Chapter 17 The Punishment
POV: Maya
The elevator doors slid open with a soft ding that sounded like a gunshot in the silence.
The apartment was dark.
Not dark like “the lights are off.” Dark like “the night had been swallowed whole.” The penthouse, usually a spectacle of city lights, had become a black void. The vast glass walls reflected only the dark interior, transforming the glass cage into a box of opaque mirrors.
Maya’s heart, which had been pounding with panic since she left Leo’s apartment, suddenly stopped.
She stepped out of the elevator, her expensive leather shoes (chosen by him) making a tiny, timid sound on the marble.
He wasn’t there.
She let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. She had rushed back, the taxi meter a ticking bomb, his threat about Leo pounding in her brain. And he wasn’t even home. The adrenaline from her escape left her shaking, and the relief made her feel weak.
She walked toward the center of the great room, the smell of air conditioning and nothing.
“Did you enjoy the outing?”
The voice came from the darkness.
Maya screamed, a high, thin sound that was swallowed by the room. She spun around, her heart exploding in her chest.
He had been there the whole time.
Sitting in one of the minimalist black armchairs, facing the door, hidden in the deepest shadows. Motionless. A predator in his lair.
A single table lamp glowed on a distant table, its light turned down as low as it would go, barely illuminating his silhouette.
Roman Lazarov stood up. Slowly.
He wasn’t angry, like at the restaurant. He wasn’t furious, like when she broke the phone.
He was calm.
And that, Maya realized with nauseating horror, was a thousand times worse. It was the calm at the eye of a hurricane. It was the calm she’d seen in his office before he made the Demand.
“Brooklyn, wasn’t it?” he said, his voice soft, almost conversational. He stepped out of the shadows and into the dim light. “An interesting choice for an afternoon.”
He was dressed. A suit. But no tie. The black shirt open at the collar. He looked like a demon in business attire.
“Is your brother’s apartment to your liking? I found the beige tones appropriately... restrained.”
“Roman, I...” she began, taking a step back.
“No,” he interrupted, his voice low and lethal. He raised a finger. “Don’t speak. Not yet.”
He took another step. And another. He moved with fluid, dangerous grace.
“Do you have any idea,” he hissed, “what you’ve done?”
“I went to see my brother!” she shot back, panic giving way to her only defense: anger. She had seen him break. He was just a man. “I needed to know if he was safe! You owe me that!”
“I owe you nothing,” he replied, his voice cutting. “I own you. A distinction you seem to have forgotten.”
He stopped three feet from her. The silence was a blade.
POV: Roman
He had been sitting in that chair for two hours.
Two hours of personal hell.
The second Kosta’s alert appeared on his phone—Asset in transit. Taxi. Brooklyn.—his world had stopped.
Not anger. No. That came later.
The first thing was panic.
Pure, icy, incapacitating panic. The same panic he’d felt five years ago, when the phone rang and a cop with a bored voice said: “Mr. Lazarov? There’s been an accident.”
Sokolov got her.
That was his only thought. He’d lost her. He’d left her alone too long. Viktor’s warning at the restaurant wasn’t a warning; it was a declaration of intent. And he, Roman, like an idiot, hadn’t locked her down hard enough.
He saw it all in a flash. Sokolov grabbing her from the taxi. Taking her to a warehouse. Her face. Anja’s face.
He had failed again. He had failed to protect the only thing that mattered, all because of his stupid pride.
He spent the first hour of her escape in his office, destroying things. Not expensive vases. His business prototypes. His plans. He smashed three tablets against the wall, roaring in a silent fury that was purely about fear. He hated that feeling. He hated the weakness, the helplessness.
And he hated her. He hated her for making him feel this again.
Then Kosta called. “She's coming back, sir.”
The panic didn't turn to relief. It turned to ice.
She hadn't been taken. She had gone. Of her own free will. She'd walked out of his protection. She'd put herself—naive and stupid—right in front of the man who wanted her dead, the man who wanted Anja dead.
He turned off the lights and waited. Icy fury building with every second he stared at the elevator door.
And now, here she was. Defiant. Unapologetic.
“I went to see my brother!”
Those words. The innocence of them. The stupidity of them.
He broke.
POV: Maya
“You went to see your brother?” he repeated, his voice so low she barely heard it.
“Yes!” she said, braver now. “I needed to know if you held up your end!”
“My end?”
He moved so fast she didn't have time to breathe.
He didn't hit her. He didn't grab her. He brushed past her, his shoulder colliding with hers, and went to the glass wall.
He stood there for a second, her back to him, his hands clenched at his sides.
She could see his reflection in the darkness.
The reflection of a man vibrating with so much tension he looked ready to explode.
“What if,” he said to the glass, “it was a trap?”
Maya stopped. “What?”
“Your brother,” he turned slowly. The calm was gone.
There was fire in his eyes now, but it wasn't the fire of desire.
It was hellfire. “What if Sokolov never let him go?
What if he was waiting for you in that apartment?
His 'men in suits' waiting outside? What if you'd just walked straight into the lion's den?”
“You said he was safe,” she whispered.
