Chapter 11 - Elisse
Three days passed. I had counted them. Every single second.
It was not because I had any hope for something that resembled freedom, but because it was the only way to measure the shape of my captivity.
I waited for the morning to begin yet another day, which was followed by a quiet afternoon and a night.
Again and again. My phone was gone, so that made things even harder.
I knew Fyodor had it, but every time I asked for it, his answer remained the same.
“Not yet.”
I stopped asking after the second day.
The penthouse was beautiful in the way cages sometimes were, with expansive glass walls, polished floors, muted colors that felt curated rather than lived in.
It overlooked the water, the skyline, the illusion of choice, but the door remained locked.
It was not visibly guarded or dramatically sealed but simply inaccessible.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to open it even if I tried.
And try I did. I tested it the first morning when he was in the shower.
But it did not open.
I also tested the elevator access panel, but it told me that a keycard was required, and I did not have one.
I did not even know where Fyodor kept his.
I walked the perimeter of the windows like a restless animal, counting the floors beneath me, but I knew we were too high and too exposed.
I was sure my brothers would come eventually.
I knew they had to. Iosif would not tolerate this silence from me much longer, and Avgust would not tolerate the insult.
Timofey would burn the city before he tolerated humiliation, so I knew they would come.
And I repeated it to myself every day like a promise and a prayer, this being the only thing that was keeping me sane.
I would not become party to this stupidity.
I would not adapt or soften, and through it all, I continued to ignore him.
That one thing became my weapon. When he spoke, I answered with one word or sometimes not even that.
When he asked if I had eaten, I shrugged, and when he attempted conversation, I walked away.
I noticed the way he did not react. That unsettled me more than anger would have. On the second evening, he tried again.
“We need to discuss how this will look publicly.”
I was sitting on the far end of the sofa, legs tucked beneath me, staring at nothing.
“I’m not in the mood to discuss anything with you.”
“This affects you just as much as it affects me, Elisse.”
“Everything affects me,” I replied coldly. “Apparently without my consent.”
He studied me for a moment but then simply nodded. I could sense that a part of him had accepted that reasoning with me was becoming even more pointless every day, yet he still continued trying. I almost wanted to applaud his patience. It was rather unexpected from someone like him.
“Dinner is in twenty minutes.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You still need to eat.”
“I don’t take advice from kidnappers.”
His jaw tightened faintly, but once again, he did not retaliate.
Instead, he stood up and left the room. That was the general pattern, without any raised voices, punishment, or force.
But even his patience infuriated me. Anya returned every morning and brought warmth into the penthouse like contraband.
She would bake fresh bread and even make tea for me whenever I asked.
I was becoming used to waking up to the faint scent of vanilla in the house.
“You must keep your strength,” she told me on the third day, placing a plate in front of me at the kitchen island. The plate was overflowing with maple syrup drizzled pancakes, bacon, an entire bowl of fruits, and toasted bread slathered with butter and jam.
“For what?” I muttered.
“For whatever comes next.”
Her eyes held mine meaningfully, and I felt as if she knew everything that was going on in my heart.
She had been a part of this world too long to now know, and I knew she was right.
Once my brothers found out and things escalated, a war was waiting for us.
As much as I wanted to get out of here, a war in our world affected everyone. I was not ready for that.
“Has he spoken to anyone?” I asked quietly.
“He always speaks to someone,” she said carefully.
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
Her expression softened as she looked at me.
“There is tension,” she admitted.
“From my family?”
“Yes.”
Of course. Something tight in my chest loosened slightly, knowing that as I was reassured, they were indeed looking for me.
That was my one ray of hope right now because whenever I asked Fyodor anything about it, he simply shrugged and walked away as if he deliberately wanted to keep me away from whatever was happening out there.
“So that means they’re coming,” I whispered more to myself than to her.
Anya did not contradict me.
“He is preparing,” she added.
“For what?”
“For impact.”
That sounded ominous, and I pushed the plate away slightly.
