Page 53 of Deadly Knight (The Bratva’s Elite #2)

“How do you feel this week?” Ava asks, crossing one leg over the other.

Pre-Russia, pre-Dimitri, I’d been going to counselling on a bi-weekly basis, long ready to shift to monthly appointments. Ava recommended it, and I knew deep down I’d be fine cutting back, but never made the jump. Call it nerves, call it whatever, I clung to my safety net.

“You continue therapy because you’re scared of what it’ll mean not having someone to catch you if you fall.”

Is that all Ava’s been for me? A lifeline who catches me at every little fall? As a therapist myself, I should have the answer to those questions, but as the client, I’m blinded to my own needs.

Either way, since returning from Russia, I’ve increased my sessions to weekly, going the complete opposite way from where I should be.

“Katya?” Ava prompts, shattering my thoughts.

“Honestly…depressed.” Still. I sink into the blue couch, crossing my arms to make myself as small as possible.

“Almost every day I ask myself ‘what if?’ What if I stayed? What if I gave it a shot? Was he right? Do I run away from everything? He thinks I’m strong enough to handle life by his side, and what if he’s right? ”

“And what answers have you come up with?”

“None that make any sense. Sometimes, like last night, I stay up late driving myself insane coming up with various answers and outcomes. It makes my head hurt.”

She makes a noise and folds her hands over the pen on her lap. “I’d like to discuss your point about being strong enough and dissect how you feel about it. You’re wondering if you are strong enough, but define what ‘strong enough’ means.”

Um. My mouth opens but no sounds come out.

She stares.

I stare.

She waits.

I sweat.

The use of silence is a therapy trick meant to grant the client the space to think and reply in their own time.

And it always fucking works.

“I don’t know. My mental wall fell. Without it, I don’t think I could stay with a mobster.”

She hums, jotting a few things down. “There’s something in that statement I’d like to return to later, but let’s talk about that mental wall again. It’s not the first time we’ve talked about this since you’ve returned, but when it fell, did you fall as well?”

“Well. No.” I don’t think so.

“From what you’ve mentioned, it sounds like you’ve held firm in your decisions.”

“Yeah…”

“All without that mental protection.”

“I see where you’re going with this. A few days are different from a lifetime.”

“Are they?”

Um.

“Have you considered that you’re strong without your walls? That without them you’ve proven to yourself you are. With or without walls, you made it through. They fell because your subconscious knew Dimitri was safe and trustworthy, and you didn’t have to rebuild for the same purpose.”

This is why therapists need therapy. I’d be blind to my own faults and solutions.

“Maybe,” I whisper, reaching for her bin of fidget tools, needing one more than ever. The folding cube means my focus is on something other than Ava’s points—which are completely and unfortunately valid.

“Alright, let’s return to what you called Dimitri…” She glances at her pad. “A mobster.”

Finally, an easy answer. “He’s a Bratva soldier. A.K.A: a mobster.” Thank fuck for client confidentiality.

“Have you noticed you call Dimitri by name except when you’re defending your choices and relate him to his job?”

“Do I?”

She nods. “Is it possible for you to separate Dimitri from his job?”

“Already have.” I fold the cube, my motions jerky. “It’s not him I’m worried about. It’s the people who’ll come after us.”

“What if no one does? What if his father was, as Dimitri told you, lying or exaggerating?”

These are the questions that have plagued me daily, resulting in the circles I mentioned before. “Then I might have made a huge mistake and given up an amazing man.”

She sits in silence, my admittance bouncing around the quiet office, only the gentle barely-there whirling of the computer in the far corner.

“My time home proved I never got over him, even though I thought I had.”

She chuckles. “I could have told you that years ago. Did you realize you called Russia home?”

“Well, I did spend half my life there. It’s natural.”

“Eighteen years versus ten here. Not a huge difference. Isn’t that what you told Dimitri and his family to defend your return to Toronto?”

Fuck Ava for calling me out on everything.

“Maybe. I had to. They weren’t listening to me.”

“Yes…” She trails off, flipping backwards in her notes. “Because you kept telling Dimitri he needed time away from you to heal, even when he claimed he didn’t need that. Do you truly feel he should?”

She’s asking me this ? “Ava, professional to professional, tell me the truth: wouldn’t he?”

Her hesitation is obvious before she rests her pad off to the side, momentarily setting aside her job and role as my counsellor.

“You knew what you needed and made it possible. He might have followed you here, sure, but he never once interrupted your progress. He stayed away as you attended school, got a job, and even went out with other men. He respected your recovery, so what makes you think he needs the same things? You’re in the field, Katya, so you understand how trauma is different for every person.

How everyone has different healing methods.

That’s my take on it.” She pulls her notes back onto her lap, her expression returning to polite but professional.

