The scar healed, poorly, as I was too afraid to go to hospital to get stitches. I cleaned and dressed it myself daily until it finally started to knit together.
After that, I got serious. I found Jess. I studied. I learned how to move without being noticed, how to leave no evidence. I turned the clumsy, desperate thing I did in that dingy apartment into something precise and clean.
In six years I've handled eleven men. The kind of men the system lets slip through the cracks. I pick my targets carefully. I do my research. I’m patient and methodical and after that first time I never, ever let it get messy.
And now it's over.
Because in three days, I'll be Stefania Orlova. Living in a house I didn't choose, watched by a man I don't know, absorbed into a family that will monitor my movements and control my schedule and notice if I disappear for even a few hours.
Yevgeny Orlov. That's his name. I've seen him once, maybe twice, at family gatherings years ago, when my parents were still alive. He is tall from what I remember. Handsome, too. The kind of face that gives you nothing but you can’t help but look at. Ruslan says he's respected. Traditional.
Traditional means he'll expect obedience. Traditional means he'll expect access to my body, my time, and my compliance. Traditional means the version of me that hunts in the dark will have to die so the version of me that smiles at dinner parties can survive.
"Last round," Jess says. "Give me everything you've got."
I give her everything I've got.
When she leaves an hour later, I stand in the empty gym with my hands unwrapped and my body aching and the silence pressing in around me like a fist.
Three days.
Three days and then I belong to someone else, and the only part of me that's ever felt real gets locked away for good.
I press my palm flat against my thigh where the scar sits beneath my leggings. The raised line of it is familiar under my fingers. A reminder. The first and worst thing I've ever done, and the reason I became everything I am after it.
I can't take it with me into this marriage. But I can't make myself regret it either.
Yevgeny
She's late.
Not by much, but I've been counting the minutes because counting keeps me still, and right now still is the only thing keeping me from walking down the aisle myself, finding her, and dragging her to this altar to get this over with.
I stand with my hands clasped in front of me and I wait because I've been waiting for three weeks and a few more minutes won't kill me.
The chapel is small. A stone building on the edge of the estate that hasn't been used for a family wedding in years. The pews are mostly empty. Artem is at my side, my oldest brother and best man. Anton sits next to his wife, Kira, and my sisters, Anastasia and Lena sit next to Artem’s wife Elena who is nursing their son. It’s clear to me that Anastasia doesn't approve of this match. She hasn't said it, but she doesn't need to. It’s written in the way her mouth is pinched and her eyes are carefully flat but not really looking at anything.
Then there’s the Irish side of the Orlov family. Liam and Grace sit three rows back with their baby, and my Aunt Saoirse and youngest cousin Rafferty are here too. With everything that has been happening with the council, and the mandate that all Orlov men need to be married by the end of the year, it’s nice to have their support today.
The bride's side is thinner. Four men who share a jawline and dark hair. Brothers. I've studied them the way I've studied everything about Stefania Rudakova over the past three weeks. Ruslan is the eldest at twenty-eight. He's the one who brokered this deal, the one who traded her like a line item on a balance sheet. He's standing at the back of the chapel now, waiting to walk her in, and the pride on his face makes something tighten in my chest that I choose not to name.
The other three are younger. Early to mid-twenties. They sit in the front pew with identical postures and blank faces. Soldiers already or soldiers in training. None of them look particularly thrilled. They look like men who've been told what's happening and decided that having an opinion about it isn't worth the trouble.
Behind them, an older woman I take to be the housekeeper. Grey hair pinned back in a severe knot. Hands clasped around a tissue she hasn't used yet. She's the only person on the bride's side who looks like she might actually feel something today.
And then there's the other one. A woman I recognize as Stefania’s personal trainer. Fit. Late twenties or early thirties. She's sitting at the end of the second pew, slightly apart from the family, dressed like someone who wasn't sure she'd be welcome but came anyway. She doesn't carry herself like Bratva. No deference in her posture, no awareness of hierarchy. An outsider.
Three weeks ago, when Artem told me the council had approved a match with the late Rudakov family's only daughter, I said yes before he finished the sentence. He raised an eyebrow at that. Artem always raises an eyebrow when I do something he can't predict, which is most of the time.
"You don't want to think about it?" he asked.
"I already have."
That was true. I'd been thinking about Stefania Rudakova since the first time her name appeared on a list of potential matches six months ago. I requested her file. Read it. Read it again. And then I did what I always do when something interests me.
I watched.
Not in any way she'd notice or her brothers would question. I have people. Resources. Access to information that most men in my position use for business and security and leverage. I used it to learn her.