“And you believed me?” he roared, taking a step toward her. “You believed the man who bought you? Or did you just go anyway, reckless and stupid?”
“Don't call me stupid!”
“That's what you are! You're a reckless fool!” he shouted, and the word reckless seemed to rip from his throat. He grabbed her by the shoulders, his fingers digging into the cashmere. “You have no idea what's out there! You have no idea what he would do to you!”
“I know what you did!” she shouted back, pushing him. “You broke me! You locked me up! You're the monster!”
“I'm the monster?” he laughed, a terrible, joyless sound. “I'm the monster keeping you from meeting the devil!”
He pushed her. Hard. Maya stumbled backward, her back hitting the glass wall with a dull thud that stole her breath. The city exploded into light behind her.
“I'm the only one,” he hissed, pinning her against the glass, his hands on either side of her head, “keeping you alive.”
“You're suffocating me!”
“I'm protecting what's mine!” he roared, his face inches from hers. The scent of his panic—the panic she couldn't see—clung to him, mixed with his cologne. “You're mine, Maya. Don't you understand that? The Demand wasn't a suggestion.”
“I'm not your property!” she gasped, trying to break free.
“You are! You were mine the moment I laid eyes on you. You were mine the moment I found out Sokolov wanted you!”
His panic was shifting into something else. The anger, the fear, and her closeness. The same raw chemistry that had ignited on the carpet floor was back.
He looked at her mouth, her lips parted from panic.
“You had no right,” he murmured, his voice hoarse now, “to risk what I protect.”
And then he kissed her.
It was punishment. It was possession. It was a brand.
His mouth crushed hers, stealing air, stealing thought. It was desperate. A hunger lived in it that wasn't just desire—it was fear. It was a man trying to prove something was still his, that he hadn't lost it.
Maya fought. She pounded her fists against his chest, but he was a wall of steel. He grabbed her wrists, pinning them above her head against the cold glass.
“Fight me,” he gasped against her lips. “Fight me all you want. You're still mine.”
He was kissing her and claiming her at the same time. His skilled hands, now free, slid up beneath the cashmere sweater. He tore it. He didn't remove it gently—he hooked his fingers into the collar and ripped downward, the sound of expensive knit tearing echoing through the room.
Cold air hit her chest.
“Roman, no!” she begged, humiliation flooding back full force.
“Yes,” he growled, not to her, but to the universe. To Sokolov. To Anja.
He lifted her off her feet. She was trapped between his hard body and the cold glass. He carried her—or rather, dragged her—across the room from the glass wall to the solid concrete wall near the door. The dark wall where the red and black abstract painting hung.
He slammed her against it. The plaster cracked.
“You want to know what happens when you break the rules?” he said, his voice a tangle of rage and desire.
He didn't wait for an answer. He tore off her cashmere pants. The clothes meant nothing. He was marking his territory.
The sex was fast, furious, and possessive. A reassertion of ownership. His panic transformed into the only language he knew: control.
He took her against the wall, his movements hard and relentless. He gripped her hips, his fingers leaving marks. With each thrust, he reminded her who owned her.
And Maya… Maya hated him. She hated him with every fiber of her being. But her body, which he had claimed and broken, was on fire. The adrenaline of the escape, the terror of his return, the fury of his punishment—it all blurred into sensory overload.
She scratched him. She dug her nails into his back, through the black shirt. She bit his shoulder, tasting the salt of his skin.
She met him, stroke for stroke.
The climax was a violent explosion. A ragged scream from her, an animal growl from him. It was a collision, not an ending.
For a moment, he stayed there, his face buried in her neck, his body trembling. Maya could feel his heartbeat—or maybe it was hers—pounding against her like a war drum.
And she realized.
She could feel the tremor in his hands as he held her.
He was terrified.
The man who was punishing her… was afraid.
The realization hit her harder than his body had. The intensity of his reaction, the fury so disproportionate to her “escape.” It wasn't just anger at her disobedience. It was something deeper. Something darker.
It was panic. The same panic she'd heard in his nightmare.
He released her.
She slid down the wall, collapsing onto the marble floor, her limbs trembling and weak. She pulled the remains of her sweater over herself, a pathetic covering.
Roman stepped back, his chest heaving. Sweat gleamed on his forehead. He looked down at her, crumpled at his feet.
The rage and desire had vanished from his eyes. Only ice remained.
He straightened his shirt, ignoring the scratches on his neck. He looked at her with cold detachment, as if she were a problem he'd just solved in the most efficient way possible.
“Now,” he said, his voice calm and deadly. “You understand.”
He turned, not toward his own wing, but toward the office door.
“Never,” he said without looking back. “Never again.”
He walked into his office and closed the door. The click of the lock was final.
Maya was left alone on the marble floor, naked, bruised, and trembling.
She had survived the punishment. But she was more confused than ever. It wasn't the act that shook her. It was the emotion behind it.
It wasn't the fury of an owner whose toy had disobeyed.
It was the terror of a man who thought, for two terrible hours, that his favorite toy had been stolen. And he was punishing the toy for letting itself be taken.