“I know.”
She studied me for another moment before asking, almost casually, “Do you also know that you’re in love with her?”
The question hit harder than I expected. Hearing it said out loud stripped away every comfortable label I’d been using to contain the truth.
“It’s been seven days, Ma.”
“Your father proposed to me after six hours.”
“And look how that turned out.”
The words came out sharper than I intended. My mother absorbed them without flinching.
“It turned out with six children and twenty-seven years with a man who loved me until the moment he stopped breathing,” she said softly. “The ending doesn’t erase what came before.”
She kissed my cheek.
“I’m proud of you,” she said.
Then she left the kitchen, leaving me standing at the counter with a mug of chamomile tea in my hand and a truth I wasn’t ready to name.
I delivered the tea the same way I always do. A knock on her door, the quiet exchange of mug for goodnight, then the sound of my own footsteps walking away. It’s a routine now. One I’ll keep following until she tells me to stop. Or until she tells me to stay. Either way, the decision will be hers.
That was two hours ago.
Now I’m lying in the dark in the guest room, staring at the ceiling and thinking about her.
I do that most nights.
My mind keeps returning to the flinch Ma described. The one that happens when a door closes too hard and Katya’s entirebody braces before she smooths it away again. I’ve seen it four times in seven days. Each time she recovers almost instantly, composure sliding back into place so quickly most people wouldn’t notice.
I noticed.
You don’t learn a reflex like that from words alone. Words erode. They diminish. They reshape the mind. But a flinch like that lives deeper. It’s muscle memory. It’s the body remembering something the mind would rather forget.
My jaw tightens until my teeth ache.
I want to make Lazovski pay.
Not loudly. Men like him thrive on spectacle. They turn drama into justification for the next cruelty.
No.
What I want for Katya’s father is quieter.
I want his alliances to evaporate one by one until he’s standing alone wondering where everyone went. I want the territories he thought this marriage bought him to close like locked doors. I want him reaching for the Orlov name and discovering it offers him nothing.
I want him to become irrelevant.
For a man whose identity is built on power and control, irrelevance is worse than death. Now I’m in exactly the right position to arrange it.
The ceiling gives me nothing back.
I should sleep. Tomorrow is full of meetings, a call with Helsinki, paperwork Liam wants finished before the end of the week. I need to be sharp.
But my mind drifts back to breakfast this morning.
To the moment Katya looked at me when she thought I wasn’t paying attention. It was quick. A stolen glance. Gone the moment I turned my head. But I caught it.
