Chapter 28 The Photograph
POV: Maya
“You're insane.”
Maya's voice was a dry rasp in the dusty silence of the room. Viktor Sokolov's words echoed in her mind. The ghost of Anja Lazarov. Her spitting image.
She was tied with silk ribbons to a canopy bed—a sick replica of a dead woman's room. The situation was so grotesque, so theatrical, it could only be the invention of a madman.
“I'm insane?” Viktor laughed, soft and amused. He was still standing near the door, his camel-colored overcoat immaculate. “My dear, I'm the only person in this story who is perfectly sane. I'm a man of cause and effect. Roman,” he mocked, “is a man of trauma and obsession.”
“That's a lie,” Maya said, pulling at her wrists. The silk didn't give, only tightened, burning her skin. “It's a trick. You're lying.”
“Ah, but am I?” Sokolov tilted his head, the paternal smile back in place—which only made him more terrifying. “You're an artist, Maya. You appreciate visual evidence, don't you?”
He didn't wait for an answer. He walked with casual grace to the mahogany vanity in the corner of the room—the same one she'd noticed before. He opened one of the small curved drawers.
Maya's stomach turned. He was using her room. He was taking things from inside it.
“Roman never showed you a photograph,” Viktor murmured, more to himself, rummaging through the drawer. “Of course not. He couldn't bear it. He wants the ghost, but he's afraid of the proof.”
He pulled something out. A small square of photographic paper, old, the edges slightly yellowed.
He turned. He walked to the bed.
Maya recoiled as much as she could, her body tense against the restraints. He didn't touch her. He simply tossed the photograph, as if playing a card at a poker table.
It landed on the peach-colored comforter, right next to her hip.
“Go ahead, sparrow,” he whispered. “See for yourself.”
Maya held her breath. She refused to look. She wouldn't give him that satisfaction. She kept her eyes fixed on the floral wallpaper in front of her.
“Stubborn,” Viktor sighed. “Like her. But that's all right. We have time.”
The silence stretched. Maya clenched her teeth so hard her jaw ached. But curiosity was a poison, and the photograph was there, burning in her peripheral vision.
Slowly, hating herself for it, she moved her eyes.
At first, it was just a blur. Faded colors.
Then she focused.
The air left her.
It wasn't a sigh. It was an evacuation of her lungs, so sudden she felt hollow.
It wasn't a vague resemblance.
The photograph showed a summer day. Bright sun, blue water in the background—maybe a lake or the sea. Two people in a boat.
One of them was Roman.
But not the Roman she knew. Not the king of shadows or the icy CEO. This was Roman in maybe his early twenties. His hair was longer, tousled by the wind. He wasn't wearing a suit. And he was… smiling.
A genuine smile, open-mouthed, full of teeth and life. A smile that reached his eyes, making them seem almost… kind. He looked happy.
And beside him, with her arm around his shoulders, laughing at the camera…
It was her.
No.
It wasn't her.
But it was.
Maya felt the world crumble. The floral wallpaper seemed to spin.
The girl in the photograph had dark, wild hair flying in the wind. She had the same large, slightly upturned eyes. The same stubborn chin. The same wide mouth that seemed made for laughing or spitting fire.
It was the face she saw in the mirror every morning.
They could have been twins.
She looked from the smiling, dead face in the photograph to her own faint reflection in the polished mahogany bedpost.
It was her. It wasn't her.
“Anja,” Maya whispered. The name she'd heard in his nightmare finally had a face.
“Anja,” Sokolov confirmed, his voice satisfied. “Little, reckless Anja Lazarov.”
The shock was so profound it was paralyzing. Suddenly, everything made sense.
That first look at the museum. He wasn't looking at her with desire; he was looking at her like she was a ghost.
The obsession. The Demand. The refusal to let her go.
The fury when she ran to see Leo. “You're a reckless fool!” He wasn't yelling at her. He was yelling at her.
And the yacht. The slow sex.
Nausea slammed into her. She turned away, gagging on bile. The kiss under the stars. He'd been kissing his sister's ghost. Revulsion made her writhe against the silk ribbons.
“Ah,” Sokolov said with clinical satisfaction. “There it is. The realization. Ugly thing, isn't it? Being a man's mourning fetish?”
He picked up the photo from the bed. Maya recoiled from his touch.
He held it in front of her face. “Look at her. So full of life. So... fast.”
He stepped back, admiring the photo like a work of art. “The accident,” he said, his voice shifting into something narrative—like he was telling a bedtime story.
Maya froze. The accident. Her research. The police report he'd sent.
“You lied,” she gasped. “The report. Roman... he wasn't driving. The blog said...”
“The blog?” Sokolov laughed. “The blog was right about one thing. There was sabotage. The blog just got the saboteur wrong.”
He looked at her. The paternal smile was gone, replaced by cold emptiness.
“But the report I sent you... Driver: Roman D. Lazarov... ah, that was a work of art. So easy to believe, wasn't it? Especially after he refused to deny it.”
“So... he didn't kill her?” The confusion was a labyrinth.
“Kill her?” Sokolov scoffed. “Of course he killed her. Not with the car. But with his weakness.”
He began pacing the room, the photograph still in his hand. “The story Roman tells himself,” he said, “is that I sabotaged the car. That I caused the accident. It's a comfortable lie. He needs a monster because he can't bear the truth.”
“What truth?”
Sokolov stopped in front of her. The smell of tea and cruelty.
“The truth,” he said, “is that Roman was there.”
That matched her research. The passenger... Roman Lazarov... pulled from the wreckage.
“He was in the car with her,” Sokolov continued, his voice low and hypnotic. “He survived. She didn't. But you know what he told me once, years ago, in a moment of drunken weakness, long before he was king? He told me the fire didn't kill her instantly.”
The air in the room went still.
“He pulled her from the wreckage,” Sokolov hissed, his face close to hers now. “Her leg was trapped. He tried. Oh, how he tried. But the fire was coming. And she... she screamed.”
Maya squeezed her eyes shut. “Stop.”
“He told me,” Sokolov continued, relentless, “that he could hear her bones breaking. That she looked at him, and she knew. And she begged him. 'Don't leave me, Roman. Don't let me burn.'”
“STOP!” Maya screamed, pulling at the silks, the skin on her wrists tearing.
“And what did he do?” Sokolov grabbed her chin, forcing her to look at him. The gloved touch was like frozen steel. “What did the great and powerful Roman Lazarov do? He panicked. The fire hit him. And he ran.”
The tear that rolled down Maya's face was scalding.
“He ran,” Sokolov repeated, savoring the word. “He left her. He stood on the side of the road and listened to his sister scream as she burned alive.”
He released her, disgusted.
“He couldn't save her that time, Maya,” Viktor said, straightening his overcoat. “His guilt? It's real. The nightmare? It's him reliving the moment he proved himself a coward.”
He looked at her, tied to Anja's bed.
“He's not the killer you thought he was. He's something much worse.”
Viktor smiled, a thin, cruel movement of his lips.
“He's a coward. And he can't save you now, just like he couldn't save her.”