Chapter 4 - Viktor
Viktor couldn’t get the image out of his head. Anka pressed against Simon, her hand on his chest, that fucking smile lighting up her face like Simon had just offered her the world on a silver platter. The same smile she used to give him four years ago, before he learned it was all an act.
Three days had passed since their confrontation in the garden, and he’d barely seen her.
She took her meals in her room, avoided the common areas when he was around, and generally acted like he was some kind of plague she didn’t want to catch, which should have been exactly what he wanted.
Keeping his distance, maintaining control, making her feel as isolated and unwanted as she’d made him feel.
So why did it piss him off so fucking much?
He was supposed to be working, reviewing contracts for a new shipping deal that would bring in enough money to buy a small country. Instead, he was standing at his office window, watching Anka walk through the gardens with two of his guards trailing behind her like lovesick puppies.
She was wearing a yellow sundress that hugged her curves, making her hair look like spun gold in the afternoon sunlight.
Every few steps, she’d turn to say something to the guards, and they’d laugh like she was the funniest woman alive.
Their faces lit up when she spoke to them, eager and attentive in a way that made Viktor’s jaw clench with rage.
When was the last time she’d smiled at him like that? When was the last time she’d looked at him with anything other than carefully controlled hatred or resigned acceptance?
Never. Not since their wedding day, and barely even then.
“You’re going to crack the glass if you keep staring that hard,” Kostya said from behind him.
Viktor didn’t turn around. “Shouldn’t you be somewhere else, annoying someone who gives a shit?”
“Probably.” Kostya moved to stand beside him, following his gaze to where Anka was now examining some roses with the kind of concentration most people reserved for defusing bombs. “She’s beautiful.”
“She’s a lying bitch.”
“Who also happens to be your wife.”
Viktor finally looked at him, letting him see the full force of his irritation. “What’s your point?”
“My point is that you married her for revenge, but you’re acting like a jealous husband.” Kostya’s dark eyes were amused, which only made Viktor want to punch him more. “Pick a lane, brother.”
“I’m not jealous.”
“Right. And I’m a fucking saint.” Kostya chuckled, shaking his head.
“Viktor, you’ve been in a mood for three days.
You snapped at Elena for burning your toast, you fired two men for arriving five minutes late to their shift, and you’ve been staring out this window every day like some kind of lovesick teenager. ”
“I have not—”
“You threatened to cut off Simon’s fingers because he touched her arm.”
That shut him up. Because he was right, and they both knew it.
Viktor had been acting like a jealous husband instead of a man executing a carefully planned revenge.
The problem was, watching Anka charm his men with that same smile she’d once used on him was like having salt poured into an open wound.
“She doesn’t smile at me,” Viktor said, the words slipping out before he could stop them.
Kostya’s expression softened slightly. “Maybe because you married her against her will and made it clear you hate her guts?”
“I don’t hate her.” The lie tasted bitter on his tongue.
“No? Then what do you call it?”
He didn’t have an answer for that. What he felt for Anka was too complicated to put into words, too raw and contradictory to make sense of. Hate was easier than admitting that seeing her again had brought back every feeling he’d tried so hard to bury.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said finally. “This isn’t about feelings. It’s about—”
“Justice? Revenge? Making her pay?” Kostya’s voice was dry. “How’s that working out for you?”
Before Viktor could respond, his phone buzzed with an alert from the security system. He glanced at the screen, expecting to see some routine notification, but what he saw made his blood run cold.
Anka’s tracker had gone offline.
“Son of a bitch.” He was already moving, pulling up the full security feed on his laptop. “She’s gone.”
“Gone?” Kostya leaned over his shoulder as he scrolled through the camera footage. “What do you mean, gone?”
Viktor rewound the feed to an hour ago, watching Anka’s morning walk through the grounds. Everything looked normal until she stopped to examine some flowers near the north wall. The same area Simon had mentioned had a blind spot in the motion sensors.
“Clever girl,” he muttered, watching her glance around casually before slipping behind a cluster of trees. The cameras lost her for exactly thirty-seven seconds, and when they picked her up again, she was walking back toward the house like nothing had happened.
Except she wasn’t wearing the tracker bracelet he’d insisted she keep on at all times.
“She ditched the tracker in the garden,” Viktor said, his admiration for her ingenuity warring with absolute fury at being outplayed. “Then she must have slipped out during the shift change.”
He pulled up the gate logs, cross-referencing them with the guard schedules.
There it was, a fifteen-minute window where the new shift was getting briefed, and the cameras were cycling through their reset sequence.
A window that should have been impossible for anyone to exploit unless they knew exactly when it would happen.
Unless they’d spent days chatting with the guards, learning their routines, and figuring out their weaknesses.
“The flirting,” Viktor said, realization hitting him like a freight train. “It wasn’t about attention or rebelling against me. She was gathering intelligence.”
“Gathering intelligence for what?”
“For this.” He gestured at the screen, where Anka’s last known location blinked mockingly. “She played me. Again.”
The rage that filled him was white-hot and pure, burning away any lingering confusion about his feelings. She’d done exactly what he’d accused her of, used her charm to manipulate his men and escape just like she’d manipulated him four years ago.
“Track her phone,” he ordered, already reaching for his jacket.
“Viktor—”
“Track her fucking phone, Kostya.”
Kostya pulled out his laptop, fingers flying over the keys. “Got her. She’s in the Meatpacking District, looks like she’s moving between shops.”
