Chapter 4 - Shadows in the Family Parlor
The communal apartment on Sadovaya Street was suffocatingly hot. The cast-iron radiators hissed violently, emitting an odor of scorched lead paint and cabbage soup. The hallway was narrow, lined with stacked cardboard boxes, bicycles with flat tires, and yellowed wallpaper peeling off in long, curled ribbons.
Olga didn’t knock. She kicked the door of Room 14 with the toe of her boot, the sound echoing through the shared corridor like a gunshot.
The latch clicked open after a long delay. Nina stood in the doorway, wearing a satin dressing gown that was clearly new, her blonde hair pinned in loose curls. Her face was flushed, her lips painted the same sharp crimson as the lipstick traces Olga had seen on the discarded coffee cup in Igor’s truck two weeks prior.
When Nina saw Olga, her eyes widened in an instant of sheer animal panic. But when she saw her brother standing behind Olga, her expression smoothed into an exquisite mask of weeping innocence.
“Igor?” Nina breathed, her hand flying to her chest. “My God, what happened? Why are you looking at me like that? Did she hurt you?”
“Where is the coat, Nina?” Igor asked. His voice wasn’t loud; it was the dead, hollow sound of an empty cellar. He didn't look at her face; he looked past her shoulder, into the crowded room behind her.
“What coat?” Nina gasped, her eyes brimming with effortless tears. “What are you talking about? Igor, she’s manipulating you! I told you, I saw her at the trade center! She had the bag—”
Olga stepped forward, driving Nina back into the room with the sheer momentum of her advance. “Shut up, Nina. We’ve been to the bank. We’ve seen the signature. We’ve been to *L’Hiver Royale*. Madame Larisa remembers your burgundy boots. She remembers your platinum hair. She has your face on three separate ultra-high-definition cameras.”
Nina froze. The theatrical trembling of her hands stopped instantly. The softness drained from her features, replaced by a cold, calculating hardness that Olga had recognized from the very first day they met.
“You have no right to come barging in here,” Nina hissed, her voice dropping into a flat, ugly register. “Get out of my room.”
“Where is the money, Nina?” Igor stepped into the room, his towering frame casting a long, dark shadow over his sister. He looked around the small space. On the unmade sofa bed lay an open leather suitcase. Inside it were packets of crisp hundred-dollar bills, brand-new foreign cosmetic sets, and a train ticket to Sochi dated for tomorrow morning at six.
On the wardrobe rail, half-concealed by an old woolen shawl, the sleek, iridescent dark fur of the Scandinavian mink caught the yellow light of the bare ceiling bulb.
Igor walked over to the wardrobe as if walking through deep water. He reached out with a trembling, blackened finger and touched the fur. It was soft—impossibly soft, worth more than three years of his life, worth every drop of blood he had shed under freezing chassis.
“Why?” Igor whispered, his voice cracking completely. He turned to face his sister, tears finally spilling over his grime-stained cheeks. “Why would you do this to me? To us? You knew we were signing the mortgage papers on the twelfth! You knew this was everything I had!”
Nina folded her arms across her chest. She didn't flinch. There was no shame in her eyes—only a cold, ancient resentment that had been festering for years.
“Everything *you* had?” Nina sneered, spitting the words into his face. “You gave everything to *her*! For four years, you worked yourself to death, and where did the money go? Into an account with *her* name! You were going to buy an apartment for *her*! Meanwhile, Mama is sitting in the village with a leaky roof and no heating, and Artem doesn’t even have winter boots that fit!”
“I sent Mama money every single month!” Igor roared, the veins in his temples bulging. “I paid for Artem’s medical treatments!”
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“It wasn't enough!” Nina shouted back. “You owed this family! You’re the man of the house since Papa died, and instead of taking care of your own blood, you let this little lab rat drag you around by the nose! She thinks she’s better than us with her college degree and her clean laboratory! She was going to take you away to Maple Boulevard and leave us with nothing!”
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