Chapter 24 The Performance
POV: Maya
The night after the message brought a different kind of sleeplessness. Not the feverish panic of the first day, nor the confused revulsion after the yacht.
It was a cold, lethal calm.
Maya knew what she had to do. Today. Midnight. Kent Street warehouse.
She had eighteen hours. Eighteen hours to be the perfect prisoner. Eighteen hours to play the role of her life—to save herself and Leo.
She woke before the phantom housekeeper brought breakfast. She showered, but this time it wasn't to scrub away his filth—it was to prepare for battle. She dressed in the beige-gray uniform, the cashmere costume of a domesticated woman.
When the housekeeper entered, Maya was sitting at the table.
“Good morning,” Maya said.
The woman froze, the silver tray trembling in her hands. In a month, Maya had never spoken to her. The housekeeper—Sokolov's spy, the bomb carrier—looked at her with wide, pale eyes full of terror. She nodded stiffly, set down the tray, and practically fled.
Maya ate every bite. Omelet. Fruit. She needed the energy.
He killed the sister. He's going to kill us too.
Leo's words were a drumbeat in her brain. Every act of obedience was an act of war.
After breakfast, she did the unthinkable. She went to the adjacent studio.
The smell of turpentine and oil paint hit her, but today it didn't smell like freedom. It smelled like camouflage. The canvas she had attacked was still there, the dried explosion of ultramarine blue mocking her from the center of the white linen.
She placed it on the easel. She picked up her palettes, the expensive tubes of paint he had bought. The murderer's bribe.
She began to paint.
But her mind wasn't on the canvas. It was on security.
She painted, but she watched. The clock on the studio wall read 9:30. She knew about the afternoon shift change at 3:00 p.m.—she'd observed it before. But she couldn't risk daytime. It had to be at night.
The night shift change. 11:00 p.m.
She remembered Kosta entering the elevator. He came from below. That meant the day guard left first.
10:58 p.m.: The day guard—a stocky man she'd nicknamed Marco—takes the service elevator down.
11:00 p.m.: The service elevator returns, bringing Kosta for the night shift.
11:01 p.m.: Kosta is at his post outside her wing.
The window. Two, maybe three minutes. The time it took for the elevator to descend and return.
Three minutes to cross the penthouse, reach the service elevator, descend sixty floors, and vanish into the Manhattan night.
It was impossible.
You'll figure it out. You're the smart one, Maya.
She needed more time. She needed a distraction. And she needed Roman to let his guard down.
She painted all day. She mixed the furious blue with whites and grays, creating a chaotic storm landscape. She was hiding her rage in plain sight. The housekeeper brought lunch; she ate beside the easel.
He came at seven. Just as she knew he would.
The studio door opened without warning.
Roman stopped in the doorway. Maya didn't turn. She felt the air go cold. She kept mixing a shade of Payne's gray.
“You're painting.”
His tone was flat, matter-of-fact, but surprise lurked beneath it. He was shocked she was using the gift she had so violently rejected.
She wiped the brush on a cloth, slowly. Then she turned.
This was the scene. The first act of her performance.
She didn't glare at him with hatred. She didn't spit at him. She looked at him, kept her shoulders slumped, and dropped her gaze to the floor.
“I... I needed something to do,” she murmured—the voice of a broken woman.
He stepped inside, his expensive shoes silent on the floor. He stopped beside the canvas. He studied the storm she was creating.
“Interesting,” he said, and she couldn't tell if he meant the painting or the change in her.
He was close. Close enough that she could smell his cologne and the power radiating off him. Her stomach turned. Murderer.
“The blue you threw,” he said, pointing to the center of the canvas. “You're using it.”
“Can't waste expensive paint,” she replied, her voice low.
He turned to her. He was studying her. She could feel his eyes on her, dissecting her, searching for the trap. She had to be better than him.
“You're different,” he said.
She shrugged, a small, helpless gesture. “I'm tired.” She looked at him, forcing her eyes to meet his. “I'm so tired of fighting you, Roman.”
The lie slipped out, smooth and venomous.
He narrowed his eyes. Suspicious. Remembering the confrontation in the office.
He took a step toward her. The predator testing the prey. “You screamed my sister’s name at me.”
“I know.” She let a tear (real, but for different reasons) fill her eyes. “I’m sorry. I was… angry. I was looking for a way to hurt you.”
