Chapter 52 Knowing all
Anya pressed her forehead harder against the glass, the cold seeping into her skin, into her bones. "And if I'm never ready? If I just want to disappear, find some place no one knows my name, live a life that doesn't involve any of this?"
Natalia was quiet for a moment. Then she said, very softly, "Then you disappear, I have money, contacts, ways to get you a new identity, a new life and a new name. Your father left instructions for that too cause he wanted you to have every option."
Anya turned, her back against the window, her eyes finding Natalia's. "He thought of everything."
"He had a long time to think. He knew he might not be there to see you grow up so he made plans and ways to keep you safe that didn't depend on him being alive." Natalia smiled, "he was always like that, planning and preparing for the worst, hoping for the best."
"How did you know where I was?" Anya asked. "That night, at the gas station, how did you know I'd be there?"
Natalia moved back to the table, picking up her coffee mug, her movements slow, deliberate. "I've been watching you for months, not following you in the way Nikolai's people follow just... watching. Making sure you were safe and waiting for the moment when you'd need to run."
Anya's chest tightened. "You saw what happened at the dinner?."
"I saw." Natalia said clenching her first, something flickered in her eyes, something that might have been anger. "I saw what Nikolai did to her, what Dima let him do and then I saw you walk out of that house. That was when I knew it was time."
"You let it happen." Anya's voice cracked. "You watched my mother be destroyed, and you let it happen."
Natalia set down her mug. Her face was pale, her hands steady, but Anya could see the pulse beating in her throat, fast and hard. "I let it happen because if I had intervened or shown myself, Nikolai would have killed me and then who would be here to help you? Who would have this house, evidence and plan your father left behind?"
"So you sacrificed her, the same way Dima sacrificed her and the same way everyone in that house has been sacrificing her since the day she married him."
The words hung in the air, sharp and brutal. Natalia didn't look away or try to defend herself. She just sat there, her grey eyes steady, her hands still on the table, and let Anya's anger wash over her.
"Yes," she said quietly. "I let it happen because I've been playing a longer game than you can imagine. A game that started before you were born, that will end when Nikolai is in the ground and everything he built is ash. Your mother is a casualty of that game, so was your father, Katya and I for fifteen years." She leaned forward her voice dropping. "But I am going to end it one way or another and I need you to help me."
Anya stared at her, at this woman who had been dead for fifteen years, who had watched her family burn and done nothing, who was asking her to fight a war she'd never wanted.
"Why me?" she asked again, the words coming out ragged, raw. "Why not Dima? He's been planning for years, he has the evidence, contacts and needs. Why not let him finish it?"
Natalia's expression shifted, something flickering behind her eyes that Anya couldn't name.
"Dima has been planning for years," she said slowly. "But Dima has also been making choices that aren't his to make. Choices about who lives and who dies, who gets hurt and who gets saved. He's been playing his father's game for so long, he's forgotten how to play anything else."
She stood, moving to the mantel, her fingers touching the frame of the photograph, her father's face, Katya's face, frozen in a moment of happiness that had been stolen from them.
"I need someone who sees the cost," she said quietly. "Someone who isn't willing to sacrifice people for the greater good. Someone who will remember, when this is over, that the people we lost weren't just names on a list, they were mothers, fathers, daughters and sons." She turned to look at Anya. "Your father understood that, same goes to Katya and I think, somewhere inside you, you understand it too."
Anya stood by the window, her back against the glass, the cold seeping through her clothes, through her skin, into the place where her anger lived.
She thought of her mother, alone in that house, her hands trembling around a wine glass, her eyes empty of everything but fear. She thought of Dima, standing in the dining room, his hands empty, his face pale, letting her walk away because it was easier than fighting.
"I don't know if I can help you," she said. "I don't know if I'm strong enough to go back and to be the person he wanted me to be."
Natalia crossed to her, stopping just out of reach, her hands at her sides, her grey eyes soft.
"Then stay here, rest, eat and sleep. Let yourself remember who you are without the fight." She smiled, "your father didn't build this house for a soldier, he built it for his daughter. A place where she could be safe, grow and choose her own life, whatever that looked like."
She moved toward the door, pausing with her hand on the frame.
"I'll be in the garden if you need me. There's bread in the kitchen, tea on the stove, a bed upstairs that's been waiting for you since you were born." She looked back, her grey eyes meeting Anya's. "Take all the time you need, I’m not going anywhere."
She stepped out, closing the door behind her, leaving Anya alone in the quiet house.
Anya stood by the window, watching her go. She watched Natalia walk through the overgrown garden, her hands reaching out to touch the weeds, flowers and wild tangle of green that had been growing here for years without anyone to tend it.
She pressed her palm against the glass, feeling the cold, the solidness of it, the way it held the warmth of the house against the winter outside.
She didn't know what she was going to do or if she was strong enough to go back, brave enough to fight, wise enough to be the person her father believed she could be.
But she was here n his house with a woman who had died fifteen years ago and come back to find her.