Chapter 22 The Art Studio
POV: Maya
The twenty-four hours after the confrontation in the office were the quietest she'd ever experienced.
He was guilty. His refusal to deny it was a verdict in itself. Maya now knew, with a cold certainty that had settled in her stomach, that she was being held prisoner by the man who killed Anja Lazarov.
The revulsion was so potent she could barely breathe when the phantom housekeeper brought her food. Every bite tasted like ash and guilt. The truce on the yacht now seemed like a sick joke, a performance of psychological necrophilia he'd orchestrated. She felt foolish. And dirty.
She went back to being the model prisoner, but for a different reason. It was no longer silent rebellion or strategic observation. It was fear.
It was self-preservation.
She was locked in with a killer. She wouldn't provoke him. She would eat his food, wear his beige clothes, and stay quiet in her gray cage. She didn't paint. The adjacent studio remained untouched, a tomb for the artist she used to be.
On the second morning after the confrontation, the door to her room opened.
Maya jumped from the chair by the window, her heart leaping into her throat.
Roman was there. He wore a dark suit, his usual business armor. His face was impassive, cold, as if the confrontation in his office—the screaming of Anja's name—had never happened.
“Get dressed,” he ordered.
He tossed a bundle of clothes onto the bed. Not the beige cashmere. Jeans. Dark, expensive jeans. And a black turtleneck. Soft leather boots. Real-world clothes.
Panic hit her. “What? No.”
She stumbled back from the bed. “No. Where? Another restaurant? To show me off to someone else?”
He ignored her, his silence a brick wall. “I won't repeat myself. Kosta will be at the door in three minutes. If you're not dressed, he'll dress you.”
The threat was brutal and impersonal. He was treating her like a doll, like property. Tremors of anger and fear gripped her. She grabbed the clothes.
“Turn around,” she spat.
He didn't. He watched her with those gray, dead eyes while she, trembling with humiliation, changed out of the prisoner uniform and into the street clothes. The clothes fit perfectly, which somehow made her feel even more violated.
“Let's go,” he said, turning before she'd even gotten the second boot on.
She followed him, one foot bare and the other booted, shoving her foot into the boot as she hobbled down the hallway.
The black SUV was waiting in the garage. Kosta was at the wheel. Roman opened the back door and gestured for her to get in. She climbed in. He slid in behind her, the scent of his cologne and his power filling the confined space.
The silence in the car was a weapon. She huddled against the door, as far from him as she could get, and watched the city pass by. Her heart pounded with panic. Where was he taking her?
Would he kill her now that she knew? Was he taking her to some alley to silence her, just as—she now believed—he had silenced her sister?
But the car didn't head toward a deserted industrial area. It took the bridge. The Queensboro Bridge.
Maya's stomach twisted. “No,” she whispered.
He was retracing the same route she'd taken during her desperate escape. He was taking her back to her past.
The SUV exited the bridge and entered the familiar streets of Queens. The laundromat. The bodega. The smell of diesel and street food.
The car stopped. Not just on her street. But in front of her building. Building 3B.
“What is this?” she asked, her voice breaking. “Is this a warning? Are you going to show me what I lost?”
Roman didn't look at her. He got out of the car. Her door was opened by Kosta. She stayed frozen in the seat.
“Get out, Maya,” Roman's voice came from the sidewalk.
Trembling, she got out. She stood on the cracked sidewalk of her old life, wearing clothes worth more than six months' rent.
Roman was already at the building's front door. He was holding a key.
“You can't…” she began.
He ignored her and went inside. She followed him, climbing the three flights of stairs that smelled of boiled cabbage and dust. Each step was an echo of her old life.
She reached the landing. The door to 3B. The door Roman had broken down.
It wasn't broken.
The old, chipped wood was gone. In its place was a new door, solid dark oak, with a gleaming metal lock.
Roman slid a key into the lock. It turned with a silent, expensive click. He pushed the door open.
“After you,” he said, his voice devoid of emotion.
Maya stepped inside, expecting the smell of mildew and turpentine.
The smell that hit her was of new wood, fresh plaster, and… clean canvas.
She stopped dead.
The apartment no longer existed.
