Chapter 13 The Business Dinner
POV: Maya
Submission tasted like ashes.
After the confrontation on the carpet, something inside Maya had broken. The silent rebellion—the hunger strike, the dirty clothes—now seemed like a naive child's game. She had poked the bear, and the bear had eviscerated her.
He left her on the floor, broken and humiliated.
And then, an hour later, the phantom housekeeper entered (he unlocked the door remotely, she supposed) and placed a tray of food on the floor beside her.
It wasn't the filet mignon from the night before.
It was dry toast and chicken broth. Sick person's food.
Maya ate.
She ate, trembling, tears of shame streaming down her face and falling into the broth. Each sip was a surrender. She ate because her useless rebellion had nearly killed her. She ate because, deep beneath her terror, the survival instinct was stronger than her pride.
And Roman Lazarov, somehow, knew this.
That was three days ago.
Three days of silence and empty obedience. She ate what she was given. She showered in the marble bathroom that felt like an ice-cold rain chamber. And she wore the clothes he provided—beige cashmere pants, gray silk sweaters. Colorless, lifeless clothes. A ghost's wardrobe.
She didn't go to the studio. The door remained closed. Painting was an act of passion, and she had no passion left. She was a shell.
Early in the evening on the third day, the door to her room opened.
She was sitting on the bed, watching the city light up—a million lives that weren't hers.
Roman entered. He wore an impeccable black suit, his dark hair still damp from the shower. He hadn't visited her since... since the battle.
“Stand up,” he said.
The tone wasn't angry. It was all business. Maya obeyed. Her bare feet touched the soft carpet.
He watched her, his gray eyes sweeping over her from head to toe. She was an object being inspected.
“You're coming with me tonight,” he declared. It wasn't an invitation.
Panic, an old friend, came rushing back. “Go out?” The words came out as a wheeze. Leave the cage? Where to?
“I have a business dinner. You will accompany me.”
“I... I can't...” she began, clutching the cashmere sweater. “You said... I can't leave this floor.”
“You can't,” he corrected, stepping into the room. “I can. And you will go with me.” He moved closer, and his scent—expensive cologne, power, and something metallic—enveloped her. “You're an asset, Maya. It's time to show off my new asset.”
He was serious. He was going to show her off. Like a new car. Like a painting he'd just bought.
“I don't want to,” she whispered, hating the weakness in her voice.
His gaze hardened. “I don't recall asking what you want.” He gestured to a large, flat, glossy black box she hadn't noticed on the bed. “That's your uniform for the evening.”
He turned. “Be ready in thirty minutes. Kosta will escort you to the elevator.”
“Roman,” she called out, one last act of desperation.
He stopped at the door, looking at her over his shoulder.
“Why?”
He stared at her for a long moment. “Because I can,” he said. And then he was gone.
With trembling hands, Maya went to the black box. There was no designer name. Just darkness. She opened it.
The dress was silk. An emerald green so deep it almost looked black.
It wasn't beige or gray. It was the color of wealth.
The color of poison. It was strapless, cut with a brutal simplicity she knew cost more than her apartment in Queens.
Beside it lay black stiletto heels and a jewelry set she assumed was real diamonds.
She stripped off her beige prisoner's uniform and slipped on the emerald doll's uniform. The silk was cold against her skin. The shoes forced her into a posture that wasn't her own.
She looked at herself in the mirror.
The girl staring back was a stranger. A pale woman with frightened eyes, drowning in luxury. The green made her eyes look larger, her skin paler. She looked like a porcelain doll that had been broken and clumsily glued back together.
Exactly thirty minutes later, Kosta knocked on the door.
The elevator ride was silent. Kosta didn't look at her. He was a mountain in a suit. The car—the Maybach this time—was waiting in the garage.
Roman was already inside, in the back seat, reading something on a tablet. He didn't even look up when she got in.
“Buckle up,” he murmured.
The ride was ten minutes of tense silence. Maya could feel his leg beside hers, the heat radiating through his suit. She shrank against the door, trying to take up as little space as possible.
The restaurant was called "Aevum." No sign, just two massive oak doors set into a limestone building on the Upper East Side.
Before the car came to a complete stop, a doorman opened Maya's door. Roman got out on the other side. He didn't wait for her. He was already on the sidewalk, and when she emerged, unsteady on her stiletto heels, he placed his hand on her back.
It wasn't a gentle touch.
It was a brand.
His fingers spread across the silk, settling in the hollow above the base of her spine. His hand was large and warm. A claim. A declaration—she's mine—to the doorman, to the paparazzi across the street, to the world.
