Victoria
The room he gives me isn’t a cage or a dungeon. It’s a large bedroom with an ensuite and a dressing room decorated in pale colours that are neutral and calming, usually.
It sits at the top of the stairs behind a heavy door that opens with a soft click, like the house is polite enough to pretend it isn’t entirely sealed from the outside.
The space inside is too large, too calm, too curated.
A king-sized bed with dark linens. A sitting area by tall windows.
A bathroom with stone and glass and expensive toiletries lined up like offerings.
The kind of place you’d pay thousands a night for if you wanted to feel untouchable.
The kind of place you’d put a woman if you wanted her to forget she’s being held.
I step inside anyway, because pretending I’m not impressed would be a lie, and lying to myself has never saved me.
My boots sink into a thick carpet, and for a second, I hate the softness under my feet.
It makes my body want to relax. Makes my shoulders want to drop.
And I don’t get to relax. Not here. Not with Leonid downstairs like a predator who doesn’t need to bare his teeth.
I cross to the window and look out. The estate is spread across dark land, lights glowing low along paths and fencing. I can’t see the gate from here. I can’t even see the road. Everything is designed like a maze where the center is comfort and the edges are impossible.
Somewhere below, guards move through the shadows, quiet as ghosts.
No chains, he said, like the absence of shackles makes this freedom.
I test the bedroom door first. It opens.
It closes. It doesn’t lock from the outside, which is almost worse because it’s another illusion of control that I don’t have.
I test the hallway, moving like I did in my uncle’s compound, ear tuned for the soft tell of footsteps and radio static.
Nothing. Just silence and the faint hum of a house that runs itself like a well-oiled machine.
I go downstairs because he told me dinner is in an hour, and I refuse to be trained by a schedule like a pet. The kitchen is pristine. The living areas are controlled luxury, all dark woods and stone and glass that reflects me back to me in pieces.
I find a library. Shelves that reach too high.
A ladder on a rail. Leather chairs. A fireplace that isn’t lit but looks like it’s waiting to be.
I walk through it, fingers brushing spines I don’t recognize, because my uncle never let me read anything he didn’t approve of.
Even books were out of my reach in his world.
Then I find the first locked door.
Not my suite. Not the front entrance. A side corridor off the main hall, disguised behind a panel of wood that looks seamless until you’re close. The lock is electronic. Clean. Modern. My pulse picks up as my body recognizes a boundary.
His office.
I don’t have to try the handle to know it.
I stand there for a moment, breathing, listening. Nothing. I could go back upstairs. I could wait, pretend, play nice, see what kind of game he thinks this is.
But Leonid Brovin didn’t bring me here to play nice. He brought me here to break me down with kindness until I didn’t recognize the difference.
I walk away before my hand betrays me and reaches for the lock.
Dinner comes without ceremony. I don’t hear staff moving, but when I enter the dining room the table is set.
One place on each side. Food already plated, steaming, the smell rich and warm, designed to trigger hunger like another weakness I can’t afford to have.
Leonid is there, sitting like he’s been waiting, suit jacket gone, sleeves rolled to his forearms. The ink on his arms shows again.
Bratva marks, peeking like a quiet warning under civility.
He looks up as I enter, and I hate the immediate awareness in his gaze, the way it flicks over me like he’s cataloging every detail of my posture.
“Good evening,” he says.
I take my seat and pick up my fork. “Am I supposed to thank you for feeding me?”
His mouth curves. “I don’t expect your gratitude, but I do expect you to eat.”
I take a bite. The food is good. Too good. A steak cooked perfectly, vegetables still bright and glossy, the kind of meal you serve a guest you want to impress.
I swallow, set my fork down. “I want to make a deal.”
He doesn’t look surprised. He looks interested, like he’s been waiting for this exact moment.
“Go on,” he says.
“I’ll give you the diamonds and tell you where you can find your watch,” I tell him.
My voice stays steady even though my throat tightens around the words.
“All of it in fact. Every last thing I stole, minus one diamond, which I sold for cash to get here. Then I’ll walk away, and you can tell whoever you need to tell that you handled it.
That I’m gone. No longer a threat to anyone’s belongings… or egos.”
He leans back slightly; gaze fixed on my face like he’s enjoying the show.
“You think this is about the diamonds,” he says.
“It’s about what I took from you,” I snap, because my patience is thin and my fear is starting to itch. “You said I stole from you. Fine. Take it back. Take everything back and let me go.”
He laughs, amused in a way that makes my skin prickle. Like I’ve offered him something small and cute, not the entire haul from six months of practicing my escape.
“You don’t understand,” he says calmly.
I clamp down on the urge to throw my wine in his face. “Then please explain it,” I say through a clenched jaw.
He watches me for a long beat, eyes steady, expression unreadable. Then he says, “I don’t want the diamonds.”
My stomach drops. I grip my fork like a weapon. “Then what do you want?”
