Chapter 7 – Iris
It had been almost a week since I was brought here, and my captor hadn’t even so much as raised his voice at me. Let alone touched me. He had never been violent with me. Not physically. Not verbally.
Instead of being treated like the prisoner I was, I was treated like royalty.
I was fed three times daily, regardless of whether I barely ate the food.
At first, I refused to eat for obvious reasons: lack of appetite and fear of the unknown.
However, as the days went by and I started realizing this man might genuinely be interested in my safety, I began to loosen up a little.
If there was even an iota of truth in his claims about the Bratva wanting my head, then maybe living here for now wasn’t such a bad idea after all. At this point, lack of appetite was no longer the reason I ate so little.
The kitchen always served me traditional Russian dishes I hadn’t seen or tasted before. Because I wasn’t used to those meals, I barely touched them. Some were too spicy. Others simply didn’t taste like what “food” meant to a British-American twenty-three-year-old.
Fortunately, for me, there was a sudden change in the menu, almost like they figured out my reason for not eating properly. These days, they no longer served me Russian delicacies.
I was served foods I already knew. Roast chicken breast with herb butter, plated with roasted seasonal vegetables and a drizzle of jus. Fresh pasta with a light cream or tomato sauce, finished with shaved parmesan and basil.
Sometimes, it was artisan bread, soft-boiled eggs, and fresh fruit plated for breakfast. For dinner, it was finger sandwiches or wraps cut precisely, served with a side garnish.
I wasn’t sure why they changed the menu, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t glad they did. At least now I ate well.
Although I wasn’t allowed outside of the mansion, I was given the freedom to explore every inch of it. Under strict surveillance, of course.
Nobody had to follow me around all the time. There were cameras everywhere, meaning my every move was being watched.
I kept to myself most of the time, locked away in my own thoughts. My favorite part of this massive estate was the library. That’s where I went to escape my current reality.
The library was stacked with books of almost every genre you could think of. Yet my captor once made a claim that hinted he’d read them all. He never admitted it outright, but it was implied.
Honestly, I couldn’t care less whether or not he’d actually read all the books in his library. What concerned me was his behavior toward me. I used to think my stay here would be painful and that he was going to make me suffer.
Hell, I even thought he would, at some point, take advantage of me like the predator I thought he was. I’d already imagined the worst possible things a man like him would do to a vulnerable woman in his mansion, with nowhere else to go.
However, so far, he’d proven me wrong.
If he wanted to hurt me, he would’ve done so already. And that restraint alone was as unsettling as it was comforting. Was I supposed to believe that a man as cold as Ilya was gentle with me for no absolute reason?
I knew he was a dangerous, violent man. So why was he soft and gentle with me? Not that I was complaining or anything; it just didn’t make sense to me.
I mean, this was the same man whose mere presence always sent all the maids into a panic. They dared not look him directly in the eyes or make silly mistakes around him.
I wasn’t sure what the consequences were, but I guessed they had to be brutal to instill this kind of fear in his staff.
Whenever he was around, the man was always tense, and everyone was on their best behavior—not like they misbehaved in his absence anyway.
He was feared and revered by all the staff, including the mean-looking bodyguards who roamed the estate like robots.
Just like everyone else, I should’ve been afraid of him because a man like that could’ve easily thrown me in his dungeon and fed me the same food as his hounds.
Instead, he kept me in a massive guest room with access to everything I needed to stay alive and sane. No guard was allowed upstairs near me. They were all downstairs, never once posted outside my room.
The few times he came to check on me, he actually knocked first and waited to be let in. For someone dangerous, invasive, and controlling, that was super surprising.
It was almost as if he were a different person around me. Softer. Gentler. Patient.
Maybe—just maybe—all of this was why I wasn’t as scared of him as everyone else.
One time, I heard him on the phone through the door, his voice flat and final about something I didn’t let myself think too hard about. Numbers. Locations. Someone’s name, followed by a silence that felt like a verdict.
Then I heard him say, “Kill him,” with his usual calmness. “And make it clean. No witnesses.”
That afternoon, my heart sank into my chest, and I walked away before he realized I’d heard him.
A man as cold as that shouldn’t be capable of treating me like a fragile ornament. And yet, here he was, doing both.
I didn’t understand it. I hated that I wanted to.
***
One cool evening, I wandered the gardens because staying in that room for another hour felt like it might actually kill me.
The estate had more green space than any house needed, with hedges trimmed into shapes too precise to be natural and gravel paths that curved without any obvious reason.
I walked without a destination, just to feel like I was moving somewhere. Besides, I needed to stretch my legs and clear my head. The scent of fresh flowers drifted through the air, accompanied by the chirping of birds.