“Walk,” he murmured.
The restaurant was dark and silent. The kind of place where silence cost a thousand dollars a plate. Low murmurs. The distant clink of silver against porcelain.
They were staring.
The moment they entered, conversations stopped. Forks paused halfway to mouths. She could feel the stares prickling against her bare skin. They weren't looking at her. They were looking at him—and at the unknown woman he held like a trophy.
“Roman.” A man stood up from a table in the center of the room. Older, gray suit, nervous smile. “Glad you could make it.”
“Arthur,” Roman greeted, his voice cold. He guided Maya to her chair. His hand never left her back until she was seated.
Dinner was torture. Arthur, the business partner, tried to talk about shipping logistics and free trade zones. Roman was curt, incisive, and never smiled.
And he controlled her.
A waiter approached. “Would you like to order, Mr. Lazarov?”
Roman glanced at the menu, then at her. “She'll have the Sancerre. And the filet. Rare.”
He didn't even ask. Maya clenched her teeth.
The wine arrived. She didn't touch it.
“Drink,” Roman murmured, low enough that Arthur couldn't hear. Arthur's smile was fixed, nervous.
Maya looked at him. The defiance was tiny, but it was there.
Roman's eyes darkened. Under the table, his hand found her knee. He squeezed. Hard.
Maya gasped, the pain sharp and sudden. His fingers dug in like a steel claw.
“Drink. The wine,” he repeated, his voice still a calm whisper.
With a trembling hand, Maya picked up the glass and took a sip. The wine tasted sour in her throat.
He forced her to smile. “Arthur was telling a joke, Maya. Smile.”
She forced her lips to curve into a rictus. Arthur laughed, relieved.
She was his puppet. He was pulling the strings, and she was dancing. She realized, with growing horror, that he'd brought her here for this. To prove his control over her was absolute. To show this business partner—or perhaps just himself—that he had broken her.
That's when she felt it. The same feeling from the museum. A shift in air pressure.
A stare.
She raised her head slowly, her eyes adjusting to the dimness.
And she saw him.
At a corner table, in a private alcove, sat another man. He wasn't dark and brutal like Roman. This man was elegant, older, perhaps in his late fifties. Impeccable silver-gray hair—almost platinum—combed back. He wore a navy suit that made Roman's look cheap. Which was impossible.
He was smiling. A calm, almost paternal smile.
And he was looking directly at her.
Maya held her breath.
The man didn't look away. He didn't look at Roman. He looked at her. And then he did something that made Maya's blood run cold.
He winked at her. A slow, deliberate wink. As if they shared a secret.
“Maya.”
Roman's voice snapped her out of the trance. She turned to him. His face was pale. He had seen.
Roman was no longer looking at Arthur. He was looking at the silver-haired man. Roman's business smile had vanished. What remained was the ice mask she'd seen in his office. The predator's mask.
Arthur, sensing the shift in the air, stammered. “Roman? Something wrong?”
“No,” Roman said, his voice so low it was almost a growl. “Continue.”
But he wasn't listening to Arthur. He was locked in a silent war with the man across the room.
And the silver-haired man… he seemed to be enjoying himself.
He knew who she was.
Maya realized this with a sickening jolt. The silver-haired man recognized her. He didn't see her as Roman Lazarov's doll. He saw her as Maya Ventura, the waitress from the museum.
How did she know? Because the man raised his glass of red wine. He didn't raise it to Roman.
He raised it to her.
A toast. A silent, mocking acknowledgment.
I see you.
I remember you.
Under the table, Roman's grip on her knee became so painful she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out.
“Who is that?” she whispered to Roman, pain and fear making her reckless.
Roman didn't look at her. His gray eyes were fixed on his enemy.
“That,” Roman said, his voice a blade of ice, “is Viktor Sokolov.”
The name.
Leo's name. The name that put her in this cage.
Viktor Sokolov, the loan shark, wasn't a thug in an alley. He was this man. This elegant, silver-haired man who was toasting her in one of the most expensive restaurants in the world.
The wine, the food, the dress—it all became poison. She was sitting between two monsters. She was the prize in the middle of a battlefield.
Roman's hand squeezed harder.
CRACK.
The sound was sharp, shocking in the restaurant's silence.
Arthur jumped. Maya looked down.
The wine glass in Roman's hand had shattered. He'd squeezed it so hard the crystal broke.
Red wine and blood dripped down his fingers, staining the white linen tablecloth.
Roman didn't even blink. He continued to stare at Sokolov.
Across the room, Viktor Sokolov smiled, took a sip of his wine, and returned to eating his dinner.