Page 134 of Stolen Empire

The apartment is too quiet without him in it.

I stand in the center of his bedroom for a long moment, trying to wrangle the chaos of my thoughts into something manageable.

I'm Ekaterina Morozova?

The name feels strange even thinking it, as if I’m trying on clothes that belong to someone else.

I remember a man in fragments now—the smell of cigarette smoke and cologne, the way he'd lift me onto his shoulders and carry me through crowds, the sound of a man's laugh that always seemed too loud.

Those fragmented memories are all I have of him.

But I'll never forget my mother's face when the police came to tell us he was dead.

She was devastated and terrified.

And I remember it was the first time I was rushed out of a home with nothing but a duffel bag.

We moved that night to a different district.

She cut my hair short and dyed it darker.

Told me my father died in a car accident, and over time, the facts blurred.

I went by Katya, which makes sense looking back.

I sit on the foot of Dimitri's bed as pieces knit together in my head.

Ekaterina to Katya, just a nickname that became my identity.

And I never remember being called Morozova, but I was a Sokolov and then Volsky, but I never knew why she made me change it.

I obeyed because I was young and terrified and because my mother's fear had become a living thing that filled our apartment like thick smoke.

But I never understood why we had to become ghosts of ourselves, drifting from place to place with no roots or history.

Now I know.

She was hiding me from the obligations that came with being Lyovik Morozov's daughter.

She was trying to give me a life free from the violence and politics that had defined my father's world.

She was trying to keep me away from men like Dimitri, who live and breathe the same dangerous air my father once breathed.

The irony of it would be funny if it didn’t hurt so much.

I ended up in the exact place she kept me from as if it's my destiny and I can't escape it.

I move through the apartment on autopilot, needing to do something to quiet the storm in my head.

The bathroom mirror shows me a stranger's face, pale and bruised with haunted eyes.

I peel off the bandages carefully, examining the damage beneath.

The cut on my cheek is shallow but angry, and my wrists are ringed with deep purple bruises and scabs.

I feel like I’m still waiting for the next blow to land.

I turn on the shower as hot as I can stand it and relax under the spray.