“I think they are confused.”
“They are not.”
“Then why do you look at her like that?”
My silence is the wrong answer.
Larisa’s mouth tightens. “You should be careful with that,” she says.
“With what?”
“Want.”
I look back at her. Her face is cold now. Not cruel in the careless way Galina is cruel. Larisa’s cruelty has discipline. It knows exactly where to press.
“Want makes men sentimental,” she says. “Sentimental men make poor decisions. Your father made them. Dmitri makes them. I expected better from you.”
“I’m nothing like either of them.”
“No,” she says. “You are more dangerous because you can convince yourself revenge is strategy even when it is appetite.”
My fingers curl once at my side. “Say what you came to say, Larisa.”
She smiles faintly at the use of her name without title. “I came to say your reasons are flimsy.”
The hall goes very still.
“You are close to saying something you should not,” I tell her.
“I’m your mother’s sister. I’m allowed to say what no one else survives saying.”
I don’t answer.
She leans in slightly. “Your father took my sister, hid her, used her, loved her only when it cost him nothing, and let her die like an inconvenience. Remember that.”
“You want her humiliated,” I say.
“I want them humiliated through her.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It’s close enough.”
“No.”
Larisa’s eyes narrow.
There. I’ve given away too much.
She studies me like she has found the weakness she suspected. “Careful, Yaromir.”
I say nothing.
“She’s young. Pretty. Angry. That makes her easy to shape if you don’t lose your head. Put her beside you. Let the city see her. Let Dmitri watch her wear your name. Let Galina hear people laugh behind their hands. Let your father see the girl meant to strengthen his house become the symbol of its failure.”
“That was already the plan.”
“Then commit to it. Let that girl become your instrument of humiliation for what your father did to your mother.”
