Chapter 29 Sokolovs Truth
POV: Maya
Anja's room was deathly silent, except for the sound of Maya's dry, ragged sobs.
She was broken.
Viktor Sokolov's story—the story of the fire, of Anja's screams, of Roman's cowardice—had done what the silk ribbons couldn't. It had paralyzed her. She lay on the canopy bed, tears streaming down her temples and soaking the linen pillow, a pathetic echo of the girl in the photograph.
Roman. A coward. A man who ran and left his sister to burn.
Viktor Sokolov watched her collapse with an air of clinical satisfaction. He still held the yellowed photograph, swinging it gently between his gloved fingers.
“It's a sad story, isn't it?” he said, his voice soft and compassionate, which made it a thousand times crueler. “The little king, haunted by the moment his crown slipped. So tragic.”
Maya tried to control her breathing. The crying was giving way to a cold numbness. But something was wrong. A small pebble in her mental shoe. A dissonance.
“You're...” she choked, her voice hoarse. “You're lying.”
Viktor's smile faltered, just a fraction. “My dear, why would I lie about something so... poetic?”
“Because you lie,” she gasped, anger beginning to burn through the shock. “You lie about everything.”
She pulled at her wrists, the silk biting into her skin. “The report... the police report you sent me. It said he was driving. It said negligence.”
She glared at him, eyes red. “Your blog research said sabotage. And now... now you say he was a coward. Your stories don't match. Which one is the truth, you lying bastard?”
Silence filled the room.
Viktor Sokolov's paternal smile vanished. Completely. The mask of charm didn't fall; it disintegrated.
He looked at her, no longer as an amused sadist, but with new and genuine appreciation.
“Clever,” he murmured.
He began to laugh. It wasn't the amused laughter from before. It was a dry, cold sound, like dead leaves scraping on concrete.
“Ah, Maya. You're so much smarter than Anja ever was. She was all fire and instinct. But you... you actually listen.”
He walked to the velvet chair and sat down, crossing his legs. He was no longer an actor on stage. He was the director.
“You're right,” he said, with frightening simplicity.
“They're all lies. The negligence report. The blog sabotage. The story of the coward running from the fire.” He gestured with his gloved hand.
“Tools. Brushes. I was painting a portrait for you.
I wanted to see which version of the monster you'd believe most.”
Maya stopped breathing. “Wh... what?”
“It was a game,” he said, bored. “To see how quickly I could destroy the little truce you had on that yacht. And it worked perfectly, didn't it? You confronted him. You accused him.”
“So,” she whispered, blood freezing in her veins. “If all of that was a lie... what... what really happened to Anja?”
Viktor looked out the window, toward the dark garden beyond. His face was calm, contemplative.
“What happened,” he said, his voice losing all inflection, “was that I got tired of losing.”
He looked back at her. The emptiness in his blue eyes was absolute.
“Roman was beating me. At everything. Baltic contracts. Transport terminals. He was young, arrogant, and faster than me. He was costing me billions. And he loved it.”
He stood up, restless, and began pacing around the dollhouse room.
“I needed an edge. Something to break his focus. And I discovered the one thing he loved more than his empire.” He touched the photograph, which he had placed on the vanity. “Her.”
“Anja.”
“She was his weak point. So loud. So reckless. So... alive.” He stopped, a thin, humorless smile on his lips.
“She loved speed. She loved fast cars. And she had no idea who I was when I met her at a party in Monaco.
She didn't even notice when my mechanic gave her favorite convertible a little 'adjustment. '”
Maya felt the room spin. The blog. The blog was right. But it was wrong about the saboteur.
“You,” she whispered, horror stealing her voice. “It was you. You... you cut the brakes.”
Viktor's smile widened. “I cut the brake line. Such a small thing. One tiny snip of the wire cutters.” He seemed to savor the memory.
“The sound the brakes made when they failed, coming down that mountain road... Unforgettable. Roman was with her, you know? In the passenger seat. He tried to pull the emergency brake. But at a hundred and ten miles per hour...”
He shrugged. “It was beautiful.”
The psychopath.
She was staring at him. The man she’d believed was a simple loan shark. The man who’d pretended to be a frightened ally.
He was a cold-blooded killer.
“You’re a psychopath,” she gasped.
“I’m a businessman,” he corrected coldly. “And it worked. Oh, how it worked.” His expression turned ecstatic. “It broke him. Spiritually. He survived, of course. Barely. Spent six months in a hospital, but the part of him that mattered... died in that fire.”
Roman’s guilt. The nightmare. The fury over “recklessness.” The non-denial.
It wasn’t the guilt of a killer. It was the guilt of a survivor.
He blamed himself. He couldn’t prove Sokolov did it, so he blamed himself for not checking the car, for not being able to stop it. He blamed himself for surviving when she didn’t.
“He never recovered,” Sokolov continued, his tone satisfied. “Became the man you see today. Cold. Controlled. Dead inside. My greatest creation.”
The final truth crashed down on Maya with the weight of a concrete slab.
She understood everything.
The Demand. It wasn’t possession. It was protection.
The control. It wasn’t tyranny. It was fear.
The punishment for her escape. It wasn’t anger at her disobedience. It was abject terror that this would happen.
Roman wasn’t the monster. He wasn’t the jailer.
He was the protector.
He’d been protecting her from this man, Viktor Sokolov, the man who killed his sister.
And she... she’d spat in his face. She’d accused him of murder. She’d believed the monster. She’d run from her protector and raced straight into the devil’s trap.
“And now,” Sokolov said, walking back to the bed. He stopped and looked down at her, tied to Anja’s bed, a perfect replica of the original sacrifice.
“He loved her. And when I took her away, he broke. It was my greatest victory.”
He leaned in, and the charm had vanished completely. Only the predator remained. The smell of his tea was rancid.
“And now...”
His gloved hand reached out and touched her face. Maya flinched, but there was nowhere to go.
“...I’m going to do it all over again. With you.”
The threat was so calm, so matter-of-fact, that it froze her.
“He thinks his fortress is impenetrable,” Sokolov mocked. “He thinks those glass walls can keep the world out. But I placed my own housekeeper inside. I made her traitorous brother deliver her. I made you believe your protector was your enemy.”
He smiled. “And now, he’s coming.”
Maya’s heart stopped. “Coming?”
“Of course.” Sokolov looked delighted. “He’s not stupid. He knows you didn’t run—you were taken. The credit card you used? So easy to track. He’s racing here right now, thinking he’ll be the hero. Thinking this time he can save Anja.”
He leaned in until his lips were near her ear.
“But he’ll break down that door,” he whispered, “expecting to save you.”
He straightened, the smile a hideous slash across his face.
“But he’ll find me. And he’ll watch you burn, Maya. Exactly like he did the first time.”