Page 88 of The Game

“I wanted to put it behind me. Maybe that was wrong. It took me years to feel right in myself, and I couldn’t bring myself to rake over it again. I’ve felt so ashamed.”

“Oh God, me too.” I suck in a deep breath.

“Do you want to talk now about what happened to you?”

And somehow now I do. “Konstantin had his favorites in the tennis camps. No one ever talked about it. You got taken to places, you met people. I was one, and Mila was another. He liked bestowing favors on the young girls who worked hard. I’m not sure when I became aware that something worse wasgoing on. He’d touch you, you know? A hand around your waist, a finger on your arm.

“One night Mila disappeared from a camp. She came back pale and shaking, and even though we were competitors, we were friends of a kind. She wouldn’t tell me what had happened, but she did tell me not to go anywhere with him on my own.”

He presses his fingers to his lips. “God, Anna.”

“I was fifteen when I was invited on a trip, one of Konstantin’s yachts that he liked to take people out on as a treat, as he put it. But as soon as I stepped onto that boat, I realized what was coming my way was anything but a treat. It was full of older men—some sponsors I recognized, some I hadn’t come across before—and the atmosphere was creepy. One of those men was Pietr. I hadn’t met him before, but he said he wanted to talk to me, and when I look back now, I think he was staking a claim. But I asked him questions and he talked, and he didn’t do anything else, and it seemed better than the other options I had, so I kept on talking—as much as I could. I was terrified. Trapped and scared about what was happening on that boat, what I might have to do. People had disappeared, I suspected into the cabins below, though I wasn’t sure. Pietr looked at me at one point and said, ‘You are frightened I think, little one?’ And I nodded. He leaned forward and smiled and said, ‘You don’t need to be scared with me. Uncle Pietr will look after you.’

“Oh, fucking hell, Anna.”

“I was ballsy enough to ask him what that protection would cost me, and he laughed and laughed. He told me how much he liked my spirit and how he would hate to see it broken. He said he thought the reason they’d not had a champion from the academy was because what happened there broke young people’s spirit and he was tired of it.

“He said that, if I kept him happy, then I wouldn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to, and after what Mila had said, that seemed amazing. So, I grabbed at it with both hands and we even shook on it, and to keep him happy I slept with him—not immediately, but later. I still think I got unbelievably lucky. How twisted is that? In many ways, he’s an awful man, but he also probably rescuedme from something much worse, so my feelings about him are complicated.”

“Did you love him?”

“What? Christ, no.”

Adam squeezes my hand. “Sorry to ask, I …”

I shake my head. “He liked getting one up on people, particularly Konstantin. That was a large part of his motivation. It was all about power and control. He was obsessed with it, with controlling me. I think I talked to you about it that day we met for coffee.” That day seems so long ago now.

He nods. “Christ, Anna, this is so much worse than what happened to me. I can hardly believe it.”

I huff out a breath. “If Pietr could have kept me locked up in his estate outside St. Petersburg, he would have done. But, of course, I had to go to tournaments. I think he wanted to prove to Konstantin that he could create a champion, and Konstantin couldn’t.” I shake my head. “He hated seeing the tennis fans; the idea that he didn’t own me entirely drove him mad. He’d put me in the public eye and now he couldn’t take it back because people would notice and ask questions, and I realized that made me powerful.”

“God, that’s why you don’t mind the publicity—it kept you safe,” he says.

“Yes.”

“How did you get away from him?”

“I realized something that he kept a secret from everyone. For all that he wanted to control me, he preferred boys. Maybe he was gay, most likely he was bisexual—I mean he slept with me. But it was unacceptable for him to be with men in Russia. So, another reason he came to the junior tournaments with me was because he wanted to watch the boys play tennis.”

“How did you find out?”

“He was always so careful, but we came to the US a few times, and New York was … Well, you know what it’s like here. It’s the gay capital of the world, and it was a revelation for him. So many men who are out and proud when you come from a country like Russia … He fell in love with a young man and, seeing them together, even though he was meticulous about behaving platonically toward him … By then, I could read his moods very well, and he struggled to hide his feelings. There was a real connection there. This man was thirty years younger than him, but something slotted into place inside me. Like a piece of the jigsaw I’d been missing. Why he made that promise to me.”

“Did you confront him?”

“Not in so many words. I told him our relationship, such as it was, was over and that I needed to be free, and he should leave Russia and try and be happy himself. He didn’t take it well.”

“What happened to the young man?”

“He was never going to be with Pietr. Pietr knew it. He was a young tennis player and would never feel that way about a man like Pietr. He viewed him like a father, an older adviser. Not sexually at all.”

“Christ, Anna, these men are monsters.”

“I know … Part of me has some understanding for Pietr, I guess, but mostly I can’t forget what he did to the teenagers from the tennis camps … what an awful man he was and still is.”

“Does he keep in touch with you?”

“Occasionally. But he doesn’t like that I know what I do about him. He’s concerned I could use it against him, and he hates that. He likes to have the upper hand. Always.”

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