Chapter 18 Investigating the Past
POV: Maya
The silence that followed her punishment was different.
In the days before, the silence of the penthouse had been oppressive, a weapon Roman used to isolate her. But now, after he left her on the marble floor, broken and humiliated, the silence was something else. It was a battlefield after the war.
Maya dragged herself off the floor. Every muscle in her body protested. The black shirt he'd torn lay in shreds. She kicked it aside in disgust.
She went to the marble bathroom, her limbs shaking so badly she could barely stand. She stepped into the shower and turned the water as hot as she could bear, scrubbing her skin until it was red. She was trying to wash him off her—his touch, his smell, his force.
But as the water poured down, a cold realization cut through her misery.
He was terrified.
The memory wasn't of the brutal sex. It was of the tremor in his hands afterward. The fury in his eyes, yes, but beneath it... panic. The same naked, primitive panic she'd heard in his nightmare.
His reaction to her escape had been disproportionate. It wasn't the anger of an owner whose property had disobeyed. It was the terror of a man who thought the world was ending.
“You are a reckless fool!”
He wasn't punishing her for disobedience. He was punishing her for recklessness.
Maya turned off the water. She wrapped herself in one of the absurdly soft robes. She stopped in front of the fogged mirror and wiped a circle with her hand. Her eyes were wild, her lips swollen.
She was no longer just a prisoner. She was a witness.
Roman Lazarov had a weak spot. And that weakness was tied to two things: Viktor Sokolov and the word he whispered in his sleep.
Anja.
Maya felt a new determination solidify in her chest, cold and hard. The silent rebellion—not eating, not washing—was useless, childish. He had proven that. Physical escape was impossible; he controlled the entire world outside.
But there was another way.
Roman thought she was an idiot. An “asset.” A “doll.” He didn't think she was capable of thinking.
Knowledge was power. If she couldn't fight with her fists—and she'd tried—she would fight with her mind. To survive him, she needed to understand him. She needed to understand why he was keeping her locked up, and why her mere existence seemed to torture him.
She returned to the gray bedroom.
He left her alone for the rest of the day. Food appeared. She ate. She needed strength for what came next.
The next morning, she sat at the small glass desk in her room. On it was a laptop. Thin, silver, unmarked, exactly like the “collar” phone he'd replaced. It had been there all along, but she'd ignored it, afraid of what it represented.
She opened it.
The screen came to life instantly. The desktop was empty except for a single browser icon.
She knew he was monitoring. Every click. Every keystroke.
Let him watch, she thought, a cold fire burning in her stomach. I'm not looking for a bus ticket. I'm looking for you.
She opened the browser. The homepage was a blank search engine.
Her hands hovered over the keyboard. What would she search for?
She started simple.
Search 1: “Roman Lazarov”
Results flooded the screen. Thousands of them. Forbes. Wall Street Journal. Articles about “Lazarov Industries” and its meteoric rise. Hostile takeovers. Shipping contracts. Cold, calculated philanthropy—museums like the one she'd worked at.
It was the public man. The reclusive billionaire. The armor. Useless. She scrolled page after page. Nothing about his personal life. Nothing about family.
She closed the tab.
Search 2: “Viktor Sokolov”
Fewer results. Far fewer. The articles were vague. “Import/export businessman.” “Eastern European shipping magnate.” There were whispers on financial forums about “underworld ties” and “aggressive business practices,” but nothing concrete. He was a ghost. A very rich and dangerous ghost.
This was also useless. They were two brick walls.
She needed a sledgehammer.
She opened a new tab. Her fingers typed the combination.
Search 3: “Roman Lazarov” “Viktor Sokolov”
The quotation marks were important. She wanted both names together.
The number of results dropped to just a few dozen.
She clicked. Page after page of business news. What did she expect?
They were all dry articles. “RIVALS COMPETE FOR BALTIC SHIPPING CONTRACT.” “LAZAROV OUTBIDS SOKOLOV FOR BLACK SEA TERMINAL.”
It was a business rivalry. A bitter, billion-dollar rivalry. But that didn’t explain the nightmare. It didn’t explain the fury over a two-hour escape. Businessmen didn’t break wine glasses and nearly kill people over shipping contracts.
