Chapter 5 Reality Bites
The walk of shame was worse than the night itself.
Maya emerged from the cold alley into the gray, merciless light of a Sunday morning in Manhattan. It was six a.m. The city hung in a sleepy pause, but the air smelled of diesel, wet garbage, and stale bread.
She ran three blocks with her catering apron tied around her waist like a ridiculous skirt, Roman Lazarov’s torn pants clutched in a death grip.
The few people she saw—a bread delivery man, a night doorman sweeping the sidewalk—looked at her with a mixture of pity and disgust. She looked like what she was: the wreckage of a bad night.
The subway. The descent into the station was a descent back into her world. The rarefied air of the penthouse gave way to the familiar smell of hot metal, ozone, and dried urine.
She sat in the nearly empty F train car, huddled in the corner. The ride to Queens was a blur of stops and jolts. At each station, more people boarded—real workers in their uniforms heading to Sunday shifts, or last night’s revelers stumbling home with red eyes. No one looked as bad as she did.
The shame was a cold, oily film over her skin. What had she done? She’d given herself to the man who represented everything she despised. She’d fought him, scratched him, screamed at him. And for what? A moment of oblivion?
Seventy thousand dollars.
The number pounded in her mind with the rattle of the train. The oblivion didn’t last. Leo’s debt did.
When she finally got off at her stop, the sun was higher, casting a watery light over the brick buildings of Queens. Her building was a five-story block squeezed between a laundromat and a bodega. The smell of frying bacon from the ground-floor apartment mixed with exhaust fumes from the street.
She climbed the three flights of stairs, her feet throbbing with each step. Exhaustion hit her suddenly, so heavy she had to lean on the railing. Her muscles ached. Her body felt used, not her own.
She stopped in front of her door, 3B. The paint was peeling. She shoved the key into the lock, which, as always, stuck. She had to force her shoulder against the wood.
The door opened with a groan.
And the smell hit her.
Her apartment.
It wasn’t the sterile silence and glass vastness of Roman’s penthouse. That place had no smell. It was a vacuum.
Her apartment smelled of life. Her life.
First, the pungent bite of turpentine and oil paint from her canvases. The smell of reheated coffee from four hours ago. The smell of dust on the hardwood floors. And underneath it all, the faint, persistent smell of mold from the radiator that always leaked.
It was small. God, how small it was. After the vastness of the night before, her studio apartment felt like a shoebox. Sheets covered the sleeping area. Easels and stacked canvases dominated the living space, her half-finished projects standing like silent accusations of her failure to sell them.
Her shame from the night before transformed into a deep, heavy sadness. This place was her sanctuary. Where she was an artist. But that morning, it just felt like a cage.
Then she saw him.
He wasn’t supposed to be there.
In the dimness, there was a shape on her couch. The battered couch she’d picked up off the curb three years ago. A figure curled up, sleeping under a thin blanket.
Panic—the cold, familiar kind—replaced the shame.
“Leo?”
The figure stirred. A groan. A tangle of light brown hair appeared. Leo Ventura sat up, blinking against the weak light.
“Maya?” His voice was hoarse with sleep and panic. “Where were you? I called all night.”
He was younger, twenty-one, and had the kind of charming, angelic face that always got him out of trouble. But not today. Today, his face was pale, with dark, purplish circles under his eyes. He looked sick. He looked desperate.
He stood up, wearing the same jeans and hoodie from two days ago. Then he really saw her.
He saw the apron as a skirt. He saw the wrinkled uniform shirt. He saw the purple mark on her jaw where Roman had grabbed her.
“Oh my God,” he whispered. The panic in his eyes transformed into a different kind of horror. “Maya, what happened to you? Were you mugged? Did someone hurt you?”
The question was so absurd, so ironic, that Maya almost laughed. Yes. She’d been mugged, but not in the way he thought.
But the genuine concern on his face, the fear for her, broke something. Her shame evaporated, instantly replaced by the overwhelming need to protect him. This was her role. She was the strong one. He was the one who needed rescuing.
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice hard. She threw the torn pants on the floor and untied the apron. “I just… worked late.”
It was a weak lie, and they both knew it.
“Maya, don’t lie to me. What…”
“Shut up, Leo,” she interrupted, her voice cutting through the air. She couldn’t deal with last night right now. “What are you doing here? You were supposed to be hiding.”
Leo’s face crumbled. The panic returned full force. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t stay there. They… they…”
“They what, Leo?” Maya went to the small kitchen and poured a glass of water, her hands shaking.
“They know where I was,” he said, his voice fast and high. “They went to Matt’s apartment. Last night. Looking for me.”
The glass of water stopped halfway to her mouth. “What?”
“I ran. I came here. I didn’t know where else to go. I knocked. I waited. You weren’t here.” He was starting to hyperventilate. “I broke in through your back window.”
“Did they come here?” Her panic was now matching his.
“I don’t think so. I don’t know. I turned off the lights.” He ran his shaking hands through his hair. “Maya, they said time’s up. They said… they said today is the last day.”
Today. Sunday. The catering money would barely cover one day’s interest.
“Okay,” Maya said. She set the glass down in the sink. Her calm was a lie, a thin shell over absolute terror. “Okay. Think. Who are they, Leo? You told me a name. But it wasn’t the main name.”
“I don’t know,” he whimpered.
“That’s not good enough!” Maya turned and grabbed him by the shoulders of his hoodie. He was taller than her, but in that moment, he was a child. “What’s the name, Leo? The name of the man you actually owe. Not the thugs they send. The name at the top. Say the name!”
“Maya, please, you don’t understand…”
“I understand!” she screamed, shaking him. “I understand seventy thousand dollars! I understand ‘break your legs’! I understand ‘today is the last day’! What I don’t understand is why you’re so stupid! NOW TELL ME THE NAME!”
Tears streamed down his face. He was pathetic. He was her brother.
“Sokolov,” he whispered, the name tearing from his throat.
Maya froze. The name hung in the musty air between them.
“What?”
“His name is Sokolov,” Leo repeated, his voice a little steadier, as if just saying the name was a final betrayal. “His name is Viktor Sokolov.”
The name meant nothing to her. And yet, it meant everything.
Sokolov. It wasn’t a Queens name. It didn’t sound like a corner loan shark charging twenty percent. It sounded… expensive. It sounded foreign. It sounded cold and heavy, like the marble in Roman’s apartment.
“Viktor Sokolov,” she repeated, releasing him.
She backed away, stumbling over one of her own fallen canvases. She sank onto the single wooden stool she used for painting.
Last night with Roman Lazarov. A fantasy of power and rage. A night in a glass mausoleum.
This was reality. A moldy apartment. A crying brother. And a name that sounded like a death sentence.
“How much?” she asked, her voice dead.
“What?” Leo sniffled.
“The exact number. Don’t lie to me.”
He looked away. “I told you. Seventy.”
“Seventy thousand dollars,” Maya said aloud. The number sounded obscene in the small apartment. It was an astronomical amount. It was impossible. It was the price of a luxury car. It was more than she’d earn in two years.
It was a lifetime.
She looked at her own hands, stained with dried paint and city grime. She thought of Roman Lazarov’s hand on her face, the broken earring.
Last night wasn’t oblivion. It was a prelude. She thought she’d hit rock bottom on his marble floor.
She was wrong.
She’d only just started to fall.