Page 52 of Arranged for the Russian Pakhan

A mind that won’t stop replaying the look on Darya’s face, while I stood trapped behind that glass wall, not just unable to reach her, but unable to be reached. Her words, sharp as knives, are in me now. I can’t un-absorb them. I’m a man trapped in a block of ice; the words rattle inside of me. Coward. Unworthy of following. Ashamed. Failure, failure, failure.

Every word is true, and I’m not even man enough to fucking stomach them. When I do, at last, manage to move, it’s to grasp blindly for a bottle that’s no longer there. Of course not. Darya smashed it all, and now the reek of liquor emanates from the hardwood floors, the fibers of the rug, and the walls she had plastered with a hideous fucking wallpaper I haven’t gotten around to getting rid of.

Maybe I knew an end was coming all along.

That’s why I let myself be reckless with her—why I let myself have her, over and over again, drunk on impulse and the warm, sweet smell of Darya’s skin and the soft, breathy spill of her laughter. And I should have known better. A portal through which life-giving passion can pour, and through which self-preservation and survival instinct can pour back out.

It’s like Schrödinger’s cat, dead forever once it’s been found dead.

I don’t hear my cousin come in. When I look up, however, she’s standing in front of me. Her vivid red hair is a halo of fire, puffed out and all over the place like a lion’s mane. “You should knock,” I say dully, voice devoid of any feeling.

It’s ironic, given the tornado tearing me apart on the inside.

“You should answer the door when people knock,” she counters pointedly, heavily setting down a tray in front of me. It is laden with a pot of what I assume is tea and a cloche she lifts to unveil ptichye moloko. What about my state makes her believe I’m in the mood for fucking dessert stupefies me. She meets my dark glower with a decisive yank of a chair, and she turns around with one hand and straddles.

“I’m not in the mood.”

“I don’t give a fuck.”

“Anastasia.”

“Anton.”

I’d been avoiding looking right at her, assuming I’d find a gratuitous helping of sadness in her eyes. Pity, even. Look at poor fucking Anton. What a sorry piece of shit. What snaps my gaze to her face is the note of anger that catches me off guard.

Her face is flushed with it, too.

“What” is the best I can articulate, it appears.

“She told you, didn’t she?” she asks.

She doesn’t specify beyond that. Because she knows she doesn’t have to. “You knew?” I demand in return, and it’s like she’s jabbed a button. I roar back to life. It doesn’t feel like a relief. It’s just a different kind of punishment.

“I wouldn’t be much of a brigadier if I couldn’t even keep tabs on your wife going to the gynecologist, would I?”

“How long have you—?”

“Two days.”

“You’ve known for two days, and you didn’t fucking—”

“Oh, fuck off, no,” she scoffs, holding a hand up to my face. Evidently, it isn’t Brigadier Zakharov reaming my ass now. This is all Stasi. “That girl deserved to give you that news herself when she was ready to. I needed to know because I’m on high alert for security, not so I can stalk your wife and dish on her secrets. And, besides, I wanted to see how you’d handle it.”

The disappointment shrouding her expression chafes at me. It feels a lot like dragging my palms through the shattered glass she eyes with disgust. “Clearly, not well.”

“Clearly,” I echo bitterly.

“I’m guessing this is about Irina.”

Stasi just throws the name out there, like it’s any other name on any other day. It costs her nothing to utter it—like it doesn’t evoke everything that haunts me, and has haunted me, for the past twelve years.

“Don’t,” I warn, my throat tight.

I look away from her, swallowing thickly, and the next thing I know, her palms slap down on the desk with such force that the cup trembles atop its saucer. “Oh, come on. Are you fucking kidding me? This, still? You’ve been so happy, I’m not letting you sabotage the possibility of a full, gorgeous life so you can worship at the altar of a woman who died—”

My body surges out of my chair with such fury that it tips right over. Its wheels jab at my calves. But I don’t care. “I said don’t.”

“I forgot,” Stasi sighs sourly. “No one is allowed to talk about her.”