This was personal.
She needed to dig deeper. What did Sokolov’s warning mean? “He breaks his toys.”
She went back to her first thought. The nightmare.
She closed her eyes. The sound. The name he whispered. Anja.
She opened her eyes. New search.
Search 4: “Roman Lazarov” “Anja”
Her heart leapt.
The first result wasn’t from Forbes. It was an archived link from the New York Post, from five years ago. The text was yellowed, the layout dated.
The headline hit Maya like a punch to the gut.
“TRAGEDY IN LAZAROV FAMILY: HEIRESS DIES IN FIERY CAR CRASH.”
Maya’s hand flew to her mouth. The air left her lungs.
She clicked.
The article was short, sensationalist. She devoured it, her eyes scanning the digitized text.
“...a single-vehicle accident... high speed... foggy conditions... The vehicle, a luxury sports convertible, left the road and struck trees, immediately catching fire...”
She kept reading, horror settling in.
“The driver, Anja Lazarov, 19, was pronounced dead at the scene. The passenger, her older brother, Roman Lazarov, 25, was pulled from the wreckage by passing motorists and transported to the hospital in critical condition...”
Maya stopped.
He was in the car.
He survived. She didn’t.
The room went cold. The cashmere sweater offered no warmth.
Anja Lazarov. His sister.
She looked at a small grainy photo in the article. A yearbook photo, perhaps. A dark-haired young woman, smiling at the camera. A wide, reckless smile.
Maya kept reading. The article mentioned Roman’s rise to take over the family empire after his father’s death a year earlier. It mentioned how Anja was “known in social circles for her free spirit and love of speed.”
There was no mention of Viktor Sokolov.
Maya frowned. The connection was still missing. This explained the nightmare. It explained his reaction to the word reckless.
But where did Sokolov fit in?
She typed a new search, her heart pounding.
Search 5: “Anja Lazarov” “Viktor Sokolov”
Click.
No results found.
Of course not. That would be too easy.
Maya thought. Roman hated him. He blamed Sokolov for this. But how?
She went back to the “Lazarov” + “Sokolov” search. She scrolled down, past the business news. She went to page three. Page four.
And there it was.
A link from an obscure financial blog, also from about five years ago. The headline was “THE SECRET LAZAROV-SOKOLOV WAR HEATS UP.”
She clicked.
The article was speculative, full of jargon she barely understood. But then she saw it.
“Inside sources suggest that the recent tragic ‘accident’ that claimed the life of heiress Anja Lazarov may not have been an accident. Rumors in the Baltic port suggest that Lazarov’s car was sabotaged.”
Maya swallowed hard.
“While no evidence has been presented, the rivalry between Roman Lazarov and Viktor Sokolov has intensified. Sources say Lazarov believes Sokolov was behind the sabotage, seeing it as retaliation for losing the Black Sea shipping contract...”
The world stopped.
The connection. She had it.
Anja. The nineteen-year-old sister.
The accident.
The sabotage.
Viktor Sokolov.
Roman wasn’t just grieving. He was on a vendetta. He believed that Viktor Sokolov, the same man who held Leo’s debt, was the man who murdered his sister.
And Sokolov's warning at the restaurant... “I saw you at the museum... and I saw him watching you.”
The air felt so thin Maya could barely breathe.
Oh my God.
She closed the laptop with a dull thud.
She finally understood.
She looked out the window, at the city below. The glass cage made sense now. Roman's panic when she ran. His obsession with Sokolov.
Roman was terrified. He was terrified because the man he believed had killed his sister... had now noticed her.
She wasn't an “asset.” She wasn't a “doll.”
She was bait.
Or, worse, she was a ghost.
The war between Roman and Sokolov wasn't about money or business. It was about a dead girl.
And she, Maya Ventura, had somehow ended up caught in the crossfire of a five-year-old tragedy.
She stood up, walking to the studio he'd given her. She looked at her canvases. She finally had her theory.
The monster who kept her locked up wasn't doing it for power.
He was doing it out of fear.
And she didn't know which was more terrifying.