Page 57 of The Pakhan's Bride
21
ZOYA
The room is a cold box. Even with the heat on, even with the curtains pulled tight and the silk robe hugging my shoulders. I sit cross-legged on the edge of the mattress, file folder on my knees, lamp turned so the light hits the pages just right. The rest of the house is in low-power mode—no footsteps, no phones, just the hiss of forced air in the vents and the occasional pop of the baseboard as it expands.
The photograph is old-school surveillance, grainy and oversaturated. A Prague sidewalk, ice rimmed along the curbs, winter light giving every face a skull's pallor. Ekaterina is at the center, wearing a camel coat with a storm collar and black boots, lips painted the exact shade of blood you only see in movies. She is laughing. Her hand is outstretched, fingers curled around the knuckles of a man twice her size, gray suit, no overcoat, a scar on his jaw that looks like it was stitched up with a fish hook. Even blurred, I recognize the skull—one of the Albani syndicate's top troubleshooters. The one who toasted me with grappa at the Monte Carlo gala almost nine years back and later tried to blackmail my father with a binder of pictures he shouldn't have had.
The sight of them together is an electrical short to the brain.
I lean in. The cheap paper creaks. My vision tightens at the edges. Her smile in the photo is the same one she wore when we were kids and she'd drag me to the schoolyard to knife boys who teased her. I always thought the cruelty was for show, a weapon she could sheathe when the job was done. What is she doing with them? Why would she ever need the validation of this syndicate, knowing full well that their corruption has no gray areas?
My fingers won't hold still. The photo shakes, then I flatten it with my palm. The skin of my hand goes white, blood shunted elsewhere. I press harder, like I could squeeze the truth from the ink.
I read every millimeter. The background is a café, blue neon sign in Czech, date-stamped three months after the family collapse. Ekaterina's hair is longer than I remember, blowing across her face in the wind. She's holding something in her other hand, a slim folder, maybe a passport or cash. The man's eyes are at her neckline, not her face. I clock the angle, the tightness in his jaw, the micro-tilt of her head. She is in complete control, and she's enjoying it.
My pulse starts to climb. Shallow, rhythmic. I breathe in and out, slow as a sniper in a tree line. Still, the tightness latches onto my chest, clamps down until my ribs ache. I realize I'm grinding my teeth.
I flip to the next page. More shots, different angles—they go into the café, come out half an hour later, walk the Charles Bridge side by side. In the last photo, Ekaterina is alone, pulling on leather gloves, chin up, a slit of satisfaction in her lips. No sign of the man. The report says he boarded a train to Bratislava that night and was dead by morning—body dumped in the Danube, throat opened stem to stern.
My knuckles are as white as the snow in the picture. I force myself to let go, but the image is stuck to my palm, sweat-welded. I peel it free, set it on the duvet, and curl my hands into fists. The heat in the room has evaporated. The only warmth left is a coil of anger at the base of my spine.
This is not business. This is family. Did Ekaterina take help from them to survive what happened to us? But if she did, why wouldn't she tell me?
I stare at the photo until the shapes blur and the lines run together. Then I stand, shoving my feet into slippers, and start to pace. One, two, three steps to the window. Back again. Every lap I try to solve the equation—What was she doing in Prague? Who did she betray—me, or the man, or herself? Was this part of the larger game, or was it a move she made for herself and no one else?
The questions multiply, bacterial, until I lose track of which ones matter. Maybe none of them do.
My mouth tastes like tin. I walk to the sink, run water until it's glacier-cold, and let it fill a glass. The first sip freezes my teeth. I hope the shock will chase out the dull panic crowding my head. It doesn't.
I look at myself in the reflection above the sink—eyes ringed with exhaustion, lips pressed to a colorless line. The same face I saw in the news reports after Papa died. I flatten both hands on the counter and stare at the lines in my palm, the old scars from fencing and glass and mistakes I was supposed to have learned from. My hands are too steady for what's happening inside me. I wonder if this is what it feels like to be hollowed out.
I can't make sense of it. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.
I go back to the bed and look at the photo again. Her smile. The line of her jaw, the shadow of a bruise under her eye I didn't notice the first time. I want to reach through the page and grab her by the collar, shake her until all the secrets come loose.
Instead, I place the photograph facedown, fold the file closed, and sit in the dark.
For an hour, I don't move. I let the questions pile up. They are heavy, but not as heavy as what's coming. Sleep eludes me until slivers of red pierce the dark blue of the night sky, and when it does come, it's light and full of dreams of my sister feeding me poison and telling me she did it out of love.
I wake up in tears.
Before the sun makes a full appearance, I visit the chapel, only to find Galina pressed against the far wall, head bowed, hands knotted in her lap. She wears the same gray cardigan as yesterday, now pill-balled and dusted with flour. She's always preferred the morning for her prayers, but today she's here in the blue hour, the candles stuttering against the dark.
I stand in the doorway and watch. She lights a match and touches it to the tip of the newest candle. It blooms, smokes, then settles into a steady flame. Her fingers shake, but she does not hurry.
With a sigh, I drop down and sit beside her, letting the silence be the language. The chapel smells of old incense, melted wax, wet stone, and the bite of sulfur from the match. I watch the flame gutter and recover. In the reflection on the glass, I see the two of us—me, rigid and angular, Galina, folded like an origami bird.
She does not turn. "Did you sleep?"
"Not much."
Her mouth bends in a way that isn't quite a smile. "It is a bad house for sleep."
I stare at the candle, at the way it eats itself. "You knew she was alive, didn't you?"
Galina shakes her head. "I believed she was not dead. Not the same thing."
The colored glass throws bruised light onto the floor. There's a patch of blue near Galina's feet, a violet wash up the sleeve ofmy shirt. It feels like a secret code I've never been given the key for.
