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Chapter Twenty-Five

Petyr

T he stairwell of my apartment building reeked.

Someone on the floor below was frying onions too hot and too fast—every breath hit the back of my throat and I bit back a cough.

My legs ached. The bus ride back to Leningrad had been long, and the walk home longer.

I’d offered Dimitri space, and he’d taken it without a word.

He’d disappeared down Nevsky Prospekt with his collar turned up and his eyes on the ground.

I’d watched him go until I couldn’t anymore.

Now I was here, dragging myself up four flights like gravity had decided it was sick of my shit.

I didn’t even hear my own footsteps. Just the muffled life inside the building. An argument blooming behind a door on the third floor, laughter echoing faintly from someone’s radio, the clatter of pans. Life marching on, uncaring. Normal. Hideous in its normalcy.

I should be mad at Dimitri. Really, I should.

He’d scared me. The way he’d grabbed me. The way his voice had cracked and how his hands had shaken, like the violence was fighting to get out and he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to hold it back or unleash it. He hadn’t hurt me. Not really. But he could have. And he knew it.

But I wasn’t angry. Not at him.

How could I be? I knew the weight he carried, because I carried it too.

Our lives, this twisted little theater we put on day after day, were breaking both of us. The lies, the roles, the fear baked into our bones. He wanted more. So did I. But where would we find it? Siberia? A cold cell with peeling walls and iron bars?

I didn’t want to be married to Vera. God, no. But what choice did I have? What choice did she have?

If the world ever found out what Vera and I truly were… if someone even suspected… we’d both be swept off the map. Our names erased, our families disgraced. The Party would make examples of us.

And Dimitri didn’t understand this. Not really.

If he were arrested—interrogated—if they got him alone in some damp room and turned up the pressure, would he hold out? Or would he tell them my marriage was a sham? Would he mean to? Or would it just spill out? A stray truth let loose in the dark?

I’d kept it from him to protect Vera. To protect all of us. But sometimes I caught the look in his eyes, like he was wondering whether I cared about her more than I cared about him.

God.

I reached the fourth floor and paused, breath shallow, heart thudding. The hallway was dim. A bulb overhead had blown out weeks ago, and no one had replaced it. Probably never would. I fished my key from my pocket, fingers trembling, and unlocked the door.

Inside, the warmth hit me first, and then the sight of Nina and Pavel on the couch, both sprawled out like they’d melted into the cushions, reading by the yellow glow of a crooked floor lamp.

“Hey,” Nina said without looking up.

Pavel nodded once. “You’re late.”

“Long ride,” I mumbled, kicking off my boots.

“You bring back any dacha mushrooms, or just broken dreams?” Nina asked, flipping a page.

I huffed something that might’ve been a laugh. “Mostly broken dreams.”

They chuckled, and I almost hated them for it.

As I hung my coat on the wall hook, an idea hit me.

This building, this apartment, these people.

All of us living in glass jars with painted labels.

Who were Nina and Pavel, really? Were they like me and Vera?

Were they hiding, trembling, swallowing down their real selves each day before stepping outside?

Or were they loyal sons and daughters of the Party, gobbling up every bullshit line about patriotism and sacrifice like it was honey?

I’d never know. And I realized I didn’t care. I didn’t have the energy to give a damn.

“Goodnight,” I muttered, and they both returned it in distracted, overlapping tones.

I slipped down the narrow hallway toward my room—our room—and opened the door.

The desk lamp was on, its weak light spreading across a sea of papers.

Vera sat hunched over her desk, pen in hand, her braid looped low and a little loose like it always got when she was deep in work.

She didn’t look up right away, just scribbled something fiercely and then dropped the pen with a frustrated clatter.

“The Ministry of Agricultural Logistics,” she muttered, rubbing her eyes. “They want a presentation by Thursday. They won’t read it, of course, but they want to see us standing there with charts and ‘commitment.’” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.

She turned to me then, leaning against the desk with tired grace. “How was the weekend with Dimitri?”

I must’ve made a face. Something flickered across hers—concern, maybe, or recognition—and then she crossed the room and wrapped her arms around me.

Tight.

I hadn’t expected it. I didn’t think I had anything left to give. But the second she touched me, my breath caught. My hands hung limp at my sides. I didn’t have the strength to lift them.

The hug felt like shelter. Like she was holding up both of us so we didn’t fall through the floor.

I closed my eyes.

I didn’t cry.

But god, I could’ve.

“Was it that bad?” she asked softly, her chin still pressed to my shoulder.

I stepped back and sat on the edge of the bed, elbows to my knees, staring at the floor like it had answers carved into it.

“It was horrible,” I said finally, my voice barely more than a scrape. “All these guys from the factory showed up. Pavel, Anton, Oleg, with girls and vodka. Loud as hell. Laughing and eating everything in sight like they owned the place.”

Vera crossed the room, perched beside me, and waited.

I exhaled sharply through my nose. “Dimitri and I barely got a moment alone. And…”

I stopped. I didn’t want to say it aloud. As if voicing it would turn the memory from smoke into iron.

“Go on,” Vera calmly encouraged me.

