Page 39 of Forcibly Sold to the Bratva
Just then, Agafon leans forward from the other end of the table. “So, Arina,” he addresses her, and I feel her stiffen, finding myself throwing a nervous look in Agafon’s direction.
But, to my surprise, Agafon is smiling. “What did you do before you… met my brother?”
I wince at what he doesn’t say. Honestly, I feel grateful even. The wordmarriageis clearly a trigger point for all at this table now. There’s been enough talk of kidnappings today.
Arina sets down her fork and takes a sip of her wine, giving me a nervous glance before she turns to Agafon. “I was a freelance PR writer,” she says. This is a surprise to me, and once again, guilt rushes back like an old friend. I never asked her about this, did I? About her life before. I was so afraid of being reminded of her innocence and of the fact that I stole it from her that somewhere in my heart, I was too afraid to peek through the window of what her life used to look like.
“A PR writer? Really?” Rurik looks interested, his keen eyes watching her.
“Mm-hmm.” She smiles at him, a small one, but a smile nonetheless.
“So, you worked at a firm or something?” Rurik then throws me a glare, like I’m responsible for having gotten her fired or something.
“Well, no,” she laughs. “I wasn’t a fan of being a slave to the establishment. I worked as a freelancer, which allowed me to design my day how I wanted. I worked a couple of hours a day, and had the rest free.”
I note how she speaks in the past tense, like that were a life she no longer recalls. Like it belongs to someone else now, and I feel my chest tighten.
“Did you enjoy it?” Agafon inquires further.
“I did, actually. There was always a new product to launch, or an event to make public, and I learned something every day.” A small smile plays at her lips. “And I liked the variety—one day I’d be writing about artisanal cheeses, the next about a dating app.”
“And what did you do when you weren’t working?” Tatiana asks, leaning in with genuine curiosity.
Arina hesitates, then relaxes slightly. “Well, tons of things. I used to love tennis. Played three times a week. Then I used to do lots of Yoga. One day, a year back, I walked into a small pottery studio to buy something and saw they had classes. The owner is such a sweet lady and convinced me to sign up. God, how fun that used to be! Every Sunday, a group of us would get our hands dirty, and there was something so meditative about that.
“That sounds like a dream,” Nikandr says with a faraway look on his face, and I nearly choke on my wine. Nikandr, who once went on a two-week bender, is calling pottery ’a dream’?
“It was,” she admits.
“We should try that!” Katya exclaims, looking at Tatiana. “A pottery class!”
“Yes!” Tatiana claps her hands together. “The three of us. It would be so fun!”
“Oh,” Arina says, looking caught off guard. “I... I’d like that.”
The image of my sisters and Arina, laughing together over clay, forces its way into my mind. It’s so domestic, so ordinary, so far removed from our reality that it feels like a fairy tale.
Soon enough, everyone’s peppering her with questions, and she gets more comfortable around them. She talks about the books she reads, the trips she took, and her college degree in advertising and marketing.
It sounds so achingly normal. So painfully simple. But it isn’t. Because there’s still an unspoken tension simmering around her, the kind that ensures no one asks about her brothers and the kind where she doesn’t even bring them up.
And still, even though everyone in this room wants nothing more than to hear about the Sokolovs, the one thing that’s not mentioned, they cling to her every word.
Because what she describes is a life none of us has ever known. She’s like a breath of fresh air, showing us possibilities we never knew existed.
“Your life sounds... peaceful,” Agafon says at last.
“It was,” Arina agrees, and once again, the past tense hangs between us like an accusation. Because of me, that life is now in her past.
“Idyllic, even,” Bogdan adds, and his eyes flick to mine pointedly. “Seems like one without complications. Aninnocentlife.”
The conversation shifts again to things other than Arina. I watch as she leans back in her seat and listens attentively, laughing and smiling. While my family finds her interesting, something tells me they’re starting to grow on her too.
It gives me hope, but also hurts. On one hand, this dinner, one with family and Arina, shows a pretty picture of what we can have. But on the other hand, the fact that we can’t talk about her brothers without things getting awkward, of her heritage and family without tempers getting heated, paints a reality we can’t run from. That, at the end of the day, what looks like this ideal situation has a time limit. Three powerful families are hunting her brothers, mine included, and we’re bound to face off at some point.
And then, what will happen? She’ll never look at me and my family the same. I feel my heart close off in pain, pushing hope as far as it possibly can.
***
