Page 85 of Pageant

Brazhensky family? Solve your own problems. You cause us enough.

When it comes to the police, I loathe them as much as they hate my family. I’m trapped. My shoulders slump and I turn around, defeated.

In my bedroom, I pull a flimsy, silky dress from the carrier bag, one that looks and feels expensive. It’s probably worth more than my whole wardrobe. The cheap clothes that I’ve been forced to wear year after year suddenly aren’t good enough for Dad.

Anger flares through me as I throw the dress onto my bed and put on a plain black cotton dress from my wardrobe.Babulyamended the belt loops when they ripped off. The fabric waist tie was lost long ago, and I’ve been using a black shoelace instead.

I kissBabulyagoodbye and walk quickly out of the house before she can stop me.

Dad glares at me as I come down the front path. “What’s wrong with the dress I bought you?”

I give him a flat, angry look. “You said you wanted me humble. I’m humble.”

He doesn’t argue with that.

We drive in silence to my suitor’s house, who I learn is called Ivan Kalashnik. He’s shorter than me and almost as old as Dad. He looks at my tits more than he looks in my eyes. Not that I have much to look at, and I’m forcibly reminded of Seth, the boy who tormented me in the street years ago by staring at my chest, because he could, not because he wanted to.

I’m silent.

I’m dull.

I’mobedient.

Everything I wanted I can feel slipping away from me as I sit on the expensive sofa in Ivan’s living room while he and Dad talk.

Hopelessness smothers me like a blanket, but there’s one small consolation.Babulyawill be taken care of. Even if Dad stops her allowance, I’ll surely be able to persuade my husband to allow me to take care of one sick old woman.

But I’ll have to be good for my husband if I want anything in return. Cook for him like my mother andBabulyataught me. Keep the house clean. Let him fuck me. Have his children. That might be another small consolation my sad future holds. Babies would makeBabulyasmile. They would make me smile, too. If I have to be married, then at least I’ll know that my children will be safe in his house and will never want for anything, including my love.

The world closes in around me, feeling smaller and smaller until I’m suffocating and barely able to breathe.

Three weeks later, it’s my wedding day.

The church doors open wide, and Dad walks me down the aisle. Hundreds of people I don’t know or barely remember turn to stare at me, the eighteen-year-old bride of Ivan Kalashnik.

Standing at the altar is a man I barely know. A man just like my father. A man who will probably treat me just like he did.

I plaster a smile to my face and pretend this is what I want. That my feet are moving of my own free will, and I’m not being dragged down the aisle.

Right into a gilded cage.

18

Lilia

Present day

The women’s accusing words sink into my bones. Every time I swallow, my throat throbs and the tattoo of the hangman’s noose burns around my neck.

What wouldBabulyahave done in my situation? She’s a woman who knows how to play the long game so well that she went against every instinct she had and was cruel to her own granddaughter, year after year. How it must have broken her heart to treat her dead daughter’s child so coldly. How she must have cried after pinching and prodding me and making sure that I was terrified of her. How much she must have wished to take me in her arms and love me openly. Her heart was steel. She locked it up tight until the day she’d waited so long for finally dawned. And she won. For seven wonderful years, I was loved.

Somewhere up above me, Konstantin, Elyah, and Kirill are discussing what to do with treacherous Number Eleven. Elyah is going to fight for me. He will insist that I am his and I was never part of this twisted beauty pageant.

Kirill will want whichever outcome causes me the most pain and gives him the most malicious pleasure.

Konstantin… I can’t predict what Konstantin will do. I’m not sure that even he knows what he wants to do with me.

“But that doesn’t matter, does it,Babulya?” I whisper in the dark.

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