She dries her hands. Pours herself a glass of water. Sits across from me at the table.
I eat. The stew is incredible. Rich, slow-cooked, with chunks of beef that fall apart on the tongue and potatoes that are soft and golden. She made this knowing I'd be late. Made it so it would hold and stay warm and be ready whenever I walked through the door, whether that was eight o'clock or midnight.
I eat all of it. She doesn't talk. Just sits across from me, her hands wrapped around her water glass, her eyes soft in the lamplight. Present.
When I'm done, I set my fork down and look at her.
"Thank you," I say. And this time I don't mean just the food.
She smiles. Not the rehearsed one. Not the trained one. A real one, small and quiet, that reaches her eyes and does something to my chest I'm not equipped to handle.
"You're welcome," she says.
I clear my plate. She reaches for it at the same time, and our hands brush over the dish.
"Leave it," I say. "Go to bed. I'll clean up."
"Anton, you have split knuckles. Let me do the dishes."
"Go to bed, Kira."
She holds my gaze for a beat, then she stands, pushes her chair in, and walks past me toward the door.
She pauses beside me. Her hand lifts and settles against my shoulder, light and brief. A touch that lasts maybe two seconds.
"Goodnight," she says.
Then she's gone, and I'm standing in my kitchen holding a dirty plate with a throbbing jaw and a warmth in my chest that scares me more than anything the council could do.
Kira
He's been different since last night in a way I can't name. Like something shifted behind his eyes when I was cleaning the blood off his face, and now he doesn't know where to put it.
He was up before me this morning. I found his coffee cup in the sink, rinsed but not washed. The bag of peas back in the freezer. No note. No message. Just the ghost of him in the kitchen and the faint smell of his cologne in the hallway.
I spend the morning the way I've spent every morning this week. I clean. I cook. I organize. I call the plumber about the kitchen drain Darya mentioned and schedule a time for next week. I wipe down shelves and rearrange the pantry and prep a marinade for tonight's dinner.
It's not mindless work to me. I know some people would look at what I do and see something small. Domestic. Beneath them. But there's a rhythm to it that steadies me. A logic. Every room I touch becomes more livable, more cared for, and that matters. It matters to me.
By early afternoon, I'm in the kitchen rolling dough for pirozhki when the front door opens. Hard. Then closed with the kind of force that says the person on the other side of it is holding something back.
It's barely two o'clock. He's never home this early.
I wipe my hands on my apron and step into the hallway. Anton is standing by the door, his coat still on, his phone in his hand, and the look on his face stops me where I am.
The cut on his cheekbone has darkened into an ugly bruise, purple and black spreading under his eye. But it's not the bruise that concerns me. It's the stillness. Control pulled so tight it's vibrating.
"What happened?" I ask.
"Nothing."
His voice is flat. Clipped. He shrugs off his coat, drops it over the back of the chair the way he always does, and walks past me toward the kitchen. I follow, because I don't know what else to do.
He goes straight for the cabinet above the refrigerator. Pulls down a bottle of vodka. Pours a measure into a glass and drinks it standing up, his back to me.
I wait.
He pours another.
