Page 7 of His Contract Queen

“Of course. I will send you the details as soon as possible.” Clipped. Efficient. Professional. As if we’re finalizing the transfer of property or closing a tedious account. An unpleasant but necessary transaction. Business concluded. Problem solved.

“I look forward to it,” I reply, my voice smooth enough to pass for cordial.

After the line is dropped, I sit there for a long moment with the phone resting in my lap, listening to nothing. The silence that follows is nearly deafening, thick with implications I refuse to fully examine yet.

For him, the problem is solved.

The debt is handled, the numbers wiped clean, the threat of exposure erased with a single phone call and a signature he never has to look back on once he walks out my office door. He will sleep easier tonight knowing the weight is no longer pressing down on his chest, knowing the vice he let spiral out of control has finally been buried along with the consequences attached to it.

For Katerina Borchin, his supposed guiding light, his greatest pride as he’s always claimed in interviews and speeches, this is only the beginning of her worst nightmare.

She has no idea that in the span of a few measured sentences, she has been reduced to a transaction. A bargaining chip. Something traded and already forgotten the moment it served its purpose. Her father has already moved past her, mentally filing her away as a cost of doing business.

In public, nothing will change.

Ramil Borchin will continue to play the devoted father with practiced ease. He will stand behind podiums framed by flags and medals, speaking earnestly about honor, sacrifice, and duty to one’s country. He will smile for the cameras and reference his daughter with pride, painting her as strong, intelligent, and independent—everything he needs her to be so no one ever questions why she’s no longer at his side.

And no one will.

Because men like him are protected by perception and their shining reputations. The careful illusion of virtue they’ve spent decades cultivating is what will always shield them from earned consequences. Whatever happens after this will never touch him unless he allows it to.

But this moment, this choice, is the one that defines him. Not as a desperate man cornered by circumstance. Not as a victim of bad luck or poor judgment. But as someone who chose himself, deliberately and without shame, over the one person he was always meant to protect.

3

KATERINA

My father doesn’t sit when I enter his study.

He stands near the window instead, both hands clasped behind his back while his shoulders remain squared with that military posture he’s always had. His form is rigid, formal, like he’s addressing a room full of officers waiting on orders instead of addressing his only daughter. The sight alone tightens something uneasy in my stomach.

The curtains are half drawn, letting in only a slice of late afternoon light. It glints off the medals lining the wall around him. Gold, silver, enamel, rows of valor earned through decades of service. They’ve always dominated this room as silent witnesses to our conversations. When I was younger, I used to trace their shapes with my eyes while he worked, imagining the stories behind each one. Battles fought. Lives saved. Sacrifices made.

Now, they feel like they’re watching me like uncaring sentinels.

“Katerina,” he says without turning around. “Close the door.”

I do, the soft click echoing far too loudly in the quiet than it ever has before. The room smells faintly of leather and the smoke from an old pipe—my father’s biggest vice. This room is the same as it has always been. Yet the further I step inside, the more I realize everything familiar suddenly feels wrong, like coming back to a childhood home after too much time spent away.

“I need you to listen to me carefully,” he continues, still facing the window.

I wait for him to turn around and address me. But he doesn’t. That’s when the unease deepens into something heavier in my gut.

My father has never been a man for theatrics. He’s always been direct with me, blunt to the point of cruelty at times. When he needs something, he says it plainly and expects results to follow with little opposition. This preamble, this careful staging of whatever he’s about to say, makes my skin prickle. It feels… rehearsed. As though he’s already decided how this conversation will end but isn’t sure how I’ll react to it.

Which is never a good sign.

“Okay,” I reply, though my voice comes out softer than I intend it to.

It wouldn’t be the first time my father has divulged state secrets to me. With a background like his and the kind of position he holds inside the government, secrecy has always been part of our lives. There have been countless problems he’s handled over the years that never made it anywhere near the public eye—foreign officials applying pressure behind closed doors, intelligence leaks quietly smothered, political figures whose scandals were buried long before they could ever see the light of day.

I grew up around that kind of tension, around half-finished sentences and late-night phone calls that stopped the moment I entered a room. It taught me how to listen for answers without asking questions and how to keep my mouth shut when it mattered.

Up until my mother’s death a few years ago, he used to confide in her when things spiraled beyond his control. When threats of sanctions loomed and allies suddenly became liabilities, she was the only one he ever truly trusted with the full scope of his fears and was always there to talk him down from the proverbial ledge.

My mother had been brilliant in many ways with only a few people knowing firsthand. She was a strategist by trade, lost to the confines of marriage far before she ever got the chance to shine on her own. She was one who saw five steps ahead while everyone else was still arguing over the first move. She was incredible with softening my father’s edges without dulling his resolve, grounding him when his ambition threatened to eclipse everything else.

After she died, that role was never filled. I have tried since then to fill her shoes but… well, there was and will never be a woman quite like Polina Borchin.