The words come out before I can stop them. “Katya would never do anything like this.”
“Yes.” Vaska shrugs one shoulder. “Because you don’t beat obedience into her.”
That shuts me up.
Because he’s right.
Katya disobeys because she can. Because no matter how furious I get, I’m not going to break her face and call it discipline. If I did, she’d obey too.
The realization makes me feel unclean. Vaska watches me absorb it and keeps going.
“So decide what this is.”
I stare at him.
His voice stays flat.
“You want me to call Dmitri? He’ll put a bullet in her head, no hesitation,” he says. “You want me to send her back to Gabriel? You want to bury her alive by the river and be done with it?” A pause. “Or do you want to keep her?”
The answer comes so fast it almost makes me flinch.
Keep her.
Mine.
Immediate. Vicious. Certain.
I say nothing.
Vaska notices anyway. He pushes off the wall.
“If the men find out where she came from,” I say before he can move, “it won’t just be her.”
He stops. I force the words out.
“They’ll look atmelike I let it happen. Like I’m weak. Reckless.” My mouth twists. “Compromised.”
Vaska nods once.
He understands. That’s the worst part.
“She didn’t play you clean,” he says. “She got trapped between two men who both think possession is the best course for control.”
The words hit hard enough to make me want to put him through drywall.
Because he’s talking about Gabriel. And me.
I’m nothing like him.
I say nothing.
After a second, he adds, quieter, “If the Pakhan decides the truth dies here, then it dies here.”
That lands deeper than anything else he’s said.
Because I know that move.
Nikolai made it once. Took what truth he wanted and buried the rest under title and fear and the certainty that no one else got a vote.
