Page 65 of Arranged for the Russian Pakhan

Silence.

Then Iosif, quietly, says, “I kind of like him.”

“You’re fucking insane,” Valentin says. “We already knew that.”

“Darya?” Anton’s voice lifts, aimed now at the house rather than the men in it—at the walls, the ceilings, the dark hallways where a person could be standing and listening without committing to anything yet. It’s shed almost all of its composure now. There’s something raw underneath it, something that has climbed up past the control and is refusing to be managed back down. Something that is searching for me. “I know you’re here. I know you can hear me. And I know you well enough to know that you’re making me work for it, which is fine. I’ll work for it. I’ll work for it forever. And I’m going to start by continuing to talk until you come down, or until your brothers actually do shoot me, and even then I’ll probably keep talking on the way to the hospital because I have things to say to you, things you deserve to know, and I have been—”

I don’t plan to move. Of their own accord, my feet race towards the top of the staircase before I’ve made the conscious decision to be there.

The entry hall comes into view incrementally as I descend. I’m surrounded by the three broad silhouettes of my brothers, and between them and across from them, there he is: Anton.

My husband.

He looks terrible. That’s the first thing I notice, and the thought arrives with a tenderness I resent deeply. He looks like a man who hasn’t been sleeping, which I know a little something about. His hair is slightly disheveled, which, for Anton, is roughly equivalent to another man walking in with his shirt inside out. He’s in his coat still, the collar turned up against the late February cold. His eyes latch onto me the moment I clear the last step. They pore over me.

“Hi,” he says, sounding ragged.

“You look terrible,” I tell him.

“I know.”

“You drove here at two in the morning.”

“Yes.”

Trifon turns to look at me. His expression contains approximately fourteen different questions, none of which he’s asking yet, which is its own kind of love. On the other hand, Valentin’s gun hasn’t moved. Iosif’s has, and I can feel it as he looks between Anton and me with the expression of a man watching something click into place that he’d been handed the pieces of separately. I can’t handle thinking about either of their reactions too deeply. I already feel undone.

As if he can sense my knees threatening to pleat beneath me, Anton takes a step toward me. Without any preamble or posturing, he just says it outright: “Please come home,” he says. The words are stripped of everything except their heart, bleeding over each syllable, soaking them all the way through. “It isn’t home without you. I’ve been walking through that house for a week, and none of it—not our library, our dining room, or our bedroom—is a place for solace without you in it to be it. I know I don’t deserve to say that to you right now. I know you hate my fucking guts, and I haven’t earned the right to stand here and ask you for anything. I’m asking anyway.”

The bare branches outside the window move in the wind, smacking against the glass. The house seems to hold its breath.

I’m aware of my brothers watching me. I’m aware of Valentin’s gun and Trifon’s hand on his own and the cold that’s come in with Anton through the front door, and the way my heart is conducting itself with absolutely no regard for my dignity or my carefully maintained position of moral authority whatsoever.

“I’m not coming home because you showed up,” I say, forcing the words out past my heart, lodged firmly in my throat. “I want to be clear about that. I’m not a woman who rewards a grand gesture for its own sake. I’m not some girl you get at the end of the movie with a speech.”

“I know.”

“I have things to say to you. And most of them aren’t nice.”

“Understandably.”

“And you have things to say to me. Real things. Not—what was it you called it once? Rose petals and sweet nothings?” I hold his gaze. “If I come home, Anton, it’s because we’re going to have an actual conversation. One where you don’t shut down. And until I’m satisfied, I’m not there to stay. And the fate of this situation isn’t decided—definitely not your part in it—until… Until you deserve it.”

“Yes,” he says. Simply. Completely.

“I’m not—” I stop because Trifon harshly clears his throat.

Oh shit..

“Darya,” Trifon says. He’s gone gimlet-eyed.

“Don’t,” I say.

“Are you—”

“Trifon—”

“Are you pregnant?” Valentin’s voice cracks through the room, and then everyone is talking at once. Iosif says something that gets swallowed by something Valentin says, and Trifon’s voice rises over both of them, and then Anton steps forward with the expression of a man fully prepared to put himself physically between me and whatever comes next.