn’t speak much. Doesn’t have to.
The look she gave me back there wassurgical. No screaming, no tantrum, no “You’re not my mom!” meltdown. Just calm, icy… and pointed.
That wasn’t a little girl confused about bedroom layouts. That was a tiny executioner letting me know I’d trespassed somewhere sacred.
And not just because it washisroom.
Because it was hers, too. Her territory. Her rules. Her father.
I recognize the emotion in her face. Not anger. Not fear.
Jealousy.
The kind that creeps in quietly and builds a fortress around itself. I know it because I’ve felt it. When the people you love themost give pieces of themselves to someone new—someone who hasn’t earned it.
And now here I am, walking beside the 8-year-old version of my past in a hallway full of art I can’t name, dripping shower water onto dark hardwood, trying not to slip on my own regret.
She opens the door to my room like a security escort making sure I don’t stray again. Doesn’t say anything. Just gestures. Like:“this is where you belong, stranger.”
I step inside.
The space is the same—still perfect, still eerie, still soft in all the ways I don’t trust—but I see it a little differently now. A little more like a gift I didn’t ask for and a little less like a threat.
I head straight for the closet.
“I’ll be quick,” I promise over my shoulder. “I didn’t mean to make us late.”
Alya’s voice drifts in like air conditioning. “We’re never late.”
Of course you aren’t.
I open the wardrobe, trying to focus. My robe slips as I reach for the blouse Anya had left hanging earlier—a cream silk thing that probably could buy me seven months of groceries. I tug it off the hanger and pull it on fast, fighting with the sleeves like it personally betrayed me.
“I wasn’t trying to be in his room,” I say, not sure why I’m even defending myself to someone under 10. “I was just… looking around.”
“Papa doesn’t look around,” Alya says from the chair like a tiny informant. “He moves with purpose. That’s what he says.”
I mumble something that sounds like “neat for him” and start fastening the top buttons of my blouse.
“You don’t have to sit there, you know.”
“I’m managing your time.”
Oh, Jesus Christ.
I yank the trousers off the hook and step into them like I’m speed-changing backstage at Fashion Week. My left leg almost gets stuck, and I nearly faceplant onto the floor, but I recover with the grace of someone used to humiliating herself in front of high-powered men and their terrifying children.
Then—a knock.
Soft.
