That’s my rule now. Keep my head down. Stay in the kitchen.
Don’t go near the front counter.
Don’t look too long at customers.
Don’t say my real name.
A drive-through kitchen is not glamorous, but it’s useful. People here are too busy to ask questions. The manager pays in cash because half the staff has some reason not to be on paper. And from the back, no one can see me unless they come looking.
Still, every time a black car slows near the window, my heart jumps.
Every time the door opens too hard, I think of Dmitri. Or my father. Or the Volkov men.
I don’t know who’s looking for me.
That’s almost worse than knowing.
At the end of the lunch rush, Pavel finally lets me take ten minutes. I go outside through the back door and sit on an overturned crate in the alley. The air is cold enough to sting my face.
Good. It keeps me awake.
My hands smell like salt and oil even through the gloves. I pull them off and stare at my fingers. The skin around my nails is dry. One nail is broken. My manicure, pale pink and perfect on my wedding morning, is ruined now.
I should care more than I do.
From inside the restaurant, I hear Marina laugh at something. A real laugh. Tired, but real.
I wonder what that feels like.
My phone is an old prepaid one I bought from a kiosk on the second day. I keep it off most of the time. I turn it on only when I need to check the time or see if there are messages from unknown numbers.
There are none.
I press my palms hard against my eyes until the tears go away.
No crying. Not here. Not in an alley that smells like garbage and frying oil.
I reach into the inside seam of my coat and loosen the thread with shaking fingers. The ring slides into my palm.
It looks absurd here.
I remember Yaromir looking at it at the restaurant, the brief hardening of his face. At the time, I thought he was judging me. Maybe he was. Maybe he looked at me and saw exactly what I was: a pretty, useless girl wearing a powerful family’s name before she had earned anything.
The memory should embarrass me.
It does. But it also warms something low in my stomach, and I hate myself for that.
Even now, filthy and exhausted, I can remember the smell of him in that corridor. Smoke. cedar. cold air. His silver-threaded hair. The scar down his face. The way his eyes had moved over me without flattery.
I close my fist around the ring. “Stupid,” I whisper to myself.
The back door opens. I shove the ring into my pocket so fast my knuckles scrape the zipper.
Marina steps out, smoke already between her fingers. “Break’s over in two.”
“I know.”
She leans against the wall beside me and lights the cigarette. Her eyes slide over my face. “You want to make extra money tonight?”
