Cole would grow up doing exactly what he wanted. That wasn’t hope anymore. It was a decision I was making while sitting on a sunbed in a mansion I didn’t own, wearing a ring I hadn’t earned, completely dependent on a man whose world turned out to be exactly what I’d suspected.
My eyes moved across the compound, taking in the surroundings properly this time. A guard stood near the east wall while several others remained positioned by the gate. More moved quietly through the property, monitoring everything. Before New York, I never paid attention to any of them. Now I understood exactly what all of this meant.
My mother ran the same kind of operation. She was born into it and shaped by it. But at least now I knew she was alive. She wasn’t lying dead in a ditch somewhere. She looked as if she had never once lost a night of sleep or a meal. All those years, I built a version of her suffering the way we suffered, missing us the way I missed her. It turned out she was fine.
Caitlin was already on her laptop when I walked in. She has been excited about the business since we started. She made the whole thing feel real instead of theoretical.
“I was just about to call you.” She turned the screen toward me with a smile. “The website is ready. Look.”
I moved closer and looked over the laptop screen. She had done a good job. The layout looked clean, with clear sections and enough warmth to make it feel professional.
Good.
“Did the tailor send the video?” I asked.
The brightness on her face shifted slightly. “Not yet. He said he needed one more hour so he could—”
“It’s been four days, Caitlin.”
She straightened in her chair. “It’s just a delay. These things happen.”
“They shouldn’t.” I pointed at my phone. “Four days for one dress. We should be posting previews by now. That’s how you build anticipation before launch.”
“Inna, it’s not that serious. We’ll have the video in an hour.” She waved toward the laptop. “We’ll post today. It’s fine.”
Not that serious. Everything felt serious to me. Money felt serious. Timing felt serious. The distance between where we were and where we needed to be felt serious.
I knew what happened when people moved too slowly. Life swallowed them whole while they were still convincing themselves they had time. You woke up one day, back at the beginning, sitting in a tiny apartment, trying to explain to a nine-year-old why dinner looked smaller than yesterday.
I looked away before any of that reached my face.
“People fail because they move slowly,” I said. “If we want this to work, we can’t keep waiting for people to deliver things whenever they feel like it. If we set timelines, we hold them.”
Caitlin stayed quiet for a moment, studying me. “You’ve barely slept since we started this.”
“That’s not relevant.”
“Inna, you’re acting like the world ends if we don’t post a video today.” She sounded concerned instead, which somehow made it worse.
My chest tightened painfully. She wasn’t wrong, and that was the problem. I couldn’t explain why it felt like the world would collapse over something as small as a delayed video without explaining everything underneath it. The fear that things could disappear overnight. The knowledge that security was never permanent, no matter how comfortable life looked from the outside.
“This matters,” I said. “I need this to work.”
She got up from the chair and walked toward me. “You’ve been different since New York. Something happened.” Her voice softened. “You can talk to me.”
“Trying to make something work doesn’t mean I’m different.” I stepped back before she could come any closer. “Send me the video once he sends it.”
I turned and walked out before she asked more questions.
I went to the beach to get away from everyone because, apparently, I was on edge around everyone. Women could focus. It didn’t automatically mean they were falling apart.
I sat down on the cold sand and pulled up Instagram on my phone, burying myself in reels about fashion marketing and brand launches. I watched all of it while the sound of waves rolled steadily onto the shore.
Footsteps approached from behind. I pulled my attention awayfrom the screen and turned. It was Dmitri.
I stood and brushed the sand from my clothes before it turned into a moment. Sitting on the beach with him the way I did last time was not a scene I intended to recreate.
I turned toward the water instead, and the sunset caught me before I could think of leaving.
