Chapter 2: The Light Heavyweight Pact
The chandeliers were the first thing Nadya noticed. A forest of crystal daggers hanging from the ceiling, each one catching and fracturing the room’s low light into a thousand painful gleams. She blinked, and the daggers swam.
“Easy,” a voice said, close to her ear. An arm, solid and familiar, stayed around her waist. “Breathe. It’s just sparkly shit.”
Dmitri. Light heavyweight. Ukrainian, with a smashed nose and eyes that had seen too many jokes go sour. He guided her through the crush of bodies. The air in the Gaudy Lounge was a solid thing—a warm, damp blanket of cigar smoke, spilled whiskey, and a half-dozen competing perfumes that smelled like rotting flowers and money.
Nadya’s own dress, a scandal of black mesh and strategic sequins, felt like cobwebs against her skin. The drugs they’d given her for the post-fight “mingle” were a different cocktail. Not the heavy sedative from before, but something airy and mean. It left her thoughts cottony but her nerves scraped raw, every sound a needle, every glancing touch a potential burn.
“Where is he?” she mumbled, her tongue thick.
“Upstairs. Appointment.” Dmitri’s voice was devoid of inflection. They all knew what ‘appointments’ were. He steered her towards a slightly quieter corner near a vast velvet drape, his grip firm but not possessive. It was a practiced maneuver. To the handlers watching from the edges of the room, it looked like another fighter claiming a moment with the champion’s prize. A show of normal, ugly hierarchy.
To Nadya, it was shelter.
He settled her onto a low, plush bench that smelled of stale champagne and sat beside her, his body a wall between her and the room. He pressed a cool glass of water into her hands. “Drink. Slowly. You look like a ghost who’s seen its own grave.”
She took a sip. The water was a shock of clarity. “I feel like one. A hot, sparkly ghost.”
“The sparkle is a nice touch. Very… flammable.” He scanned the crowd, his expression casual, but his eyes were constantly moving, assessing threats. He nodded towards a group of men in impeccably tailored suits roaring with laughter near a statue of a lion with ruby eyes. “See the bald one? He just lost two million on the undercard. He’s laughing loudest. Remember that.”
Nadya stored the information away, a tiny datum in her mental ledger of weaknesses and debts. She took another sip, her hands steadier. The bruise on her thigh, hidden by the mesh, throbbed in time with the bass pumping through hidden speakers. “How long?”
“For his appointment? Thirty-seven minutes,” Dmitri said, checking a non-existent watch on his wrist. “The Countess likes to talk. Andrey will be in the shower for twenty of them when he’s done.” He said it plainly, a simple equation of misery. “Your face is doing the thing.”
“What thing?”
“The ‘I’m picturing murder’ thing. It’s subtle. Only us poets notice.” He leaned in, pretending to adjust the strap of her dress, his voice dropping. “Petrov’s wife is here. She’s been watching you since you walked in. Looks like she swallowed a lemon.”
Nadya didn’t turn. She let her gaze drift over the room—the women in dresses worth more than a human life, the men with eyes dead as stones. She spotted her. Larissa Petrov, perched on a gilt chair like a jeweled vulture, her stare fixed, unblinking. The woman from the powder room. The one who wanted Andrey next.
“She knows he’s with the Countess,” Nadya said softly. “She’s not jealous of her. She’s jealous of me.”
“Smart girl.” Dmitri offered her a small, bitter smile. “You want to give her a show? A little performance for the vulture?”
“What kind of show?”
He shifted, throwing his arm along the back of the bench behind her, his posture expanding, becoming more territorial. He leaned in, his lips near her temple, and began whispering in Ukrainian. It wasn’t love words. It was the ridiculous, rhyming lyrics to a folk song about a drunken goat who stole a policeman’s hat.
A laugh bubbled up in Nadya’s chest, unexpected and bright. She tried to stifle it, turning her face into his shoulder, her body shaking silently. To the room, it looked like an intimate moment, a fighter making the champion’s girl laugh in his absence. A small defiance.
“He’s gonna trip on the stairs, the stupid goat,” Dmitri murmured, his own shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter. “And the hat gets stuck on a weather vane. Classic.”
She pulled back, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. “You’re making that up.”
“I am a storyteller. It’s a tragic art.” His smile faded, his eyes flicking over her shoulder. “Don’t turn. Markov. The guard with the shovel hands. He’s by the east bar. Staring.”
The pleasant haze from the laugh evaporated. Nadya felt a cold trickle down her spine. She remembered the crush of his grip, the impersonal violence in his eyes. “Is he coming over?”
“No. He’s just… staring. Like he’s trying to solve a math problem on your back.” Dmitri’s arm tightened slightly. “Andrey mentioned him. After he saw your leg.”
“He shouldn’t have.”
