Page 53 of Scarlet Thorns

Time to learn how to live with the ghosts I’ve created.

One year later…

Chapter Twenty-One

Osip

“I’m not having this conversation again,” I say, my voice cutting through the silence of my bedroom. “Marriage is not in my plans.”

“But why, baby?” Anett purrs, her manicured fingers tracing patterns across my chest that feel more calculated than affectionate. “I love you and I can give you everything a woman can give you.”

Blyad.

Here we go again.

Anett Kovács— my Hungarian… what? “Girlfriend” feels too generous. Convenient fuck sounds more accurate, though she’d probably claw my eyes out if I said it aloud. We met in some overpriced bar in Pest six months ago, all platinum hair and designer heels, the kind of woman who knows exactly what effect she has on men and wields it like a weapon.

What was supposed to be a one-night stand to help me forget turned into several nights, then regular fucking, then this— whatever the fuck this is. She keeps showing up, keeps worming her way deeper into my life like a parasite I can’t quite shake. And I haven’t been fed up enough to dump her, which says more about my current state of mind than I care to analyze.

I feel empty inside. Have been that way since Boston, since everything I had was ripped away in a single night of blood and betrayal. Even the therapy sessions my brothers bullied me into attending can’t fill the void where my future used to live.

The house around us is a monument to wealth without purpose— eight bedrooms, marble floors, tall windows overlooking the Danube. Buda Hills real estate doesn’t comecheap, but money has never been the problem. It’s everything else that’s fucked beyond repair.

“Osip,” Anett continues, her voice taking on that wheedling tone that makes my teeth clench. “You live in this beautiful house all alone. Don’t you want someone to share it with?”

Share it. Like she’s offering me some grand gift instead of slowly moving her shit into my space without permission. First it was a toothbrush, then spare clothes, now she’s practically redecorated my guest bathroom with enough cosmetics to stock a department store.

“I like alone,” I say, reaching for the tumbler of vodka on my nightstand. The burn feels familiar, comforting in ways human contact no longer does.

After Galina died, I couldn’t stay in that house. Couldn’t even stay in Boston. Every corner held ghosts, every room echoed with conversations we’d never have and dreams that died with her. Melor and Radimir had already been here in Budapest, building new lives away from all the Bratva bullshit, and after the nightmare with Galina, their invitations had begun to make sense.

“Come to Hungary, bratan,”They’d said.“Start fresh. Nobody knows you here.”

They were right. In Budapest, I’m just another rich Russian expatriate with too much money and too few questions asked about where it came from. The kind of anonymity that money can buy, distance from everything that defined my old life.

The therapy was Radimir’s idea— persistent littlemudakwouldn’t drop it until I agreed to see someone. Dr. Szabó, a soft-spoken Hungarian who speaks perfect Russian and doesn’t flinch when I describe dreams that would send normal people running for the hills.

The nightmares still come. Always the same twisted theater of horrors— someone in a mask killing Galina with a knife while I watch, paralyzed by invisible chains. Then the masked figure cuts my son from her belly and disappears, leaving me alone with blood and silence. I wake up drenched in sweat, reaching for sedatives that make the world blur around the edges.

“You’re not listening to me,” Anett says, her voice sharper now. She’s sitting up in bed, designer lingerie doing its job of demanding attention I don’t want to give.

“I’m listening.” I drain the vodka and set the glass down harder than necessary. “You want marriage, babies, the whole domestic shitshow. I told you— not interested.”

Her face cycles through emotions like a slot machine— hurt, anger, calculation. “You said you wanted children someday.”

Someday.

Back when I thought I understood what that meant, when the future felt like something I could build instead of survive. Before I lost everything that mattered and learned that hope is just delayed disappointment.

I miss Galina’s simplicity. The way she never demanded more than I could give, never pushed for declarations or promises I couldn’t keep. But even more than that, I missher— the masked woman from Room Five, whose presence haunts me more than any ghost.

Her gentle spirit. The way she trusted me with her pain while I sat there carrying the knowledge that I’d caused it. No woman has ever affected me the way she did. And I’ll never see her again. Can never see her again. The truth would destroy us.

Anett lacks both Galina’s simplicity and the mysterious woman’s depth. She’s all surface and strategy, manipulationdressed up as affection. And it’s starting to get on my fucking nerves.

Suka!

Her hand slides down my torso, fingers working at the waistband of my pants. “Let me show you how much I love you,” she breathes against my neck.