Chapter-5 The Sin

I barely made it to the bathroom.

The door shut behind me with a dull click before my knees hit the cold marble and my hands fumbled for the edge of the toilet. The overwhelming and sour acid came up fast. I retched until my throat burned and my eyes watered, until my stomach twisted in on itself like it was trying to reject more than just food.

The flavors betrayed me.

Butter. Spice. Oil. Things my body no longer knew how to hold. The convent had fed us plainly, boiled, bland, obedient meals meant to quiet desire, not wake it. This house had fed me indulgence without asking if I was ready.

I gagged again, shame rising hotter than nausea.

When it was over, I stayed there, forehead resting against the porcelain, breathing shallowly like I’d run miles instead of a few corridors. My mouth tasted sour. My chest hurt.

I wiped my lips with the back of my hand, then stood slowly, gripping the sink as the world steadied.

The mirror caught me unprepared.

My eyes were red-rimmed, lashes clumped with tears I didn’t remember letting fall. I splashed water onto my face. Tears slipped anyway, tracking down my cheeks despite my efforts.

Stop.

Stop reacting.

But my reflection didn’t listen.

I bit my lip hard, pressure blooming into pain, and squeezed my eyes shut as another wave of tears broke free. This time there was anger in them, humiliation and the confusion as to why this affected me this way.

I hated that his words had done this to me.

Hated that they followed me here, clung to my ribs, echoed louder in the quiet than they ever had at the table.

Because from where I’m sitting, that’s not God.

I turned the tap on again and washed my face properly this time, slower, calmer, like I was trying to erase the dinner, the room, the man who had looked at my faith like something fragile and flawed.

My hands went to my veil. For a moment, they hesitated.

Removing it felt like crossing a line. But the fabric felt suffocating. I untied it and let it slip free, black cloth pooling at the counter like a shed skin.

My hair fell with a soft weight down my back, unbound and unfamiliar, dark strands cascading to my hips. I stared at it as though it belonged to someone else. Slowly, almost reverently, I threaded my fingers through it.

My mother used to hate my hair.

She said it was too dark for our family. Since she and Catherine were blond.

My dark eyes reminded her of my father, she said she’d rather have me blind.

I swallowed, biting my lips as I thread my fingers.

It was soft.

I didn’t recognize the woman in the mirror now. Without the veil, without the rigid lines and rules, I looked exposed. Ordinary.

Ugly.

Unworthy.

Does it teach faith, or just expect you fools to shut up, kneel, and do as you’re told without ever asking why?

I wrapped my arms around myself, fingers digging into my sleeves, nails grazing skin beneath the habit. I saw everything I’d been taught to see. A body that failed. A soul that lied.

If I was sick, it was because I deserved it.

If I was shaken, it was because my faith wasn’t strong enough.

If his words hurt, it was because they found something true.

I pressed my forehead to the mirror, breath fogging the glass.

God.

I turned off the light and stood there in the dark for a moment longer, hair loose, eyes burning, stomach hollow, not just from what I’d lost, but from what had been unsettled.

I knew I couldn’t survive in this house longer if I keep seeing him. He was the sin I was taught not to commit.

And I hated myself most of all for knowing I couldn’t unhear him.

By the time I lay on my side and stared into the emptiness of the room, sleep refused to come. The silence pressed too close, giving my thoughts too much space to move.

There was too much inside my head. Too many words. Too many faces.

This was a mistake.

I knew it the moment I closed my eyes.

I shouldn’t have come to Moscow.

This place wasn’t just cold, it was cruel. I had lived in hell before. I knew its shape. Its smell. The way it trained you to mistake survival for grace.

And this place felt the same.

Maybe worse.

I curled in on myself, knees drawn slightly toward my chest, careful not to press my back too hard against the mattress. Even the bed felt unfamiliar. It was too soft.

I missed the pain Convent offered.

Blame was easier than anger. Shame was easier than truth.

Eventually, exhaustion won.

It dragged me under the way tides pull bodies out to sea. My thoughts blurred, edges softening, self-loathing dissolving into a dull ache behind my eyes.

As sleep finally claimed me, one last thought lingered.

If this was hell… then why did part of me feel like it had been waiting for it?

The darkness answered by closing in, and I let it.

******

I barely slept.

What little rest I got came in shallow fragments stretches where my body lay still but my mind refused to obey. Every time I closed my eyes, the house hummed, the walls whispered, and voices slipped back in like it belonged there.