“I won’t stay here,” I said.
“You may not have to.”
Her tone was strange.
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” she said gently, “that storms do not stay contained forever. You sound like someone who is sure her brothers will come to rescue her, so you truly have nothing to worry about. If all goes right and in your favor, you will be out of here soon enough.”
I watched her for a long moment.
“You care about him, and yet you say something like this?” I asked, unsure if she was on my side or Fyodor’s.
“Yes.”
“Is it because you know he has done something unforgivable?”
She considered that.
“A part of it, yes. But it is also because I know he married you for strategy and containment, but he also deserves a wife who loves him and cares for him, and you will never be that because of your differences. The sooner you leave and whatever this is ends, the sooner he will be able to find someone who genuinely cares for him. ”
I didn’t understand why something inside me twisted at her words, but I ignored the feeling.
By the sixth day, I had memorized the rhythm of the penthouse.
The staff rotated quietly. There were two maids who spoke little English but smiled shyly when I passed, and a driver I never saw but knew existed.
There was security all around us; I never glimpsed but felt.
And of course there was him. Always calm.
Always controlled. I noticed how he worked from the study for hours at a time, the door partially left open.
His voice was low and measured on calls, and even when he sounded angry, he never ever shouted or panicked.
Sometimes I ended up catching fragments of conversations I could not piece together.
“…accelerated timeline.”
“…contain fallout.”
“…no, that was my decision.”
He never blamed me for anything. Not even once. And I know that should not have mattered, but it did. By the fifth evening, I wandered into the kitchen without meaning to and saw that he was there, sleeves rolled up, speaking quietly to one of the maids about inventory.
“Make sure she has what she prefers,” he said. “If she asks for something, get it.”
The maid nodded, and he turned back around, noticing me. I did not know if I was imagining it, but his gaze softened, almost imperceptibly.
“I can speak for myself,” I said sharply.
“I’m aware.”
“Then stop treating me like porcelain.”
He dismissed the maid with a nod, the two of us now alone in the kitchen. He continued staring at me as he leaned against the counter, too tall against the frame. He filled the kitchen in a way that seemed unnatural, as if he was taking too much space in a place he wasn’t supposed to.
“I’m not.”
“It feels like you are. Like I am something fragile, and all my little whims need to be satisfied, and you need to be the one doing it.”
“I am simply ensuring you are comfortable, Elisse.”
“I am not comfortable, and it has nothing to do with things I want and don’t want and everything to do with being here outside of my own will.”
“I know.”
Silence stretched between us, but he didn’t move closer and didn’t even try to touch me.
He had actually not touched me since the last time he had kissed me, and I had asked him to stay away from me.
I had sensed his restraint and the deliberate distance he had created between us, and the way it made me unnecessarily restless.
I hated that my body remembered him. Hated that when he moved past me in the hallway, close enough for his arm to brush mine, heat shot through me before I could suppress it.
Hated that at night, when he lay on the opposite side of the bed and didn’t reach for me, my mind filled in the absence.
The attraction hadn’t faded, but it had only sharpened with the time I spent close to him.
It almost felt like a wound that refused to close.
More times than once, I had caught myself watching him and the way he moved.
It was measured, controlled, and economical.
I noticed the way his voice shifted slightly when speaking to Anya, becoming softer and almost protective.
I noticed the way he never interrupted the staff while they were going about their work.
The way he noticed when I skipped meals and quietly adjusted something without confronting me about it.
It was strategic, I told myself. I reasoned with myself that he was simply managing optics and managing me along with it.
He wasn’t being kind, but he was being careful instead.
More than a week had passed when I found him on the balcony, the city lights reflected in the glass behind him.
He didn’t turn when I stepped outside, but his shoulders tightened slightly, enough to tell me that he knew I was there.
“I know you’re there,” he said calmly.
“I wasn’t hiding.”
“No. You were not.”
The air between us felt different. A little less volatile and a little more aware that something had shifted.
