The last time I kissed a boy, he died.
Nyet.
I'm not cursed.
I'm simply ruin— for anyone reckless enough to want me, and for anyone I'm foolish enough to want back.
Twenty-one years I spent in a den full of wolves, silenced and sharpened until my tongue turned to glass. Twenty-one years inside a gilded cage so heavy it bent my spine.
And now—finally—air.
Italy.
Streets breathing in languages I don't fully know.
Cobblestones glinting after rain. Cafés spilling out bitter espresso into the morning air.
Laughter that doesn't know the weight of my name.
I walk through it like a ghost.
My boots echo against ancient stone, my coat catching the wind.
No guards, no shadows trailing me, no father's voice dripping venom in my ear.
Just me.
For the first time, I belong to no one.But I am not naive. Freedom is not mine—it's borrowed.
Stolen.
A fleeting bite of fruit before the hand smacks it from my mouth.
I know the wolves will find me.
They always do.
That's why I breathe deeper here. Why I burn this foreign air into my lungs like scripture.
Because this is my mother's land. The country that birthed her, the soil that remembers her voice, the sea that must still echo with her laughter.
Since childhood, I dreamt of touching this place, of pressing my hands to its stones and pretending I was home.
And now I'm here—
but not for long.
So I walk faster.
Look harder.
Swallow every detail until it hurts.
The cracked shutters.
The laundry strung across balconies. The violinist at the corner, bow trembling like a heartbeat.
This city does not know me, yet it feels like it has been waiting.
I am free.
For now.
It has only been three days, and already I have wandered through this city like a stray dog—lost in the daylight, even more lost in the dark.
I spent afternoons in parks, staring at children clinging to their parents,aching for a life that was never mine.
I devoured libraries, museums,even the sweaty silence of local trains and crowded buses.
I wanted to swallow Italy whole,as if by running fast enough through its veins I could cleanse my own.
But tonight... I want to be reckless.
A little wicked.A little bad.
The rest of my cash will burn inside a club.I'll drink until my throat stings,dance until my ankles betray me,let neon lights baptize me into a girl who doesn't belong to any man.
And so I walk downCorso Como,where the street itself hums like temptation, glossy and merciless,lined with doors that promise sin in silk and glass.
Every step is anticipation.
Every heartbeat is a firecracker.
The street spat me out in front of the club,all glass and smoke and ropes.The bass spilled from the walls like a pulse—a heartbeat louder than my own.
Inside, I imagined, there would be girls with glittering throats, men with hands stitched from money, laughter that tasted like expensive poison.
I had never seen it with my own eyes.
Not like this.
"Do svidaniya,"I whispered under my breath—goodbye.
Not to the street, not to my freedom,but to the quiet girl I had been in last twenty one years.
The bouncer's shadow was a mountain.He stretched out his hand."ID."I smiled like I had rehearsed it.
Poised, untouchable.
But then—
The man beside the door.
Seems early forties, a cigarette balanced between his fingers like a weapon of leisure, phone pressed to his ear, speaking Italian too fast for me to catch even a word.His smoke curled over the bouncer's shoulder, and his eyes... his eyes found me.
Cold. Scrutinizing.
They narrowed, cutting through my skin as if I had walked here naked.
I felt the sting of kholod—cold—sliding down my spine.
The bouncer flipped my ID open, glanced, uninterested.
But the man... his gaze dropped, uninvited, to the card in the bouncer's hand.
A flicker in his stare.
He looked at me again, harder, longer.
Too long.
My fingers trembled as I snatched the ID back, the edges cutting against my palm.Still, I kept my smile, pushed past, heels clicking into the belly of the club.
For one second, my chest locked tight.Bozhe moi—my God—what if he was my father's man?
But the thought dissolved in the bass.
He had been speaking Italian.
He couldn't belong to my world.
I assured myself.
The doors closed behind me, and the night outside vanished like a severed thread.
The first thing that hit me was the sound.
Not music— a tidal wave of bass that crawled through the floorboards and into my bones.
My ribs rattled with every beat, my pulse syncing to something that didn't belong to me.
The air was heavier here, perfume and sweat and spilt champagne tangled into one perfume of sin.
It clung to my hair, to my throat, like invisible hands that refused to let me go.
Light fractured across the room—strobe, neon, gold spilling from chandeliers too decadent for a place so carnal.
