Page 10 of My Wedding Night Massacre

I look at his folded hands on the desk and think about Slava’s hands. The way they moved, always with intention, always certain of where they were going. I think about them in my hair, and I think about them slack on concrete. I press my own together in my lap until my knuckles go white.

“The lawyers will need your signature on several documents by the end of the week,” my father continues. “It’s straightforward. You won’t need to understand the details. Just cooperate with the process.”

“Cooperate,” I repeat, sounding hollow even to my own ears.

He looks up. “Is that going to be a problem?”

I don’t answer. He takes the silence as a no and moves on.

“There will be meetings. Some of Yeleshev’s former associates will want to assess the transition, to understand the new structure. You’ll attend when I tell you to attend. You’ll say what I tell you to say.” He straightens one of the papers on his desk, aligning it with the edge. “You were raised for this, Pavlina. You know how to be present without being disruptive. I need that from you now.”

He looks at me across the desk, his eyes cold and emotionless.

“I also need you to understand the importance of conducting yourself appropriately going forward.” His voice drops slightly. It doesn’t get softer, just lower. “You were raised well. I trust you’ll remember that.”

Raised.

The word catches somewhere behind my sternum and sticks.

Like livestock. Like something cultivated for a purpose and brought to market when the season turned.

I look at him across the desk.

“You killed him.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel, but colder than I expect. I’m not screaming. It’s not the animal sound from the bedroom. It’s the voice that lives underneath grief, underneath rage, the one that has been waiting since the car for exactly this room and exactly this man. “You sat across from us at the engagement dinner, and you toasted our happiness, and you had already planned it. You’d already given the order.”

He doesn’t respond. His hands stay folded.

“You knew I loved him.” I don’t rush it, don’t soften it, give every word its own space to land. “You knew it, and you used it. You used me. You put me in that dress, walked me down that aisle, and smiled at me while you were already counting down to this.” My voice cracks on the last word, and I let it, because I’m done performing for him. I’m done performing for anyone in this room. “He’s dead. Slava is dead, and you’re sitting there talking about signatures and meetings, and I’m supposed to cooperate with the process?”

“Pavlina.” His voice is a closed door.

“I loved him,” I repeat. It comes out raw, stripped of everything except the truth of it. “I loved him, and you knew that. You used it like a tool. Every piece of me you ever had access to, you used. My name, my face, my feelings, all of it. I was never your daughter. I was a mere transaction.”

My hands are shaking now, but my voice isn’t. I find that strange.

“I was so stupid.” It comes out almost quietly, almost to myself. “I wanted so badly to believe you were proud of me. I spent my whole life wanting that one thing, and you knew it, so you took it, and you built your fucking empire on it.”

He lets me finish. Every word, every crack in my voice, every second of it. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t look away, doesn’t give me anything to push against. When I’m done, he simply picks up his glasses, holds them in one hand, and looks at me across the desk with an expression I’ve never seen on him before, or maybe I have and called it something else.

“The only love you are permitted,” he says, “is love for this family. That is the only love that has ever been real.” He sets the glasses back on his nose. “What you felt for Yeleshev was sentiment. Sentiment is a luxury, and luxuries end.” He looks back down at his papers. “You’re dismissed.”

Just like that. Back to his documents. Back to the next item on the agenda, the next transfer, the next signature, the next piece of a dead man’s empire being absorbed into his own.

I stand. My legs carry me to the door. I pull it open, step through it, and pull it closed behind me. I stand in the corridor with my back against the wall and both palms flat against the wallpaper.

The words are still in my throat. All the ones I said and all the ones I didn’t, all the ones still forming in the dark place underneath the grief. They have nowhere to go. He’s already moved on. He’s ten feet away, reading documents; my husband is dead, and I’m standing in a corridor in my childhood home with my back against the wall. I can’t touch any of it.

The wallpaper is cool under my palms. I press harder and breathe. I look at the frayed runner at the top of the stairs, that same frayed edge, still there, still unnoticed, and still unreplaced. I focus on it as I breathe. I let the words stay in my throat because there’s nowhere to put them today, but I’m going to need them.

I’m going to need everything I have.

8

Pavlina

On the third day, I stop eating.

It’s not a decision as much as a fact I discover when Nadia puts a plate in front of me, and I look at it. The looking is as far as it goes. The food gets cold, and Nadia takes it away. Neither of us comments on it. The same thing happens at dinner. The same thing happens the next morning, and the morning after that.