Chapter 1
Polina
I’d always imagined freedom would arrive with a quiet sense of dignity—perhaps a signed offer letter, a glass of wine raised in celebration, a plane ticket bought with my own money. Instead, it came wrapped in rough hands and silent nods, courtesy of my father’s security team.
So much for dignity.
The moment I stepped out of the gallery’s sun-drenched atrium, two black-suited shadows flanked me and ushered me toward the waiting car like I was some rogue asset gone off-script. No warning. No apology. Just leather seats and locked doors.
I crossed my legs slowly in the jet’s cabin, smoothing my skirt as if I had all the time in the world, though my pulse fluttered like a trapped bird in my throat. “If Daddy dearest wants a grown woman to play dress-up and drape on his arm like a living doll,” I murmured, staring through the tinted window, “he really ought to invest in a professional. I believe they call them escorts.”
Dimitri said nothing from across the aisle. Vlad stood at the front of the plane, murmuring something to the pilot with that unreadable calm he’d perfected years ago.
“I’m not happy about this, Vlad,” I called, my voice cutting through the low hum of the engines.
He turned. Even now, after all these years, those ice-blue eyes startled me. They were arctic, beautiful, distant, and sharp enough to wound. I remembered having a schoolgirl’s crush on that gaze once. Back when I believed coolness was mystery and silence meant depth.
Back when he was the only one who ever bent my father’s rules to sneak me cupcakes or let me stay out an hour past curfew.
“I know,Koshka,“ he said gently, using the childhood nickname that once made me giggle and now felt like a leash. “But you know your father.”
I did. That was the tragedy of it.
Still, I swallowed the bitter response rising in my throat and buckled myself in with deliberate grace. My phone buzzed. A message bubble from my father’s number flickered with the telltale dots of a reply... and then vanished.
No message followed.
I stared at the blank screen for a long beat before tossing the phone into my purse like it burned. “What’s going on?” I demanded, more to the air than to anyone in particular. “What could possibly be so urgent that I get dragged away like some prized possession?”
Dimitri gave me a glance laced with the kind of pity that always made me feel both childish and invisible. He returned his attention to his phone without a word.
The silence pressed around me like velvet and steel.
“Come,Koshka. Don’t be a sourpuss.“ Vlad’s lips twitched, his idea of levity.
I turned my gaze on him slowly, the kind of look that could peel paint from a wall. “Forgive me if I’m not in a laughing mood. I only had to cancelthreeappointments with senior curators atthreeworld-renowned art institutions today. But I’m sure whatever Father wants trumps the career I’ve worked years to build.”
Neither man responded, though I caught a flicker of something in Dimitri’s jaw, guilt, perhaps.
I exhaled through my nose, slow and controlled. “He really should hire someone else to play his charming accessory. I hear mistresses make excellent arm candy and don’t come with the inconvenient burden of a brain.”
That got their attention. Both men blinked at me, their expressions unreadable.
“Polina,” Dimitri said at last, careful and quiet. “We all answer to someone. In this case, it’s your father.”
“Speak for yourself,” I muttered, turning my gaze to the window, where clouds drifted like indifferent gods. My reflection shimmered in the glass, polished and composed. The picture of control.
Inside, I burned.
As soon as the seatbelt sign dimmed, I stood, moved to the small, polished bar at the rear of the cabin, and poured myself a glass of vodka—clear, cold, and unforgiving. It was barely past nine in the morning. Somewhere, it was 5 PM. Somewhere, someone was allowed to live their life without permission slips and bodyguards.
I took a long sip, feeling the burn kiss my throat.
Vlad and Dimitri exchanged a look behind me but said nothing. They knew better.
There was a time I wasn’t so alone in these battles. A time when someone had stood between me and my father’s endless need for control. My mother. My North Star. My harbinger of warmth and color in a house full of locked rooms and cold expectations.
She had died when I was ten. I had clung to Vlad’s stoic presence then, not because he smiled or spoke much, but because hestayed. He was the one who carried me out of the wreckage, both literal and otherwise, the day she died.
