Chapter 8 - Avgust
The delivery arrived earlier than I had expected, consisting of three crates, each of them taller than Ilana and marked FRAGILE in bold red lettering. I watched from the upstairs landing as the guards brought them in through the foyer, their boots echoing across the marble.
Ilana heard the noise before she saw anything.
She peeked over the balcony railing, hair loose around her shoulders, eyes bright with curiosity.
Too bright. Too easy to read. Her excitement unfolded across her features in real time, beginning with confusion, then interest, and then a spark of something that hit me like warm breath against cold steel.
She looked alive again. She looked like herself.
The guards set the crates down and went to fetch tools while Ilana drifted downstairs as if drawn by instinct. She didn’t even notice me leaning against the wall, arms crossed, watching every tiny shift of her expression like it had the power to rewrite gravity.
“What is happening?” she asked, finally noticing me. I hadn’t failed to realize she had been actively avoiding me for the past few days, so this was new.
“You’ll see.”
The guards returned with the tools and quickly got to work in front of us.
One crate opened with a groan of nails and wood.
Just as the wooden panels were pulled away, a burst of color spilled out.
Ilana let out a quiet gasp, which was both soft and genuine.
It sounded like someone was seeing sunlight after a long winter.
She stepped forward slowly, as if she were approaching something scared. “That’s… new.”
“Yes,” I said, pushing away from the wall. “I ordered them a few weeks ago.”
She turned, eyebrows high. “For yourself?”
“No.”
“For me?” Yes.
“For the house,” I replied, because admitting the truth felt like a mistake. “You complained my older paintings were out of order and not bright enough.”
“I didn’t complain.” She argued, biting back a smile. “I critiqued.”
“Same thing.”
“Absolutely not!” she shook her head firmly. “One is rude, and the other is educational. There is a huge difference.”
“And I’m supposed to enjoy being educated?”
She shot me a look. “Someone has to do it, and I seem to be the only person who isn’t afraid of you to do it.”
I almost smiled at that retort.
Her attention returned to the painting, a bold impressionistic piece, bright enough to warm the room.
Suddenly, I understood what she had meant about the other paintings in the house.
This one was starkly different. She reached out but didn’t touch it, hovering her fingers above the canvas with a reverence most people reserved for living things.
“You can move them,” I said.
She blinked. “Move what?”
“The paintings. Both the old ones and the new ones. Doesn’t matter. You can arrange them however you wish.”
Her lips parted in surprise. “You’re letting me rearrange your house?”
“First of all, it’s our house,” I corrected. “And you can move things around. This is not a museum.”
Her expression changed at my words, but she quickly adjusted it.
“And yet you have a freaking Monet in the hallway!”
“I have told this to you before, Ilana. I get paintings because I can afford them.”
She groaned under her breath. “You infuriate me.”
“I know.”
She turned sharply, ready to argue, but froze when she saw my expression. I wasn’t teasing anymore, but simply watching her. It was something else to watch the way the color seemed to transform her, making her forget to be afraid. It truly changed her entire personality.
“Do you paint?” I asked instinctively, realizing there was still so much I did not know about her.
My wife.
Her eyelashes fluttered, caught off guard. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“I… I don’t know why you’d ask me that.”
“Because you look at art like someone who makes it.”
A flush crept up her throat, warm and soft and utterly unguarded. She scrambled for composure, lifting her chin.
“I used to,” she admitted. “A little. Not professionally.”
“Why did you stop?”
She shrugged, that sunshine brightness dimming for half a second. “Life gets busy. Things change. I used to paint during school, but I haven’t touched a brush since school ended.”
“That’s not an answer to my question. I asked why.”
“It’s the answer I am choosing to give you, so accept it.”
I stepped closer. She stiffened, just slightly, then held her ground, stubborn to her last breath.
“What do you paint?” I asked.
Her gaze darted to the floor, then back to the crate. “Landscapes, portraits, abstracts. Anything that shows light.”
“Light,” I echoed, utterly fascinated by everything that came out of her mouth.
“Yes.”
I looked at her then, really looked, and understood more than she intended to reveal. There was something poetic in her choosing that subject. Because it fully reflected the person that she was. Someone full of colors, warmth, and light. Everything I wasn’t.
She caught the shift in my expression and immediately bristled. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you just figured something out about me.”
“Did I?”
“No.” Her cheeks warmed again. “Stop.”
I didn’t. Couldn’t. She turned away quickly, pretending to study the next crate as the guards pried it open.
Another burst of color. Another quiet inhale from her.
She looked restless. If I stood long enough, I could practically feel the energy buzzing under her skin.
The need to touch, to create, to do something instead of hide inside the walls I’d put around her.
It was the first sign that she was returning to herself after the attack.
And I wasn’t going to let that flicker die.
“I’ll be in my office,” I said, though I had no intention of staying there.
She waved me off without looking, absorbed in analyzing brushstrokes on paintings that I had bought for exactly this reason. So she could look at them and feel alive again. As soon as I left the room, I took out my phone and dialed Mikhail, who was out for some work.
“Boss?” he asked, picking up the call.
“I need a contractor and someone who understands art and art materials. And bring them in quietly. Ilana shouldn’t find out.”
“Do you want them today?”
“Yes. Right away.”
I hung up.
***
For the next few days, I pretended to work, but most of my attention was on the CCTV feeds that always glowed across the screen in my office.
I watched Ilana wandering around the house, humming to herself, several guards in tow as she instructed them which paintings to put where.
She compared pieces and rearranged them, then stepped back and tilted her head to survey them before rearranging them again.
She moved around the house as if mapping emotion to space. But once all of it was done, she began sneaking around.
She peeked into rooms she hadn’t explored yet and tucked her hair behind her ear every time she passed a guard, pretending she didn’t care that they were watching. She tiptoed into the halls with the older paintings and then the library and then the storage room, which she didn’t know was locked.