Shit. Maybe she’s right.

Ava glances at her watch. “We have a few more minutes, and I’d like to leave you with a bit of homework before our next session.

Determine what path you want to take next.

You’ve been home for a month, but week after week, you tell me how uncertain you are about your decisions, while doubling down on them immediately.

You don’t have to have it figured out, but enough we can formulate a goal.

Do we return to your old one and work on those walls again, processing everything from the past accompanied by everything that happened recently, or do we come up with a new goal? ”

A new goal. A new path. Rebuilding walls or moving into the future without them.

“I can do that.”

After the session, I head to my next appointment.

Given my abrupt absence from Toronto, my Friday self-defence lessons got cancelled and rebooked into the only other time they had available, which happens to now be Sunday afternoons, after therapy.

It’s a lot of self-building in one day, but I’m all for it because then I head to my parents in the late afternoon and stay until dinner, and they’re always nothing but supportive.

They noticed the change in my schedule and have commented on it, but haven’t asked outright why. Which I’m grateful for because I’d prefer not to lie to them, but I really don’t want to tell them about any recent events involving Russia and Dimitri.

Carl, the middle-aged owner of the gym, greets me and completes my check-in before returning to helping the receptionist with something on the computer. I head to the back to change and store my stuff before finding my trainer, Bailey.

The gym’s really good with assigning different trainers for varied experiences, but Bailey’s the only one I’ve ever worked with.

This way, I don’t get paired with a man because practicing getting out of holds with a strange guy I barely know—if at all—without having weeks of work-up to build trust wasn’t happening.

Maybe it’d be worth trying soon.

“Welcome,” the no-nonsense woman greets from one end of the mat. “Good day so far?”

“It’s a day.” After the session, especially today’s topic, this is precisely what I need to get me through to the evening.

It’ll exhaust my body enough that hopefully sleep will come quickly tonight, and I won’t be up late thinking about everything I talked about with Ava. Overthinking is tomorrow’s task.

“Let’s start with stretching.”

Bailey leads me through the typical exercises and explains the benefits of more practice of breaking from holds—something I’m more than okay with because one never knows when they may find themselves caught in something they shouldn’t be.

It would have been useful in a few instances since the day Ivan trapped me in the park.

When I first began self-defence lessons, Ava recommended I imagine their faces while fighting the trainers, and though I considered it, I opted not to let them through my wall, even in this controlled environment, because I couldn’t be sure I’d get them back over it as easily.

Since returning, there’s been no one’s face replacing Bailey.

There’s been lessons where I remain entirely present.

Maybe it’s the images of their bloodied and broken bodies that reassure me they won’t be attacking me.

They’re not who I’ll be defending myself against from here on out.

If Bailey noticed my different behaviour, she’s never said so.

Today, however, is different. Maybe it’s the conversation with Ava, but when Bailey has me in a leglock, it’s Bald One’s face I’m seeing as he tries to tie the rope around my ankles and wrists by pinning me down.

When I punch Bailey’s arm pads, it’s Greasy One and I’m hitting the knife from his hand.

When I kick and trip Bailey, I’m knocking down Skinny One before he has a chance to kneel between my legs.

And when I get Bailey in a hold, it’s Bodybuilder One and I won’t let go until he releases Dimitri and I.

“Time,” Bailey calls with a T motion of her hands. She’s bent over on her knees, breathing heavily, while I’m downright panting like a dog left in the summer heat for too long. “You had some vigour today.”

“I needed it.”

She straightens, resting her hands on her hips.

“Clearly. You did good, Katya. Some real challenges for me there. If you were ever attacked, you’d have a damn good chance, no matter their size.

You’re smart. As long as your head remains straight and you stay focused and don’t allow panic to take over, you’ll be fine. ”

Words that mean more than she’ll ever know.

I left Russia and all it has behind me, and while I don’t exactly know what I’m preparing so hard for, deep down…I think I do.

Later that night, I pull out the book I haven’t in years: my diary.

The walls are down. I’ve been faced with Ivan again. I’ve seen Dimitri and survived—albeit barely. What more can these memories do to me?

So I reread my past, starting from the first entry about some school drama or whatever, going to when I met Dimitri, and then graduation night, the chaotic entries afterwards, and finally the single entry following before I stopped writing in the book.

Before I tuck it away, I find a pen and jot one more quick entry:

Dear Diary,

Been some time. Almost ten years to be exact. It feels right to bridge the gap between now and when life went to hell, and update on one fact:

I’m alright.

I’m better than I thought possible.

I went to Russia, was faced with Ivan, saw Dimitri, and survived it all.

I don’t know what’s next, but whatever it is, I’ll handle it.

I’m becoming strong enough to.

My scars are becoming no more than memories—exactly like that night.

I’m winning.