Page 126 of Hate You Most

“Yes.”

“If the story is published,” Aamina said, “you can't take it back. It will spread and it will be picked apart on the internet. People will choose sides, and it could very well not be yours.”

“I know.”

“Some of them simply won't believe you.” Aamina told her.

“I know.”

“Some of them will blame you.”

“I know,” Viktoriya repeated.

She held her gaze for a second longer, then nodded slowly. “Okay.”

“Then we start today,” Claire said. “We will call you in a few days and discuss further.”

May 28th, 2023.

— Outside Dakota Sanchez apartment. Detroit, Michigan.

By the time the article went live, Viktoriya had already stopped pretending she could be normal about it. She had spent the morning buried in her phone. She couldn't leave it alone for more than a few minutes without running back to it just to check.

Claire had warned her that once the article was published, the first response would not be kind. It would be immediate and it would be loud.

Viktoriya had nodded when she'd heard that. She had spent most of her life understanding that the first version of any truth was rarely the one people liked best.

Still, nothing could have prepared her for the speed of it.

The article was published at 10:14 in the morning, and by 10:56 it was everywhere.

OLYMPIC CHAMPION LINKS FATHER’S COMPANY TO PATTERN OF COERCION, CAR CRASHES, AND COVER-UPS

OLYMPIC FIGURE SKATING STAR, VIKTORIYA VOLKOVA, EXPOSES OWN FAMILY IN SERIOUS ALLEGATIONS

VOLKOVA’S FALL FROM GRACE: THE SCANDAL THAT DESTROYED RUSSIA’S GOLDEN GIRL

HERO OR ACCOMPLICE? QUESTIONS RISE ABOUT VOLKOVA’S ROLE IN SHOCKING REVELATIONS

VOLKOVA’S COLLAPSE: THE HIDDEN TRUTH BEHIND RUSSIA’S FIGURE SKATING CHAMPION.

She didn't read all of it at first, she couldn't possibly. What had started as an article about what her father had coerced her and other high-profile closeted people into had, within an hour, been spun into the newest piece of front-page gossip.

It was all out in the open for everyone to read. The pressure and the manipulation she'd endured, the phone calls, the money her father had spent, the survivors, the fact that she had agreed to this, and then spent a year trying to live with the damage.

She had told Claire that she wouldn't allow the story to make her clean. She was not a perfect victim. She had made choices that reflected who she had been at the time, because she had been terrified. She had tried to erase herself and the article said that plainly, without softening it for the reader, and that had been the entire point.

Her phone rang, it was an unknown number. She let it go to voicemail. Then it rang again. By the fourth ring she moved to the couch and sat down very carefully. Her hands were cold.

She stared at her phone as another notification flashed across the top of the screen. It was from an account she recognized, and then another message came, from a former teammate, then a retired skater, then a journalist, then a publicist who had once before called her untouchable and cold-hearted.

Half of her long-term sponsorships had distanced themselves with vague online statements after her viral kiss with Dakota reached the Russian news outlets. Her father hadn't scrubbed anything, or maybe he'd tried and it was simply too huge to be discarded as a rumor. The other half of her sponsors were pulling out now, the articles were too much for them.

Figure skating had always been a highly visible sport in Russia, and her career had been funded by a system that only worked as long as she fit into its standard, as long as she stayed quiet about the parts of herself that weren't accepted. And maybe the only comfort she could take from any of this—her dying career, the headlines, the gossip, the loss of everything she'd worked toward—was the thought that somewhere, someone like her would see the news and maybe become slightly less afraid to exist in the world.

Viktoriya set the phone down on her coffee table and closed her eyes.

Two days later, other professional athletes started speaking up. A retired figure skater wrote that she'd experienced similar pressure to perform, and that she'd been denied food and water from her coaches before competitions. One athlete posted simply, you are not alone, and that was enough to make her tear up.