Chapter 3 - Ilana #2
He led me down a corridor that seemed to stretch forever.
Every sound echoed. Our footsteps, the hum of distant air conditioning, and the faint patter of the rain outside.
The silence pressed on my ears, making me realize how empty the entire place was.
It almost felt as if no one else lived there.
I could not see a single servant or anyone else, either.
Finally, he stepped in front of a door and pushed it open.
It opened into a huge, minimally decorated yet very masculine study. It was all dark wood, chrome, and books lined in perfect order. A single lamp lit the desk, its glow spilling across stacks of paper and the faint glint of metal from a gun resting beside them.
“Sit,” he said, motioning to the leather chair across from the desk.
I stayed standing. “What is this?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he leaned against the desk, pulled out his phone again, and sent a short text.
Seconds later, footsteps approached from the hall.
A man knocked on the door and entered the room.
He was clearly in his mid-fifties, had thin hair, and his forehead was beaded with sweat despite the cool air.
A briefcase dangled from his hand. His eyes darted to Avgust, then to me, then immediately back down to the floor.
“Mr. Chernykh,” he said, voice careful. “Everything is in order. As requested.”
Avgust held out a hand. The man fumbled to open the case and slid a set of documents onto the desk.
“Leave.” Avgust said.
The lawyer blinked. “Should I—”
“Leave.”
The word hit like a bullet. The man nodded quickly, retreating without another sound, the door clicking shut behind him.
It would have been funny if I were not this man’s property right now and was observing all of it from a third eye.
But right now, it almost felt as if my life was on the line. Quite literally.
My stomach tightened.
I took a step forward towards Avgust. “What was that?”
Avgust didn’t look at me. He flipped through the papers, scanning, then set them down neatly. “A marriage license.”
For a second, I thought I had misheard him. “I’m sorry, what?”
He met my gaze now, calm, cold, detached. “You’ll sign it.”
I laughed, the sound sharp and brittle. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
“Marry you? You bought me!”
His expression didn’t change. “I bought your safety. You are a person, not property that can be bought and sold.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works!”
He tilted his head slightly, studying me like I was some puzzle he hadn’t decided whether to solve or destroy.
“It’s exactly how it works here. You were being sold at an auction, and if it hadn't been for me, you would have been bought by that man in the red tie. Do you think the men in that room were going to let you walk away if they had bought you, or would they be giving you marriage contracts to sign? You’d be dead by the morning or something even worse might have happened to you. ”
I swallowed hard, the memory of the eyes of the men present in that room making my stomach twist. “So what? You’re my savior now? Is that it?”
He pushed the papers towards me, a pen balanced on top. “You’ll sign this. It’ll make you untouchable.”
“Untouchable?”
“No one touches another man’s wife,” he said simply. “Not in this world and definitely not of a Chernykh.”
The words hit me harder than I wanted to admit.
He leaned forward slightly, forearms resting on the desk, voice low and measured.
“You think I wanted to be there tonight? That I make a habit of buying women from cages? I don’t.
But when I saw you on that stage, I knew I couldn’t leave you there.
You looked at me like you’d already given up.
And I don’t like seeing something break before I decide what to do with it. ”
My pulse jumped. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s not supposed to make you feel anything. It’s supposed to keep you alive and safe.”
Safe. There was that word again.
I stared at him. The arrogance, the calm, the absolute conviction in his tone terrified me more than the men who’d dragged me off that stage. He stood up then, walking around the desk until he was close enough that I could feel the faint heat radiating from his body.
“Sit,” he said again, quieter this time.
My knees moved before my mind caught up.
He placed the pen in front of me, his voice dropping lower, rougher. “Sign it, Ilana.”
My name sounded strange on his tongue. Personal. Intimate. As if my name too belonged to him.
“You don’t even know me.”
His jaw flexed. “I know enough. You’re Russian. Educated. Stubborn. The kind who fights until she has no choice but to adapt. You’ll survive if you’re smart enough to listen.”
I shook my head, voice trembling now. “I can’t. I can’t marry a stranger. This is insane.”
“Insane would’ve been leaving you there in the middle of men like that.”
He said it so simply that I didn’t have an answer.
The silence between us thickened, filled only by the faint ticking of a clock on the wall.
I stared at the papers between us. My name was written neatly beside his: Avgust Chernykh. The letters looked unreal, like they belonged to someone else.
I thought of my brothers, how they had promised safety and yet left me alone anyway.
How easily I had vanished, and none of them had come for me.
None of them had been able to find me yet.
I thought of the men in that room, laughing as they bid, the way one of them licked his lips like I was dessert.
And then I thought of the man standing beside me now.
Calm, composed, and terrifyingly certain. But not cruel. Not like any of them.
“Why me?” I asked softly, still unable to rationalize it.
He was silent for a moment, then said, “Because when you looked at me, you didn’t beg. You dared.”
I closed my eyes. My fingers shook as I reached for the pen.
The scratch of ink on paper sounded louder than thunder.
When it was done, I pushed the document back towards him and stood. My hands were cold, my chest tight. “There. You got what you wanted.”
He glanced at the signature, nodded once, and then my eyes again. “What I wanted,” he said, “was to make sure no one could touch you again. Remember that.”
I stared at him, every muscle in my body strung tight with exhaustion and rage. “You think that makes you the good guy?”
“No,” he said. “It makes me the one who owns the gun and won’t hesitate before using it.”
He picked up the papers, slid them into a folder, and locked them in a drawer. “You’ll stay here tonight. There’s a room down the hall. You will find clean clothes and food. Use it.”
I didn’t move. “And then what?”
“Then,” he said, turning away, “you’ll start getting used to being Ilana Chernykh.”