Chapter 15: The Gala's Gilded Cage
The Grand Ballroom of the Ministry of Internal Security was a monument to cold, gilded power. Chandeliers the size of tractors driiced light onto a sea of marble polished to a lethal shine, reflecting the uniformed and suited men who moved through it like sharks. The air was a thick soup of expensive cologne, sweat-slick fear, and the sharp, mineral bite of vodka poured over ice. A string quartet sawed away at something mournful in a corner, the sound utterly devoured by the roar of a hundred concurrent, calculating conversations.
Alexsi Volkov stood near a pillar of veined red marble, a glass of untouched champagne in his hand. He was a statue in his dress uniform, the medals a calculated display of lethality, not honor. His focus was a radius of exactly two meters.
Mila Petrovna stood within that radius, a slender figure in a dark green dress that had arrived in a box from the ministry’s wife. It was beautiful and entirely wrong for her, the silk too slick, the cut designed for a different kind of woman. The makeup artfully applied by a stern ministry stylist hid the last yellowing traces of bruising along her jaw, but nothing could mask the tension in her shoulders, the way her eyes stayed lowered, tracing the patterns in the floor.
In their quarters at the battalion, a quiet understanding had grown. She would put her feet in his lap during a film, her toes cold against his thigh. He would sometimes, with clumsy, soldier’s fingers, braid her long dark hair while she read, the act so mundane it choked him with its tenderness. Here, that privacy was a forbidden country.
Here, his hand was a constant, heavy presence on the small of her back. His arm was around her shoulders whenever they paused, his grip firm and proprietary, his body angled subtly between her and the room. It was a performance, but the intent was iron-core real. He was marking territory. Keeping the flies away.
She played her part beautifully. When a fat-fingered Deputy Minister with bad breath leaned in too close, complimenting her “exotic complexion,” Alexsi felt her go preternaturally still. She offered a vague, confused smile, her eyes darting to Alexsi as if for translation.
“She doesn’t understand much yet,” Alexsi would say, his voice flat, sliding his palm from her back to her hip, pulling her an inch closer. “The language is difficult.”
The Deputy Minister would leer, waving a dismissive hand. “All the better, Volkov! Quieter!” He’d laugh, spraying spittle, and move on to find another glass.
It was an ice bucket dumped over the soul, repeated every ten minutes. A general from the western front commented on her “breeding hips” to Alexsi as if she were a mare. A slick-haired political officer asked, with a nauseating smirk, if the “tribal girls” were as wild as the intelligence reports suggested. Alexsi’s replies were short, non-committal grenades. “You’d have to ask my father. It was his selection.” Or a simple, cold, “I wouldn’t know.”
They tried to have their own fun, a silent conspiracy in the glare. He’d point out a particularly ridiculous hat on an elderly minister’s wife and she’d press her lips together, a real spark of amusement in her dark eyes. He’d quietly translate the most pompous bits of a speech by the Minister of Resource Allocation, and she’d cough to cover a laugh. They were islands in a sea of predation, their connection a fragile lifeline.
But some men were simply cruel. Colonel Veshnev, a man whose face was a topographic map of old knife fights and newer grudges, swaggered over. He was deep into the vodka, his eyes bloodshot and roaming over Mila with a frank, disgusting hunger.
“Volkov,” he slurred. “Heard you got the broken one. The one they had to stitch up before they sent her. Makes you wonder what they were using her for before, eh? Maybe they wore her out.”
Alexsi didn’t move. But his hand on Mila’s hip tightened, his knuckles bleaching white against the dark fabric of his uniform. He felt the minute tremor that went through her. The ice in his voice could have frozen the champagne in his glass. “Walk away, Veshnev.”
“Or what? You’ll challenge me? For a piece of border trash?” Veshnev laughed, a wet, hacking sound. “Your father bought her for you. Don’t get sentimental about the furniture.”
In that moment, Alexsi calculated fifteen different ways to break the man’s neck without spilling his drink. He saw the path: the elbow to the trachea, the knee to the groin, the final, shattering twist. It played out in a blink. But the cost… the cost was Mila, alone in the aftermath. He didn’t blink.