That he would understand. The malice.
He continued to approach. “And now?”
“Now… I don’t know.” She looked at the painting. “I just… understand that I can’t win.”
He stopped in front of her. The man who broke her on the floor. The man who took her to the yacht. The man who killed Anja.
He’ll kill us too.
He reached out.
She wanted to recoil. She wanted to vomit. Her entire body screamed in protest.
He touched her face.
His touch. His fingers brushed her cheek, where there was a smudge of paint. The killer’s hand.
Her stomach turned violently. She had to swallow back bile. She saw him in the car with Anja, the car crashing, the fire…
Act.
She didn’t pull back. She closed her eyes and, in the most disgusting act of her life, she leaned into his hand.
He went still. She felt him hesitate. He wasn’t expecting this.
She opened her eyes. She was crying now, hot tears of self-loathing rolling down her face. He would see it as regret.
“You seem better today,” he murmured, his voice softer. The phrase from the prompt.
She swallowed the lie. “I feel… calmer.”
He bought it. She could see it in his eyes. The tension in his shoulders relaxed a fraction. He saw her not as a threat, but as his “asset” finally broken, finally domesticated. The truce on the yacht, followed by her hysterical confrontation, and now this… the final surrender.
He ran his thumb across her cheek. “Good.”
Arrogant bastard.
“I…” she began, forcing her voice to tremble. “I can… can I see you… later? In my room?”
It was the bait. The promise of complete surrender. She needed him as far away from her wing as possible, complacent and waiting for her, while she escaped.
His eyes darkened, desire replacing suspicion. He remembered the yacht. He remembered the first night.
“Yes,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Finish your… mess.” He gestured to the paints. “I’ll be in my office.”
He leaned in, and Maya’s panic spiked. He was going to kiss her.
She met him halfway, a quick, chaste kiss on his cheek, before he could claim her lips. She brushed her fingers against his face, the touch making her skin burn. “I just… need one more hour.”
He nodded, satisfied. He was the king, and his subject had bowed.
He turned and left the studio. He didn’t slam the door. He left it open, a new level of trust she had earned with her betrayal.
He was gone.
She stood there, trembling, the smell of his cologne on her skin. She ran to the studio sink and scrubbed her face, scrubbed her cheek until it was red.
She looked at the clock on the wall.
9:45 p.m.
One hour and fifteen minutes until the guard change.
She went to the studio door and closed it, but didn’t lock it. She returned to the canvas. She picked up a brush.
She wasn’t painting anymore. She was waiting.
10:30 p.m. The faint sound of the housekeeper picking up her dinner tray in the hallway.
10:50 p.m. The penthouse was silent as a tomb.
Maya placed the brush in the jar of turpentine. The sound was a soft clink.
She looked at the painting. The storm.
She went to the studio closet. She didn’t grab clothes. She grabbed the roll of painter’s tape and a utility knife that Kosta had packed.
She returned to her room. Her heart was a drum. She traded the beige sweater for the black turtleneck he’d given her for the studio trip. Darkness.
10:57 p.m.
She went to her bedroom door, opened it a crack, and looked into the hallway. Empty. The baseboard lighting was the only guide.
She listened. The soft sound of the service elevator being called. Far away, at the end of the hallway.
Marco is leaving.
She counted the seconds. One minute for the elevator to go down. One minute for Kosta's call. One minute to come back up.
Three minutes.
She stepped into the hallway. She didn't run. She walked, fast and silent, her soft-soled shoes making no sound.
She headed in the opposite direction from the elevator. Toward the service kitchen.
She reached the service elevator, the same one she'd been watching. The light above it was off. It was on the ground floor, waiting for Kosta.
She didn't press the button.
She turned to the door beside it. “FIRE ESCAPE.”
His threat about Leo was a lie. Sokolov and Roman were partners. He wouldn't hurt Leo. He was manipulating her.
She grabbed the metal handle of the stairwell door. What if it was locked? What if it set off an alarm?
It was a risk.
She thought of Leo. She thought of Anja.
He killed his sister. He'll kill us too.
She pushed the metal bar.
No alarm.
The door swung open with a heavy click. A gust of cold air and dust hit her.
She cast one last look at the luxury penthouse, the gilded cage that had become the stage for her deception.
Maya Ventura stepped into the dark stairwell and started to run.