“…and Dimitri barely kept himself in check while they were around,” I said, the words heavy and sour in my mouth.

“It’s like the presence of other people presses against his skin until it breaks.

I don’t know if it’s shame or fear or rage, but when they finally left, he just, damn, he lost it. Completely.”

Vera’s hand moved to the middle of my back. A steadying circle, slow and warm, like she was trying to smooth down the ruffled edges of my soul.

“We almost ended things,” I admitted, the truth cutting me on the way out. “It was awful. I know it scared him, how close he came to hurting me. But it scared me too.”

I looked up, eyes catching the faint outline of myself in the windowpane. Just a blur. A tired shape in a world of tired shapes.

“Dimitri isn’t as strong as we are, Vera,” I said. “He’s not used to this. To all these damn lies we have to tell. It’s eating him alive, and if we don’t get a break soon, like, if we don’t get some real time, away from everything, it’s going to end. I can feel it.”

She said nothing. Just kept rubbing that same spot on my back. Round and round.

“And thank you,” I added, quieter now, “for getting us the dacha. It was a kind thing to do. Too bad we didn’t get to be alone.”

The irony of it made something twist in my gut. We’d wanted a pocket of time. A breath. Instead, we got a slow-motion collapse.

“You still love him?” she asked, her voice barely a murmur.

I nodded. It wasn’t even a question. Loving Dimitri felt like breathing. It wasn’t always pleasant, but necessary for survival.

“Then hold on to it,” she said. “That love. No matter what happens. One day, maybe not tomorrow or the next, but one day, it’s going to save you both.”

I blinked. Hard. My chest ached. I wished she wasn’t always right.

I reached for something else, anything else. “Have you seen Mira lately?”

Vera’s hand stilled.

Her posture shifted just slightly, but I caught it. That fractional tightening of the shoulders.

“She…” Vera hesitated. “She decided we should take a break.”

My stomach sank. “Because of this?”

She shrugged, but it was stiff. “It’s just… gotten stressful. Too many secrets. Too many things we can’t say in daylight. She says she needs space. I think she’s scared.”

“Shit,” I muttered.

We sat like that for a while. Side by side. Two people living a version of a life no one had written a manual for. Vera with her careful strength, and me, unraveling thread by thread.

“When,” I asked the window, the floor, the sky, “when will life ever become easier?”

Vera didn’t answer.

* * *

The tram rattled along its tracks like an old dog refusing to die, groaning and yawning around every bend.

Sunlight filtered in dusty gold through the scratched windows, painting the empty seats in sleepy stripes.

Half the city was at their dachas, lounging in hammocks or burning their skin in vegetable gardens.

A lucky few were even in Crimea, sunbathing on the Black Sea under the lazy eye of a Party-run sanatorium.

I envied them. Every last blissfully dull one of them.

Not for the sea or the sun, but for the simplicity.

For the ease with which they moved through life, never once questioning the shape it was handed to them in.

They accepted everything. The rules, the stories, the slogans—with empty smiles and arms outstretched.

I’d have killed to be that kind of man. A man with a wife at his side and no symphonies storming in his head.

A man who didn’t need to lie with every breath he took.

Vera sat beside me, her shoulder brushing mine with every jolt. She was reading a flyer from the Ministry of Forestry about some new conservation push. I turned to her and whispered, “Hey. You think your parents could swing us a week in Crimea? Like a real vacation. Just us.”

She glanced up, one eyebrow raised.

“I mean,” I amended quickly, “I could bring Dimitri and you could… you know. Relax.”

I almost said Mira. The name got as far as the roof of my mouth before I swallowed it back.

Vera didn’t answer right away. Just shrugged. A very Vera shrug—measured, noncommittal, just enough muscle to keep the topic alive without committing to it.

The tram screeched to a stop. We both stood and moved with the trickle of passengers stepping down to the street. The sky had that pale bleached-out look it got when it forgot how to rain.

We joined the quiet stream of workers heading toward the factory gate, a row of gray shapes in gray clothes marching toward the roar of machinery and the scent of wool.

Then I felt a presence behind me.

“Good morning,” Dimitri said softly.

We turned. His hair was still damp from a rushed shower, and his eyes held that sheepish, crooked sort of apology I’d come to recognize like the back of my hand. He looked better than he had at the dacha. Not quite whole, but patched together. At least upright.

Vera gave him a warm smile. So did I, though mine nearly cracked my face.

God, how I wanted to have woken up next to him. With his arm flung across my chest and his weight anchoring me to something real. But instead, we stood there like coworkers. Like strangers. Faking our way through the choreography of morning greetings.

We filed into the factory building, where the air changed—denser now, full of dust and wool and the distant, unholy rhythm of looms that never slept.

Vera peeled off toward her office with a parting nod, and I walked with Dimitri toward the lockers.

Our boots echoed on the tiled floor in a hollow, offbeat duet.

No one else was in the room.

I opened my locker and leaned in, keeping my voice low. “I missed you last night.”

A pause. Then: “I missed you too.” His grin was quick, flickering. But when it reached his eyes, it hit me like sunlight in a dark room.

Impulsively, I blurted, “Can we hang out after work?”