“The furniture,” Alexsi repeated, his voice so low it was almost lost in the din. He took a small step forward, putting himself fully in Veshnev’s space. He was taller, broader, and stone-cold sober. “You are drunk in the Minister’s hall. You are insulting my wife, who is under the Minister’s direct protection. You are creating a diplomatic incident with an asset of the state.” He let each phrase land like a hammer. “Walk away now, or I will have security remove you. And I will personally explain to my father why a washed-up colonel from a rear-echelon unit is sabotaging his unification policy.”
The word ‘asset’ tasted like ash. But it worked. Veshnev’s booze-fueled bravado faltered. He blinked, his brain sluggishly processing the threat of Alexsi’s father, the Minister himself. He muttered something incomprehensible, shot a last, filthy look at Mila, and wobbled away.
Alexsi didn’t relax. He guided Mila towards a slightly quieter alcove near a bank of frost-rimmed windows overlooking the black expanse of the ministry complex. He could feel the heat of her through the silk, the frantic bird-beat of her heart.
“Breathe,” he murmured in Russian, his lips close to her ear. “Just breathe. He’s a pig. He’s nothing.”
She gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod. Her hand came up, hesitated, then rested lightly on the arm he had across her chest, her fingers curling over his wrist. A silent thank you. An acknowledgment of the shield. They stood like that for a long minute, watching the grotesque ballet of power swirl around them.
The rest of the evening was a slow, draining march through a minefield of boredom and overstimulation. The lights were too bright. The noise was a physical pressure. The constant, assessing stares were like insects crawling on the skin. By the time Alexsi offered a final, formal nod to his father across the room—the Minister, surrounded by sycophants, gave a bland, approving wave—they were both vibrating with the need to escape.
The walk back to their assigned ministry suite was silent. The click of the door locking behind them was the sweetest sound Alexsi had heard all night.
Mila didn’t say a word. She kicked off the stupid, delicate shoes, wincing as her feet met the carpet. Her hands went to the clasp of the necklace at her throat, then the zip at the back of the dress. She vanished into the bathroom.
Alexsi shed his uniform jacket, his tie, rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He went to the small sidebar and poured two fingers of whisky into a tumbler, then set a kettle on for tea. He pulled one of his own soft, grey cotton t-shirts from his suitcase and laid it over the back of the plush armchair.
When she emerged, the transformation was profound. The slick dress was gone. The makeup was scrubbed away, revealing the pale, tired canvas of her face. She wore his t-shirt, which swam on her, falling to her mid-thigh. Her hair was down, a dark cascade. She looked about eighteen. She looked like herself.
She padded over, took the whisky glass from his hand, and drained half of it in one go, shuddering as it went down. Then she curled herself into the armchair, tucking her feet beneath her.
“Your show or mine?” Alexsi asked, picking up the tablet.
“Yours,” she said, her voice husky. “The one with the spaceship and the sarcastic robot. I don’t have to think.”
He navigated to it, started the next episode. The familiar opening music filled the room, a comforting, mundane signal. He sat on the sofa nearby. Within ten minutes, as the protagonist faced down a corrupted star map, he felt the cushion dip. She had uncurled and migrated over, sitting close beside him. Then, slowly, she leaned her weight against his side, her head coming to rest on his shoulder. He adjusted his arm, letting it settle around her. It was what she did on bad days. After nightmares. After memories ambushed her. A silent request for anchor.
He was happy to oblige. Literally anything. He would have sat there forever if she needed it.
She watched the screen, but her breathing was still too quick. “The man. The colonel,” she said in halting Russian. “He knew. About the… stitching.”
“He heard a rumor,” Alexsi said, careful, staring straight ahead at the tablet. “Rumours are like smoke. They mean nothing.”
“They mean they see the cracks,” she whispered.
He had no answer for that. He just squeezed her shoulder gently. When the episode ended, she didn’t move. “Crossword?” she asked.
He reached for the ministry newsletter on the side table, flipping to the daily puzzle. He read a clue aloud. “Seven letters. ‘Frozen water, but not a cube.’”
She was quiet, then said, “Glacier.”
“That’s six.”
“Oh.” She thought. “Iceberg.”
“That’s seven.” He filled it in. They worked through a few more, a quiet, collaborative rhythm. It was normal. It was everything the ballroom was not.