Every face flashed in fragments.
A woman's red mouth opening in a laugh.
A man's jaw tilting over a glass of amber liquor.
Bare shoulders glistening with sweat. Jewels flashing like teeth.
It was theater and battlefield all at once.
I kept my chin high, but my eyes drank greedily.
Every corner, every glimmer, every moving shadow— I trapped them all behind my eyelids, hoarding them like stolen jewels.
Girls in dresses sharp enough to cut.
Men in suits stitched from pieces of clothes that could cost fortune.
Bodies pressed too close on the dancefloor, moving like one breathing, writhing creature.
I had never seen such freedom, and such captivity, tangled in the same breath.
My heels carried me toward the bar,because where else does a stranger belong?
The marble counter gleamed like it had been polished with vanity itself, bottles stacked behind it like stained-glass windows in a church of excess.
For a moment, I let the room blur into one feverish painting, and whispered to myself, svoboda—freedom.
As if saying it could make it true.
The bartender's eyes lingered too long, but I didn't care.
I asked for the drink my mother once loved in Italy—her voice whispering through me like a ghost.
Crystal glass, golden liquid.
I raised it to my lips, and for a moment, I felt almost hers.
The burn was velvet.
The second sip softer, like silk pressed against my throat.
I let my gaze wander—hungry, shameless.
A girl in a dress so short it was almost a secret, rubbing her body against a man as if seduction were a prayer.
Her hips swayed, her smile painted sin across his mouth. I bit my lip, tasted the faint salt of lipstick.
Another sip.
In the corner, rich teenagers with too much laughter, throwing champagne, their voices rising above the music like hyenas.
Not far, men in suits—sharp, cold, glasses of scotch clinking over business spoken through clenched jaws.
Every table was a different kingdom, and I was the stranger trespassing through them all.
I drifted forward, glass still in hand, until it happened.
The collision.
Hard.
Pain shot through my shoulder, liquid spilling across my skin. "Ouch—"The word tumbled out before I could swallow it.
I looked up.
Tall.
The black shirt stretched taut across a frame built for violence, for control.
Ink crawled up his neck—serpents winding into skin, a coil of blue etched from collar to ear, both brutal and beautiful.
His hair—dark brown, falling recklessly over his forehead.
His jaw—cut like a blade, cheekbones carved from stone.
And his eyes—Bozhe moy...God...The color of frozen seas.
He stared at me.
Not at the spill.
Not at my trembling hands.
At me.
Unmoving.
Fixated.
My breath faltered, stuttered.
Heat bloomed across my cheeks, burning red as the truth struck—I was staring back.
"Mi scusi..."I whispered, my Italian fractured, trembling off my tongue.
I'm sorry...
His brow lifted.
His lips curved into a smirk that felt like a blade dragging across my throat.
Then—fingers.
Curling around my arm.
"Petrova?"
The name fell from his mouth like the crack of thunder.
My heart lurched.
The ground vanished beneath me.
No. No. No.
I yanked, desperate to pull free.
But his grip tightened.
Someone knows me.
Bozhe moi—my God—someone knows.
The glass slipped from my hand, shattering on the floor.
My voice stammered, broken Italian tumbling uselessly from my lips:"Io... non... Petrov... not me—what-"
But his smirk only deepened.
His gaze dropped.
Down my throat.
Down to the silver glint pressed between my breasts—the diamond cross, platinum, a cursed gift.
His eyes darkened.
His smile sharpened.
I followed his gaze and clutched the necklace, as if I could bury it into my skin, as if I could erase the bloodline it betrayed.
Then—
gunfire.
The air cracked open.
Loud, merciless, relentless. Rounds tearing through music, through glass, through screams.
The club erupted.
Bodies surged, chaos spilling in every direction, heels breaking, men shouting, women crying.
Smoke.
Fire.
Blood in the air like metal.
The man went stiff.
Still holding my arm.
Eyes flickering between me and the madness.
I drove my heel down into his foot, hard enough to feel bone through his leather shoes.
He cursed sharp in Italian.
And I tore free, heart slamming against my ribs as I shoved into the crowd.
I didn't look back.
Not once.
I disappeared into the stampede, a ghost slipping through the cracks of fire and fear.
Three days of air, stolen and sweet.
Now the cage closes.
He saw me.
He recognized me.