Shopping. She’d escaped from his compound, evaded twenty-four-hour security, and gone fucking shopping like this was some kind of vacation. The audacity of it made his vision blur with rage.
“Get me eyes on her location,” he said, heading for the door. “And prep a team. We’re going hunting.”
Twenty minutes later, Viktor was sitting in the back of an SUV watching live surveillance footage of his wayward wife on his tablet. She was browsing through a boutique on West 14th Street, trying on sunglasses and chatting with the sales clerk like she didn’t have a care in the world.
She looked happy. Genuinely, radiantly happy in a way he hadn’t seen since... since before. Since those early days when they’d meet in coffee shops and bookstores, when she’d light up at the sight of him like he was the best part of her day.
The memory hit him like a sucker punch to the gut. He remembered this version of Anka, carefree and spontaneous, who would drag him through vintage shops and used bookstores, making him laugh at her terrible jokes and ridiculous observations about the people around them.
She’d bought a vintage leather jacket in a shop not far from here, he remembered. Had insisted he help her pick between the brown one and the black one, modeling them both with exaggerated poses that had made him want to drag her into the dressing room and remind her exactly how beautiful she was.
He’d chosen the brown one, and she’d worn it every time they met after that. Said it was her good luck charm.
He wondered if she still had it.
“Boss?” The voice belonged to Marcus, his head of security. “What’s the play here?”
Viktor forced himself to focus on the present, on the woman who’d lied to him and manipulated him and was currently making a mockery of his security system. Not the girl who’d worn his jacket and kissed him like he was her whole world.
“She needs to learn that there are consequences for her actions,” he said, his voice cold and controlled. “Set up a kidnapping scenario. Make it look real, but don’t hurt her. Just scare her enough that she thinks twice before pulling this shit again.”
Marcus frowned. “Sir, are you sure that’s—”
“I’m sure. She wants to play games? Fine. Let’s play.”
He watched on the tablet as his men took up positions around the boutique. Professional, coordinated, invisible to casual observation. Anka had no idea what was coming.
She left the shop carrying several bags, with that same carefree smile on her face as she window-shopped her way down the street. For a moment, she looked so much like the woman he’d fallen in love with that his chest ached with the loss of something he’d never really had.
Then he remembered Simon’s hands on her waist, her fingers on his chest, and the pain transformed back into anger.
The grab happened fast and clean. Two men approached her from opposite directions, one bumping into her hard enough to make her stumble while the other caught her arm in a grip that looked helpful from a distance. A black sedan pulled up to the curb, and they started steering her toward it.
Viktor expected her to panic. Expected her to scream or fight or do any of the things a normal civilian would do when faced with what appeared to be an abduction.
Instead, she started talking.
Even through the grainy surveillance footage, he could see her lips moving, her expression shifting from startled to concerned to almost... friendly? She wasn’t fighting his men. She was fucking chatting with them.
“What the hell is she doing?” he muttered.
As if in answer to his question, one of his men laughed. Actually laughed, his professional demeanor cracking as Anka said something that apparently amused him. The other one was nodding along, his grip on her arm loosening from restraint to something more like a casual touch.
“She’s charming them,” Marcus said, his voice filled with disbelief. “She’s actually charming them.”
Viktor watched in growing fury as his highly trained, utterly professional security team fell under the same spell that had once ensnared him. Within thirty seconds, they weren’t kidnapping her anymore. They were having a conversation.
And then, while they were distracted by whatever bullshit story she was spinning, Anka pulled the oldest trick in the book. She pointed at something behind them, and when they turned to look, she slipped away into the crowd like a ghost.
His men stood there for a full ten seconds, looking around in confusion, before one of them swore loudly enough that Viktor could see his mouth moving.
She’d done it again. Played them, manipulated them, and escaped while they stood there like idiots, probably still thinking about her smile.
“Son of a bitch,” he breathed.
“Should we pursue?” Marcus asked.
“No.” He closed the tablet with more force than necessary. “Let her have her fun. She’ll have to come home eventually.”
But as they drove back to the compound in silence, Viktor couldn’t shake the image of Anka’s face when she’d been shopping. The pure joy in her expression, the lightness in her step, the way she seemed to come alive in a way he hadn’t seen since their early days together.
She’d been happy out there. Truly happy, maybe for the first time since their wedding.
And he’d tried to ruin it by terrorizing her with a fake kidnapping.
What the fuck was wrong with him?
He’d married her for revenge, told himself he wanted to make her suffer the way she’d made him suffer.
But watching her today, seeing the woman she became when she wasn’t trapped in his fortress with a husband who made no secret of his hatred, he was starting to wonder who was really being punished here.
She’d escaped his compound like it was child’s play, evaded his security team, and turned his own men against him with nothing but charm and conversation. She was everything he remembered and more—clever, resourceful, impossible to contain.
And he was the one sitting in the back of an SUV, obsessing over her smile and remembering the way she used to look at him like he was worth something.
Maybe Kostya was right. Maybe he needed to pick a lane, decide whether he was her enemy or her husband, whether he wanted revenge or something else entirely.
But as they pulled through the gates of the compound, he caught sight of a familiar figure slipping through the gardens, like she’d never left. Anka had beaten them home, probably by hours, and was now pretending she’d been there all along.
The sight of her should have infuriated him. Instead, all he could think about was how fucking magnificent she looked with her hair mussed from her adventure and her cheeks flushed with triumph.
Anka 1, Viktor 0.