The place where she’d lived, her shoebox studio, had been gutted. The walls that divided her sleeping space were gone. The leaking radiator, vanished. The hardwood floor, once stained and worn, was now light and polished.
And the brick wall at the back, which she’d always hated for blocking the light, was no longer a wall. It was glass. Floor to ceiling. A perfect industrial studio window, facing north, flooding the space with soft, even light.
“My God,” she whispered.
And then she saw the rest.
These weren’t her old things. These were new. Things she’d only seen in catalogs she could never afford.
A solid oak easel stood in the center, so beautiful it looked like a sculpture. Next to it, a tall metal cabinet with shallow drawers. She opened it.
Inside, hundreds of tubes of paint. Not the student brands she used. These were Old Holland, Winsor & Newton. The smell of pure linseed oil was almost overwhelming. Sable brushes, still in their packaging. Charcoal. Gesso.
In one corner, stacks of Belgian stretched canvases, every size, white and pristine.
It was the studio of her dreams. It was paradise.
The artist in her, the woman she thought was dead, gasped. Her hands, against her will, began to tremble. She stepped forward as if in a trance.
She ran her fingers over the smooth wood of the new easel. The touch burned. She picked up a tube of French Ultramarine. The weight of it in her palm was substantial.
A tear escaped her eye and rolled down her cheek. A tear of pure, overwhelming artistic joy. She had this. It was real. She could create.
And then the tear froze.
Sokolov’s voice echoed in her mind. He killed her through negligence.
The falsified police report. Driver: LAZAROV, ROMAN D.
His non-denial. Get out of my sight.
This wasn’t a gift.
It was a bribe.
The oak easel suddenly seemed stained with blood. The smell of the expensive paints made her sick.
She turned slowly.
Roman stood in the doorway, watching her. The same look as always—impassive, analytical. He was waiting for a reaction. Waiting for what? Gratitude?
She squeezed the tube of paint so hard her knuckles turned white.
“What is this?” she asked, her voice dead.
Roman’s face twitched, a slight frown of confusion. “It’s what you wanted. You weren’t painting at the penthouse. I thought the environment was wrong. This is your space.”
He was frustrated. She could see it. He genuinely didn’t understand. He thought a new studio would erase… everything.
“No,” she said, stepping toward him. “I asked what is this.”
“It’s yours,” he said, his voice sharp. “I bought the building. The apartment is yours.”
He started to explain. “It’s yours, but…”
She cut him off. The sight of that perfect studio, paid for with Anja’s blood money, was too much. “What do you want in exchange for this?”
“I already have what I want in exchange,” he said coldly. “Your obedience.”
“No.” She shook her head, disgust rising in her throat. “This.” She gestured to the canvases, the light, the luxury. “This is extra payment. For what? For my silence?”
She was inches from him now, and she didn’t care anymore if he was a killer. She didn’t care if he hurt her.
“Is this to ease your conscience?” she hissed.
Roman’s face darkened. The frustration turned to ice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?” she pressed, her voice breaking. “Is that it, Roman? You buy me a toy studio so you can sleep at night? So you can stop having nightmares about her?”
Anja’s name wasn’t spoken, but it hung in the air between them, toxic and heavy.
His reaction was instant and violent. He didn’t touch her. He didn’t even raise his voice. But the air around him turned so cold that Maya stepped back.
He looked at the tube of paint in her hand.
“Paint,” he said, his voice low and lethal. “Or burn it all down. I don’t care.”
He turned to leave.
“I didn’t ask for this!” she shouted at his back.
He stopped in the doorway without turning around. “You don’t have to. You’re my property. I decide the furniture in your cage.”
He left, closing the new, solid door behind him, leaving her alone.
Maya looked around the studio of her dreams. The north light was perfect. The smell of new canvas was intoxicating.
She screamed. A scream of rage and frustration and confusion.
She grabbed the expensive tube of “French Ultramarine” paint and hurled it with all her strength at the perfect white canvas on the easel.
The tube exploded.
Dark blue paint splattered across the canvas, dripping onto the polished wood floor.
It looked like blood.
Maya sank to the floor, surrounded by the paradise that Anja’s killer had built for her. And for the first time, she didn’t know who she hated more: him, or the part of her that still wanted to pick up a brush.