“My brothers will come eventually, you know. I think they just don’t know where I am, and it is a little difficult to find me, which is what is taking so much time,” I said.
“Yes. You are right. They will come eventually.”
“You sound very certain.”
“I am.”
“So what are you doing? Just waiting?”
“Yes.”
“For war? Have you lost your mind?”
“I am waiting for confrontation.”
I wrapped my arms around myself.
“You don’t seem afraid when you should be.”
“Probably.”
I studied his profile, my eyes tracing the sharp line of his jaw and the stillness of his posture.
Despite the seriousness of our conversation, he almost seemed unbothered.
As if a confrontation, a war, and my brothers combined would not be able to hard it.
It was unnerving to say the least, and I could not understand the basis behind it.
“You’re too calm,” I said quietly.
“I don’t see the benefit of panic.”
“It would at least make you human.”
He turned, and his dark, stormy eyes finally met mine.
“I am human.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
“The way you are keeping me hostage here with so much as an inch of remorse in your body, I would actually disagree.”
A flicker of something crossed his expression that looked a little bit like regret or conviction. I was no longer certain.
“I tied you to myself, just as much as I tied myself to you. You are not the only one who is a hostage in this marriage, Elisse; I am too. I know you don’t realize that, and you think of me as cruel and barbaric and someone who doesn’t care about anything, but if you stop and look outside yourself, you will realize I am just as much here as you are. ”
“That does not make my situation any better.”
“That’s debatable.”
I should have walked away then, but I stayed instead, the wind catching my hair and whipping it across my face.
He reached out instinctively to move it away, but then stopped himself right before his fingertips grazed my skin.
His hand hovered there for half a second and then fell back to his side.
The restraint burned more than touch would have and filled me with a frustration I didn’t know I was capable of possessing.
“You can’t just pretend this is normal. Any of it,” I said.
“I am not.”
“You act like it is.”
“I’m stabilizing it.”
“You think patience fixes coercion?”
“No.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Giving you time.”
“For what?”
“To process your anger.”
I stared at him.
“You expect it to fade?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“For you to see clearly.”
“I see clearly.”
“Not yet.”
My temper flared again.
“You’re unbelievable.”
“Probably.”
I shook my head and moved back inside, but I felt his gaze follow me, burning holes at the back of my head.
I went into the guest bedroom to sleep away from him, but that night, I ended up dreaming of the masquerade.
Of masks and dim lights and the way his hand had felt at my waist. When I woke up after a fitful sleep, he was already up, making me wonder if he had even slept at all.
I could hear him moving outside while I lay there staring at the ceiling, my heart betraying me in quiet ways.
I hated him and what he’d done. I hated the arrogance and the control he embodied and the way he believed he knew best. But beneath all of it, something softer pulsed stubbornly as I was reminded how he had not forced himself on me even once.
He had not shouted, nor had he humiliated me.
He had not tried to break me; instead, he was giving me space.
He let me rage and be mean with him while he silently endured it.
And the romantic, foolish part of me, the one that believed in intensity and inevitability, kept whispering that he had chosen me.
Not as leverage. Not as bait. But as his wife instead.
I pushed that thought away every time it surfaced because I knew choice without consent was still coercion, and desire without permission was still violation.
And yet when he walked into a room, my pulse still shifted.
When his voice dropped lower in conversation, heat still curled low in my stomach.
When he stood too close, I still remembered exactly how it felt to be kissed by him.
Anya caught me watching him from across the room, and she smiled faintly.
“Be careful,” she murmured.
“Of what?”
“Of your own heart.”
I stiffened at her observation.
“I don’t—”
“You do,” she said gently, cutting me off.
I turned away before she could see the truth in my expression, because despite everything, despite the cage, the war, and the anger, something inside me was no longer purely defiant. It was, in fact, conflicted and that terrified me more than captivity ever could.
I still knew my brothers would come. They had to.
But as the days stretched on, a new fear began to whisper beneath the surface. What if, when the door finally opened, I didn’t want to leave as much as I should?