I was sure this house was haunted and a demon lived here.

By morning, exhaustion clung to me heavier than guilt.

After we had our breakfast, and I was grateful Pakhan was not there, we decided to sit on the lawn. Magda said it was sunny and we should take some Vitamin D.

I smiled despite meaning to, cause she reminded me of my aunt I lost at young age.

We sat in the lawn, I was wrapped in a thin shawl over the habit and veil, hands curled around a cup of tea I hadn’t touched.

The air was crisp enough to sting my lungs despite the sun, but it felt cleaner than the suffocating warmth inside the mansion. Frost still clung to the edges of the grass. Moscow looked deceptively calm in the light.

Catherine sat beside me, one hand resting absently over her stomach.

Four months.

She glowed in that way people always describe, softened, rounded at the edges, like life had finally settled into her properly. I watched her carefully, searching for cracks I knew better than to point out.

I had many questions for her, but knowing her, she’d rather be quiet.

Magda joined us with her own tea, settling into the chair with a sigh. “My granddaughter turns three this winter,” she said fondly. “Sometimes I bring her with me. Only for a few hours. She likes the garden.”

Catherine smiled. “You’ve told me. The one with the wild curls.”

“Yes,” Magda said proudly. “Sharp tongue, that one. Takes after her mother.”

I kept my head lowered.

Takes after her mother.

I wished I could hear that for myself.

Magda chuckled, then added casually, “The previous Pakhan, he was kind. Generous. Gifted me a house when my son married. Said family should never worry about shelter.”

My fingers tightened around the cup.

I didn’t look at Catherine. I didn’t ask the question forming in my throat.

Was Kayne the same?

Why ask something when the answer lived in the marrow of the city itself?

Russia wasn’t blind. It just pretended to be.

To the outside world, Pakhan Sokolov was a politician. A businessman. A man who shook hands and smiled for cameras. Inside these walls, and everywhere the law conveniently failed, he was something else entirely.

A butcher with clean hands.

When Catherine married Nikolai, our mother hadn’t protested. Not once. She smiled, accepted the gifts, basked in the attention. Mob ties meant power. Power meant safety. That was the logic she raised us on.

I had attended the wedding in silence, already knowing then that Kayne Sokolov was a bad thing.

We hadn’t spoken much that day. He’d been busy. Or uninterested. Or both. I hadn’t cared enough to wonder.

I never imagined I’d be here now, sitting on the porch with Catherine and Magda, pretending this was normal, while just a few feet away Kayne sat with Yan and Nikolai, voices low, conversation clipped and illegible.

I didn’t need to hear him to feel him.

His presence pressed against my awareness like heat. Not warm, but searing. My skin prickled every time his gaze found me. It ignited places in me the sun never could, shameful and confusing and unwanted.

I flinched once when he tilted his head and hummed softly, like he’d noticed.

Like he always noticed.

As if he could read thoughts I hadn’t dared to finish.

Last night’s words hadn’t left me.

Because they were close enough to truth to hurt. And still, I couldn’t agree with them. Not fully.

Mother always said God was great. That pain was instruction. That if He offered suffering, it was because He was shaping something better.

It was easier to believe that than to believe pain could be meaningless.

Catherine’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “You should stay,” she said gently. “After the baby’s born. With me.”

My heart sank.

“I…” I hesitated, then nodded automatically. “I will think.”

I barely knew how I’d survive this month.

But it was easier to suffer quietly than to name what this place did to me. Easier to agree than to explain why once I left, I would never come back.

I stared out at the pale sky and took a careful breath.

I hadn’t prayed in a while.

Magda rose with a soft groan, brushing her hands over her apron. “I should start preparing for dinner,” she said, already halfway into routine. “You sisters should spend some time together. It’s been long.”

She smiled at us warmly before retreating inside, leaving the porch quieter than before.

Catherine exhaled, the tension easing from her shoulders the moment Magda disappeared. She leaned back in her chair, stretching her legs slightly, and for a moment she looked like the sister I remembered. Not a wife. Not a future mother. Just Catherine.

“Do you remember,” she said suddenly, smiling, “how Mama used to wake us up at dawn on Sundays? Drag us to church even when we were half-asleep?”

I huffed softly. “You used to complain the entire way.”

“And you used to defend her,” Catherine replied, amused. “Said God liked punctual girls.”

Something warm stirred in my chest for a fleeting moment before it slipped back into the grave.

