The sky outside was thick with clouds, casting a pale gray glow through the curtains. The heat in their apartment barely worked, so she'd slept in socks and a sweater, curled around her sister like a barrier against the cold.
Nastya woke before her alarm—again.
That was becoming a habit lately. She blamed stress. Or maybe something else.
Lena murmured in her sleep but didn't wake. Their mother's room was silent except for the quiet hum of her oxygen machine, steady and fragile.
Nastya slid out of bed, padded to the kitchenette, and started her morning routine. Kasha for Lena. Black tea for herself. Two pills left by a glass of water for their mother. The same every morning.
But her hands moved slower today. Her mind was elsewhere.
Last night.
The gala.
Him.
His voice. His stare. That strange intensity. The feeling that he saw straight through her defenses.
She shook it off and grabbed her backpack, pulling out her textbooks for her early morning class.
The morning sky over Saint Petersburg was a pale gray wash, and the streets were slick with thawing slush. Nastya's boots squelched slightly as she rushed through the wrought-iron gates of the Volkov Institute of Arts and Literature—an old, ivy-clad building that looked like something out of a Chekhov play, all faded grandeur and crumbling charm.
She was late.
Inside, the hallways buzzed with a quiet kind of creative chaos. Poetry fragments on whiteboards. Students in long scarves arguing about symbolism. The scent of old books and cheap coffee mixed with fresh ink and snow-damp wool.
Nastya slipped into her usual classroom—Literary Forms and National Identity—and ducked into the last row. The professor, a tall woman with wild curls and ink-stained hands, didn't pause her lecture.
"Pushkin doesn't just belong to Russia," she was saying.
"He belongs to whoever needs him. And that's why he's dangerous."
Nastya opened her notebook and tried to focus. Tried. But her hand drifted to her coat pocket. Her fingers closed around the business card she still hadn't thrown away.
Viktorov Holdings.
No name. No number. Just that.
She ran her thumb over the embossed letters.
What does a man like him want with a girl like me?
Her professor's voice floated through the fog of her thoughts.
"Literature asks a single question: what does it mean to be human in the face of power?"
Nastya blinked.
That struck something.
Because last night, when she'd stood face-to-face with that man in the black suit, she had felt that question hanging between them. Power and humanity. Distance and something else.
And she wasn't sure which side of the line she stood on anymore.
————————————————————
After class, Nastya wandered the quiet hallways of the Volkov Institute. The radiator clanked beneath a row of arched windows, and snow flurried lightly against the glass. She should've gone straight to the library to work on her paper, but she couldn't focus.
Instead, she found herself sitting on the worn leather couch outside the student reading room, pretending to scroll through her phone. Really, she was staring at that business card, held low in her palm.
Viktorov Holdings.
No phone number. No explanation. Just the invitation of an address.
She googled it.
A stone building in the financial district.
Marble. Private security. People who drove cars with tinted windows.
Not my world.
She shoved the card back in her coat and pushed herself up. The spell of curiosity broke when she checked the time—16:48. Her evening shift started in less than an hour.
The night settled heavy and cold as she walked the short distance from the metro to the 24-hour convenience store on Prospekt Mira. The manager didn't greet her when she walked in, just grunted and handed her the shift log. Nastya put on the blue apron, clocked in, and settled behind the counter.
Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The aisles were half-empty. The heating barely worked.
Her shift dragged like wet cement. She rang up cigarettes, instant noodles, cheap vodka, and cans of beer. Regulars came and went. A drunk man muttered something crude; she ignored him.
But her mind kept drifting.
Back to the gala.
To the stranger in the black suit.
To what he had seen in her.
Caring makes us human.
Why did I say that? Why did he listen?
And always, always back to that card in her coat.
By 11 p.m., she'd made up her mind:
She would go by the address.
Just to look.
Just to see who or what waited behind those heavy stone doors.
And if it was a mistake?
She would walk away.