Chapter 14 - Viktor #2
“Talk to me,” he said, his voice carrying that commanding edge he used when negotiations were falling apart. “Something’s wrong.”
She yanked her arm free with a violence that confirmed every fear he’d been nursing during the silent drive home. When she spun to face him, the fury and devastation in her hazel eyes hit him like a physical blow.
“Wrong?” The word was sharp enough to draw blood. “Why would anything be wrong? I’m just no one important, right? Just part of the staff, filing contracts and grateful for the work.”
Fuck. She’d heard everything. Every calculated dismissal, every protective lie designed to keep Nick from targeting her. From her perspective, it must have sounded like genuine contempt, like confirmation that he saw her as nothing more than a useful burden.
“You heard—”
“I heard everything.” Her voice was rising, years of suppressed frustration finally finding an outlet.
“I heard how disposable I am, how unimportant, how perfectly content I should be with busy work designed to make me feel valuable. I heard exactly what you think of me, Viktor, and it’s nothing I haven’t heard before. ”
The pain in her voice was devastating, but it was the resignation that really gutted him.
Nothing I haven’t heard before. How many times had brilliant, capable Anka been dismissed as unimportant?
How many men had looked at her intellect and ambition and decided she needed to be managed instead of challenged?
“Anka, that’s not—”
“It’s not what? Not true? Not what you really think?
” Her laugh was bitter and broken, the sound of dreams being shattered in real time.
“Because it sounded pretty fucking convincing from where I was sitting. Not too bright but competent enough for simple filing. Women like that, grateful for scraps of importance.”
Viktor’s jaw clenched as his own words were thrown back at him.
In context, spoken to protect her from Nick’s predatory interest, they’d been necessary lies.
But standing here watching them destroy something fragile that had been building between them, they sounded exactly like what she thought they were—genuine contempt disguised as professional assessment.
“You don’t understand the situation—”
“I understand perfectly. I understand that no matter what I do, no matter how hard I work or how much I prove myself, I’ll always be the burden you were forced to marry. The dim-witted wife who needs to be placated with make-work and pretty lies about the partnership.”
“That’s not true.” But even as he said it, Viktor knew how hollow it sounded. How could he explain the complexities of protecting her from Nick without sounding like he was making excuses for cruelty?
“Isn’t it?” She stepped closer, her anger making her magnificent and terrible. “Then why was it so easy for you to dismiss everything I’ve accomplished here? Why did reducing me to a filing clerk roll off your tongue like you’d been thinking it all along?”
Because Nick Barresi would have destroyed you if he thought you mattered to me.
Because men like him collect valuable things that belong to their enemies, and I couldn’t let you become his next trophy.
Because protecting you was more important than protecting your feelings, even if it meant breaking something between us that I’d only just begun to value.
But Viktor couldn’t say any of that. Not without explaining the full scope of Nick’s depravity, not without making Anka understand that being dismissed was preferable to being targeted.
His hands flexed at his sides as he fought the urge to reach for her, to hold her until he could find words that would make her understand.
Instead, he took a step back, his expression shutting down in that familiar way that ended difficult conversations.
“You’re upset,” he said carefully, hating himself for the patronizing tone. “We should discuss this when you’re calmer.”
It was exactly the wrong thing to say. He watched her face transform from hurt anger to cold fury, watched her shut down in the same way he’d just done, protecting herself behind walls that might never come down again.
“Don’t,” she said, her voice deadly quiet. “Don’t you dare patronize me on top of everything else.”
She turned away before he could respond, taking the stairs two at a time in her desperation to escape. Viktor called her name once, but she didn’t stop, didn’t pause, didn’t give him any opportunity to explain or apologize or fix what he’d just broken.
He stood in the marble foyer long after her footsteps faded, staring at the empty staircase and trying to process what had just happened.
He’d set out to protect Anka from Nick Barresi’s predatory attention, and he’d succeeded.
Nick had dismissed her as unworthy of his interest, filed her away as just another insignificant employee.
Mission accomplished.
So why did victory taste like failure? Why did protecting her feel like he’d just destroyed the most valuable thing he’d ever possessed?
Because that’s what he’d done—in his desperation to shield Anka from external threats, he’d become the threat himself.
He’d taken her brilliance, her competence, her growing confidence, and crushed them beneath the weight of protective lies that sounded exactly like the dismissals she’d been fighting her entire life.
She’d been magnificent during the Henderson meeting, analytical and sharp and everything he’d ever wanted in a partner. But when faced with protecting her from Nick’s interest, Viktor had reduced her to nothing in ways that would have been devastating even if she hadn’t overheard.
The worst part was that he’d meant every protective instinct behind the lies.
Nick would have targeted her if he’d thought she mattered to Viktor, would have made her life hell just to prove he could.
But Anka didn’t know that. All she knew was that her husband—the man she’d been building something fragile and important with—had dismissed her accomplishments as easily as breathing.
Viktor closed his eyes and tried to figure out how to fix what he’d just destroyed. But for the first time in years, he had no strategy, no plan, no clever manipulation that would undo the damage.
He’d won the battle against Nick Barresi.
And lost something infinitely more valuable in the process.