“I didn’t know any better,” I murmured.

Catherine studied me, her gaze gentle but probing. “She asked for you,” she said quietly. “Near the end.”

My heart-beat faltered.

“She kept saying your name,” Catherine continued, smiling softly. “Even when she couldn’t remember much else.”

A pang hit me so suddenly I had to look away.

I wanted to believe her.

But her jaw twitched, just slightly.

She was lying.

Guilt and grief tangled tight in my throat.

Catherine sighed, and took be by surprise. “Why did you leave, Ana?”

I stared at my hands. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “It felt… appropriate. At the time.”

“And now?” she asked softly. “Do you still feel the same?”

I drew in a slow breath, filling my lungs until it hurt. “Yes.”

The word hurt her.

Her smile faltered, shoulders stiffened.

“So you’re happier being gone?” she muttered.

“That’s not what I said.”

“It’s what you mean.”

“You left,” Catherine continued, voice tight now. “You disappeared. And I was left to explain you away. Again and again.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“No,” she snapped quietly. “You never do.”

Something in me folded in on itself then.

Like a tide pulling back before it could be seen, before it could make a mess of everything.

I knew that feeling. The warning hum in my chest.

Because it wasn’t about Mama anymore.

It was about blame.

About absence. About who stayed and who ran and who paid for it in the end.

And I had learned that there were truths you could hold without ever setting them down between two people. Truths that, once spoken, didn’t heal.

My throat tightened, words lining up uselessly behind my teeth.

What could I say?

That leaving had been endurance, not abandonment?

That staying had once felt like drowning slowly, quietly, so no one else would notice?

That I hadn’t disappeared…. I escaped?

None of that would sound like love to her.

None of it would matter.

Catherine wasn’t asking to understand. She was asking me to take the weight from her shoulders and place it back on my own. To confess. To repent. To make myself the reason everything had gone wrong.

And God help me… I almost did.

The familiar urge to apologize for existing. To bow my head and accept whatever shape of guilt was handed to me, just to keep the peace.

Good girls don’t argue.

Good girls don’t elucidate.

Good girls endure.

If I stayed in this moment, if I opened my mouth again, I would give her something she didn’t deserve and I couldn’t afford to lose.

Myself.

So I swallowed it.

All of it.

The ache. The defense. The truth clawing at my ribs.

I couldn’t breathe with it inside me.

I lifted my gaze, forced my face into something neutral and stood abruptly. The chair shrieked against stone as it slid back.

“I can’t do this,” I said.

They were all I had.

I turned. The world lurched the second later and then came the impact. Stone met bone with a dull, brutal thud. The breath tore from my lungs in a sharp, humiliating gasp. Pain bloomed white-hot across my forehead, my vision fracturing at the edges as my balance tipped.

For half a heartbeat, I thought I was falling.

Panic surged before a hand shot out and fingers closed around my bicep, firm enough to stop me, tight enough to hurt.

Pain detonated up my arm, straight into my spine.

I gasped, the sound torn from somewhere ugly and instinctive, and ripped myself free before I could stop myself. My heart was hammering now, too fast, too loud, my body already spiraling ahead of my mind.

Don’t touch me.

Don’t grab me.

Don’t….

I looked up and froze at the sight of him. Amber eyes glowing under the sun, honey dipped with gold, hooded eyes making my breaths uneven and nights sleepless.

His hand loitered in the space where my arm had been, fingers curling slowly as if he could still feel me there. His expression hadn’t changed but his eyes turned fiery.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted, already stepping back. I didn’t look at him again. Couldn’t.

I fled, heart pounding, shame and fear chasing each other down my spine.

My heart couldn’t stop beating like crazy, I couldn’t calm it down. I didn’t turn when I ran down the lawn and only when I was at the threshold, something made me stop.

Placing a trembling hand over my heart, I took three deep breaths and forced myself to turn.

Catherine had crumpled.

She stood pressed against Kayne’s chest, her face buried into his coat as her shoulders shook. His arm was around her. One hand rested at the back of her head, shielding her from view.

From me.

His eyes lifted over her shoulder and found mine.

Amber against darkness.

Honey against poison.

I looked away first and ran to the room. Pressed my back against the door as sharp pain shot up, as I hid my face in my palms and prayed.

And yet, I couldn’t shake the image of his arms around Catherine, of how easily he could console her and not me. Of the way I thought there was something between them, only to realize I had misunderstood.