His phone, set to silent, vibrated on the table. He glanced at it. A text from Andrey.
His blood went cold.
The message was a block of text, clearly typed with agitated, huge thumbs. Alexsi. Found the uncle. Drunk in ballroom two down the hall. He had the girl with him. Anya. He was… awful. Parading her. Offering her as a “sample” to his friends. I intercepted. Made the offer. He agreed on the spot. He’s thrilled. He just… he just handed her to me. For the night. As a “sample” in return. I feel sick. I have her in my room. Suite 714. For safety. The things he said… Can you and M come when you can? I don’t know what to do. She’s terrified. Doesn’t understand me.
Alexsi read it twice. The clinical, protective part of his brain noted the success: the offer was made and accepted. The human part recoiled at the image: Andrey, a giant in his dress uniform, being handed a fifteen-year-old girl like a complimentary after-dinner mint.
“What is it?” Mila asked, feeling his tension.
“Andrey,” Alexsi said, his voice rough. He showed her the phone.
She read it, her face draining of what little color it had. The word “sample” seemed to paralyse her. For a second, she was back in that other room, in that other dress, being presented. She swallowed hard, her fingers digging into the sofa cushion. “We have to go. Now.”
“Get dressed,” he said, already moving.
They didn’t change back into formal wear. Alexsi threw on a black sweater and trousers. Mila pulled on leggings and a hoodie over his t-shirt, her hair hastily tied back. They were two shadows slipping out of their suite, moving quickly down the plush, silent corridors of the ministry guest wing.
Suite 714. Alexsi knocked, a specific pattern: two sharp, one soft.
The door opened immediately. Andrey filled the doorway, still in his full dress uniform, but his jacket was gone, his tie loose and askew. He looked physically ill, his broad face pale, his eyes haunted. He wordlessly stepped aside.
The suite was a mirror of their own: sitting room, bedroom, opulent and cold. Andrey had turned on only a single lamp. In its pool of light, curled in the very centre of the large sofa as if trying to occupy the smallest possible amount of space, was a girl.
Anya.
She was tiny, drowning in what looked like one of Andrey’s white dress shirts. Her legs were bare, folded tightly beneath her. She had Mila’s same dark hair, but hers was a wild, curly mane, currently a tangled cloud around a face that was all huge, dark, petrified eyes and sharp cheekbones. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen. She looked twelve. She was shaking.
When Mila stepped into the light, the girl’s head jerked up. A choked sound, a word in their native tongue, escaped her. “Mila?”
Mila was across the room in an instant, kneeling in front of the sofa, her hands up, speaking in a low, rapid flood of their language. Anya stared, disbelieving, then her face crumpled. She didn’t throw herself into Mila’s arms. She just leaned forward, her forehead touching Mila’s shoulder, and began to cry silently, her thin shoulders heaving.
Andrey turned away, running a massive hand over his face. He looked at Alexsi, his expression one of pure anguish. “He just… handed me the key card,” Andrey whispered, his voice shattered. “Told me to… to see if she was to my liking. That she was a virgin, guaranteed. That he’d have her cleaned up better for the real thing.” He gripped the back of an armchair, the wood groaning. “I wanted to kill him. I just smiled. I said she was perfect. I said all the… the platitudes. ‘Such youth. Such beauty.’ I think I’m going to be sick.”
Alexsi put a hand on his back. “You got her out. That’s all that matters right now.”
Mila was still talking softly, her hands now rubbing slow circles on Anya’s back. The girl’s weeping had subsided into hiccuping shudders. She was listening, her eyes screwed shut.
Mila looked over her shoulder at Alexsi. “She doesn’t understand. She thinks he is the same as the other one. The pig farmer. That he has bought her for the night. She thinks when you leave, he will…” She didn’t finish.
Andrey heard the translation. He closed his eyes in pain. “Tell her… tell her I won’t touch her. Tell her she can have the bedroom. I’ll sleep on the floor in here. Tell her she’s safe.”
Mila relayed it. Anya’s eyes opened, flickering towards Andrey with profound, unconvinced suspicion. She said something short, sharp, to Mila.
“She says all men say that,” Mila translated, her own voice tired.