“He didn’t. Not really. He just asked if I knew which guards were careless. In a voice that meant something else.” Dmitri took the water glass from her and finished it in one gulp. “The problem with Markov is he’s new. He doesn’t know the rules. He only knows orders. And Volkov gives the orders.”
As if summoned by the name, a path cleared through the center of the room. The murmur dipped, then resumed at a more attentive pitch. Anton Volkov moved through his domain like a sleek, dangerous fish. His suit was charcoal grey, so perfectly cut it seemed to absorb the garish light rather than reflect it. He held a glass of mineral water, his eyes scanning the crowd, calculating net worth and leverage per square foot.
He was heading toward them.
“Shit,” Dmitri breathed, the word barely audible. The casual shield of his posture hardened into something more alert.
Volkov stopped before their bench. He didn’t look at Dmitri. His gaze, cold and evaluative, settled on Nadya. “You seem to be enjoying yourself, Nadyusha.”
The diminutive was a violation. She forced her lips into the ghost of a smile. “It’s a lively party, Mr. Volkov.”
“It is. Money is lively.” His eyes drifted to the bruise on her arm, visible through the mesh. “I hear there was an incident. With one of the new security staff.”
Nadya’s blood ran cold. She said nothing.
“A misunderstanding, I’m sure,” Volkov continued, his tone smooth. “We cannot have misunderstandings. They create… friction. Andrey is a valuable asset. His focus must be absolute. You understand this. Personal distress,” he said, letting the word hang, “is a distraction.”
He was telling her that her pain was an inconvenience. That reporting it, or Andrey acting on it, would have consequences.
“It was nothing,” she heard herself say, the words ash in her mouth. “I was clumsy.”
“Good.” Volkov’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. He finally acknowledged Dmitri. “Dmitri. You are attentive. The Romanian was asking about you. Perhaps you should make yourself seen. I believe he is near the roulette table.”
It was a clear dismissal. A command to leave Nadya alone.
Dmitri’s jaw tightened, but he gave a short nod. He was a fighter, not a champion. His contract was thinner. He stood, squeezing Nadya’s shoulder once, briefly, before melting back into the crowd.
Volkov watched him go, then sat in the space Dmitri had vacated. The bench felt smaller. He didn’t touch her, but his proximity was its own contamination. “You have a unique position here, Nadya. The girls, they see the patrons. The fighters, they see the fight. You… you see the connections. You listen in the powder rooms. You are a smart girl. This intelligence is also an asset.”
He was circling something. She remained perfectly still.
“Petrov’s wife is fond of you,” he stated.
“She finds me amusing.”
“She finds you a confidante. This is useful. Her husband’s shipping interests are… expanding. He needs partners with certain tolerances. The Romanian has those tolerances, but he is sentimental. He wants a token of goodwill. A shared interest.” Volkov took a sip of his water. “Larissa Petrov believes a gift might ease the negotiations. She has asked if you might accompany her to their dacha next weekend. A change of scenery.”
The room tilted. The crystal daggers above seemed to lower an inch. This wasn’t a request. It was a transaction. She was the token. The dacha wasn’t a change of scenery; it was a different kind of cage, where the rules would be whatever Petrov and the Romanian decided.
“Andrey—” she started, her voice tight.
“—will be preparing for his matching with the Lithuanian,” Volkov finished smoothly. “He will need to focus. No distractions.” He stood, brushing a nonexistent speck from his sleeve. “Think of it as a promotion. From a fighter’s prize to a diplomat’s companion. It is a softer life. You should be grateful to Larissa for her consideration.”
He walked away, leaving the scent of expensive cologne and utter dread.
Nadya sat, paralyzed. The noise of the lounge surged back, a roaring wave about to crash over her head. She saw Larissa Petrov across the room, now watching her with a thin, satisfied smile. She saw Markov by the bar, still staring, his expression unreadable.
And she felt the absence beside her like a physical wound. The space where Andrey should be, where Dmitri had been, was just empty, velvety air.
A waiter passed with a tray of full champagne flutes. Nadya reached out, her movement automatic, and took one. The bubbles were sharp and acidic on her tongue. She drank half of it in one go, willing the buzz to blur the sharp edges of Volkov’s words.
But it didn’t. They just got clearer.
A diplomat’s companion. A softer life. Next weekend.
The glass was cold in her hand. She looked down into the golden fizz and saw, not her reflection, but a simple, terrifying equation. Andrey was being sent to a fixed fight—a matching he could lose. And she was being sent away, a gift to seal a deal. They were being separated. Not by chance, but by design.
The momentum of the evening shifted beneath her, a sudden, violent lurch. The gaudy laughter around her morphed into the sound of gears grinding, moving them both into a new and unknown configuration of danger.
She finished the champagne and set the empty glass carefully on the floor beside the bench.
Then she waited, her eyes fixed on the grand staircase, counting each second until he returned.