She tested the door. Locked. She whipped around like she expected someone to jump out and catch her.
I pressed the intercom button.
“Ilana.”
She yelped. Her head snapped up to the nearest camera.
Her eyes narrowed. “Are you spying on me?”
“Yes.”
She gasped, indignant. “You’re not even trying to deny it?!”
“You’re sneaking around the house.”
“I am not even allowed to explore? This is not sneaking around. ”
“You’re terrible at it anyway. Now leave that door and come to my office at once.”
“No. I don’t want another lecture from you.”
“You’re not getting one.”
“Then what do you want?”
“You. In my office. Right now.” This woman was infuriating.
“That’s not very reassuring.”
“You’re wasting my time. Get here.”
She cursed under her breath, then stomped towards the hallway in the most dramatic attempt at defiance I’d ever seen.
I leaned back in my chair, watching her approach on the screen, a slow heat settling low in my chest. Within seconds, she appeared in my doorway like a storm, pretending to be human with her chin lifted, arms crossed, and eyes sparking with irritation she clearly hoped would hide the fact that she was a little breathless from hurrying down the hall.
“You called,” she said, voice sharp, “so I’m here. What do you want now?”
I pushed away from the desk. “Follow me.”
“No explanation?”
“You don’t get one.”
She muttered something impolite under her breath, but stepped aside as I moved past her.
I noticed when she kept her distance, staying two steps behind like she didn’t trust walking too close, but her eyes never left me.
We walked through a hallway she hadn’t been allowed in yet. Her suspicion rose with every step.
“Is this another lecture?” she asked.
“No.”
“A new rule?”
“No.”
“Are you showing me your weapon collection?”
I rolled my eyes at her question.
“A punishment?”
I glanced at her. “Do you want it to be?”
She flushed instantly. “That’s not what I… you… ugh.”
Amusing. I loved watching her struggle to form a coherent thought.
Right at the end of the hallway was a closed door.
Just as we neared it, I took out the keys from my pocket and pushed the door open, walking inside while Ilana stood frozen on the threshold.
And that alone almost made the entire effort worth it.
Her breath left her body in a slow, staggered exhale.
Her hand lifted, barely, like she wanted to touch the air itself.
The room glowed with soft lights, coming from a wide window that faced the forest. The hardwood floors were newly polished, and clean tables stood beneath mounted lamps.
Canvases leaned against the walls with brushes sorted by size placed on a circular table.
The boxes were filled with tubes of paint in ranges of color she didn’t even know she needed yet.
Everything was there: an easel, aprons and sketchbooks.
Everything she would ever ask for, before she even thought to ask.
A studio which was hers and hers alone.
Finally, she found her voice. “What… is this?”
“Your art studio,” I said simply.
“No,” she shook her head, stepping inside as if she didn’t trust her own feet and eyes. “No, this… this is not real. Why would you—”
“You like art and enjoy painting.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“You needed something of your own, and now you have it.”
She stared at me like the world had turned itself upside down.
“This is…” she swallowed. “This is too much.”
“It’s not enough,” I corrected.
Her chest rose, fell, and rose again as she touched the edge of a table with trembling fingers.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered. “Why would you do this?”
“Ilana, I am already keeping you trapped here,” I said. “You shouldn’t spend your days staring at walls, waiting for something bad to happen. You need a way to breathe until the danger is over and you can begin your life again.”
She took another cautious step, still stunned and wary. Then she turned to me, her expression changing from soft to hard to both somehow.
“What do you want in return?” she asked quietly.
My jaw tightened. “What?”
“This.” She gestured to the room. “The supplies. The whole thing. You must want something in return from me. Right?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You’re lying.”
“No,” I repeated, slower. “I’m not.”
She folded her arms, not defensive this time, but afraid to be wrong. “Everything in my life has mostly always come with strings. You don’t do something like this without expecting something back.”
Cold fury surged up inside me, not at her, but at whatever the hell had taught her to think like this. I stepped closer, slowly and carefully, meeting her gaze head-on.
“If I ever want something from you,” I said, voice low, sharp, unwavering, “it will not be your body.”
Her mouth parted. She blinked hard.
“And it will not be payment. Or obedience. Or leverage. I don’t need those from you. And I definitely don’t need it all in return for something. That is not who I am, and I will never ever put you in a situation like this.”
She trembled softly, her breath hitching as her fingers curled into her palms.
“Then why—”
“I did this,” I said, “because I wanted to give you something that doesn’t take anything away from you. To give you a sense of comfort in this house so you feel like yourself again. I want you to be happy, Ilana.”
Silence settled between us, dangerous, warm, and unbearably charged. Her eyes softened, slow as dawn breaking across a frozen morning.
“Avgust…” her voice barely above a whisper, “thank you.”
For the first time, I could feel there was no sass or suspicion in her voice.
But just the simple, plain truth. Something tightened deep in my chest, too sudden and too strong.
I moved without thinking, closing the last few inches between us.
I was not touching her. Not yet. But I was close enough to feel her breath catch again.
“You’re welcome, Ilana,” I said, softer than I meant.
Her gaze dropped to my mouth and lingered there for a few seconds, heat sliding across my spine. This spark between us could burn a city to the ground if either of us would just let it. So I stepped back first. Her lashes fluttered, as if waking from something she didn’t want to admit she felt.
“Use the room,” I said, forcing the steel back into my voice. “Whenever you want.”
She nodded once.
But her eyes held me longer than they should have. Longer than she realized. And as I left her there, surrounded by colors, possibility, and the only softness I had given anyone in years, I knew two things for certain.
She wasn’t ready to trust me. Not yet.
And I wasn’t ready to let her go. Not ever.