He reaches for his glass and takes a slow drink. “Your uncle kept you like property. He called it protection. He called it family. You lived under his rules so long you forgot what choice feels like.”
My jaw tightens. “Don’t talk about him like you know—”
“I know,” he interrupts, and there’s steel under the calm now, something that makes the room feel smaller. “I’ve watched him for years. I know exactly what kind of man Boris Andreev is.”
My hands curl into fists on my lap. My nails bite my palms. I can still feel my uncle’s grip on my jaw when I was sixteen, forcing my face upward so I’d look at the men he wanted to impress.
I can still hear his voice, soft and smiling, telling me I was lucky.
Telling me he could’ve done worse to me when my parents died, but he didn’t, because he cared.
Leonid watches the shift in my face like he caused it on purpose.
“What do you want?” I ask again, quieter this time, because my anger has nowhere to go and my fear is starting to taste bitter.
He sets his glass down. “I want you to know you’re safe here.”
I push the vegetables around the plate, no longer able to stomach the thought of eating them. “You said I’m free if I escape. You said it like it’s a game. Is that what this is to you? Entertainment?”
His eyes darken. “Everything is a game,” he says. “The only question is who wrote the rules.”
I stare at him across the table, this man who speaks like he owns the air, who watches me like he’s already memorized what I look like when I’m cornered. “So what, you keep me here until I give up?”
“No,” he says, and his tone shifts into something that feels almost intimate. “I keep you here until you choose.”
My throat tightens. “Choose what?”
“Me.”
The word lands like a weight in crystal clear waters.
I force myself to breathe. Force my spine straight. “And if I don’t?”
His gaze holds mine, unblinking. “Then you keep trying to escape. And I keep catching you.”
A shiver crawls over my skin. The promise isn’t cruel. It’s worse. It’s inevitable.
Dinner ends with me barely tasting the last few bites I manage to force into my mouth. I won’t give him the satisfaction of hunger as weakness. I push my plate away and stand.
“I’m tired,” I say.
He doesn’t get up. “Goodnight, Victoria.”
I walk away before my mouth betrays me and throws something at him that will cost me later. The hallway feels colder now, the house quieter. Upstairs, my room waits like it knows I won’t go anywhere else.
But I don’t go inside.
I turn down the side corridor instead, footsteps silent, heart pounding so hard it makes my vision pulse at the edges. The locked door to his office stares back at me, sleek and modern. A challenge. A boundary.
Leonid said he wanted to see me plot.
Fine.
I kneel and pull a thin metal pick from the seam of my boot. Old habit. Old survival. My uncle never searched my shoes because he believed I’d never have the guts to hide anything from him.
The lock is electronic, but electronic locks still have physical failures. Still have seams. Still have wires you can coax into obedience if you know where to press.
I work fast, breath shallow, ears tuned for the slightest sound.
Click.
The door opens.
I slip inside, shutting it behind me with careful precision.
The room is darker than the rest of the house, lit only by low lamps and the glow of monitors in sleep mode. The desk sits perfectly organized, nothing out of place. It’s a secondary office of some sort, or a surveillance room, maybe?
Control made physical.
I move to the desk first, fingers gliding over the wood, searching for what matters. Passport. Documents. A key. Anything that proves there’s a way out for me somehow.
The top drawer is locked.
I pick it, quicker than I should be able to, adrenaline sharpening my hands. The drawer slides open.
Inside is a passport.
My passport.
The forged one I used to get here. The one I kept in the safe in my hotel room, the one I checked three times before I left the hotel.
It’s sitting in his drawer like it’s always been there.
My blood turns cold.
I lift it slowly, staring at it like it might dissolve. It doesn’t. It’s real. It’s mine.
Or it was.
I set it down with shaking fingers and keep searching because if he has that, he has everything. He has my routes, my papers, my names, my options.
I reach into the drawer again and pull out a small stack of photographs.
There I am, leaving the hotel. There I am in the bar. There I am on the street outside, glancing over my shoulder like I can feel the eyes on me.
He didn’t just find me tonight. He’s been with me the whole time.
My throat closes, panic clawing, hot and fast.
I back away from the desk, breath coming in short bursts, and that’s when I see it.
On the far corner of the desk, angled like it’s meant to be noticed, sits another framed photograph.
Not the one from the party.
This one is from the vault.
Me, in black, hair pinned tight, turning my head slightly like I can sense the camera. The moment before the alarm screams. The moment before the chase begins. The moment I said goodbye like it meant something.
He framed it.
Like art. Like ownership. Like worship.
My stomach twists, heat and fear tangling so tight I can’t separate them. Because there’s something about that frame, about the care taken to place it there, that isn’t just obsession.
It’s reverence. And that’s the thing that scares me most. It’s not because he caught me. Or that he locked every door he didn’t want me to go through. But that he’s been watching me long enough to know exactly who I am… and wants me anyway.
Behind me, the door clicks.
I freeze, the blood in my veins turning to ice.
“Found what you were looking for?”