I was strolling aimlessly when I heard it. Crying. Small, thin, coming from somewhere near the hedges to my left.
I followed the sound and found a kitten tangled beneath a broken section of wooden fence, one paw caught between two slats. Its cries grew more frantic as I drew closer. The poor thing couldn’t have been more than a few weeks old, all ribs and fur, terrified.
My heart was filled with pity, and before I could reach out to help, a large shadow fell over both of us.
Ilya appeared out of nowhere and knelt first.
I hadn’t even heard him approach. He was suddenly there, crouched beside me. His ease didn’t match his size at all, and his hands moved toward the kitten before mine could.
I expected him to grab it roughly. Toss it aside, tell one of the guards to deal with it, something in line with the man I’d built in my head.
Instead, his hands worked slowly and carefully around the trapped paw, checking it the way you’d check something breakable, something worth handling gently.
My brows arched in disbelief as this man kept proving he wasn’t quite the monster I’d painted him to be. A part of me wanted to hate how human it made him look, crouched in the dirt over a half-dead kitten, like it mattered to him whether it lived or not.
I crouched down next to him despite myself, unwinding the scarf from my neck without really deciding to. He glanced at me once, said nothing, and I wrapped the kitten in the fabric while he kept its injured leg steady.
Our hands brushed as I adjusted the scarf around it. Just a second. Barely anything.
It still sent something uncomfortable yet familiar straight through my chest. It was the same feeling that had coursed through me when his fingers grazed mine as he loosened the ropes on my wrists the first time I was brought here.
The same feeling that sent shivers down my spine in the library the night he leaned in too close. I knew, deep down, what it meant. But I wasn’t ready to face it yet.
“I’ll have the guards take it off the property,” he said, straightening once the kitten was wrapped and quiet, now tucked against my chest instead of thrashing against the fence.
“You will do no such thing,” I said, staring him down, daring him to argue. “If you’re going to keep me here against my will, at least let me have a companion.”
He studied me for a moment, like he was running the request through some calculation I wasn’t allowed to see the results of.
“Fine.” A pause. “You’re responsible for it from now on. Not the staff.”
I should probably thank him, but I didn’t.
That was the whole conversation.
He turned and walked back toward the house, leaving me standing there in the garden with the kitten wrapped in my scarf.
***
Later that night, just before he left my room after dropping off dinner, he paused at the door.
“Stay inside tonight. Don’t leave this room until morning.”
Something in his tone was sharper than usual. Not louder. Just harder, as if the words had edges.
“Why?” I demanded, watching him with suspicion in my gaze.
“Because I said so.”
“That doesn’t cut it. I need an actual answer.”
“I’m not in the mood for games, Iris,” he said. “Stay in your room tonight and don’t step out.”
I hesitated, displeased by the sharpness of his tone. “No.”
He turned back toward me, and whatever patience he usually kept in reserve for me seemed to run out all at once. He crossed the room in a few steps, closing the distance between us until I had to tilt my head to keep looking at him.
“Do not mistake my kindness for weakness, young lady,” he growled, his eyes colder than they usually were.
Young lady? Ohh, he’s pissed.
“When I give an instruction, you obey. No questions asked. Do you understand?”
I swallowed hard, eyes blinking rapidly on reflex. “I’m not one of your maids,” I managed to say, my gaze unwavering. “I don’t have to ‘obey’ your instructions.”
His jaw tightened. For a second, I thought he might actually raise his voice. And some small, stupid part of me almost wanted him to, just to prove he was capable of losing control the way I imagined he should.
He didn’t.
His voice dropped instead, quiet, even, somehow worse than shouting would have been.
“For once,” he said, “just listen to me.”
I opened my mouth to argue again.
“I mean it, Iris.” His eyes held mine, steady, no room in them for negotiation.
Iris. That’s more like it. Better than “young lady.” I wasn’t sure why being addressed that way pricked a part of me the way it did. Or why calling me by my name actually felt more refreshing.
“Stay in the room tonight.”
The words landed somewhere low in my stomach, tightening it in a way that had nothing to do with fear. I didn’t have a name for the feeling. I didn’t want one.
I stood there, frozen, working through some response that wouldn’t come, and by the time I found my voice, he was already gone. The door shut behind him, quiet compared to how hard my heart was suddenly working.
I sat on the edge of the bed, the kitten asleep in a makeshift bed of towels by the window. With a hand pressed flat against my chest, as if that might slow anything down, I pondered his warning.
Why tonight?
I always wandered the halls whenever I wanted, at whatever hour, and he never had a problem with it. Then what changed?
Was something supposed to happen tonight that he didn’t want me to witness? Was he trying to protect me from something I didn’t know about, or was this just another form of control?