Chapter 31 The Rescue
POV: Maya
“ROMAN! STOP!”
The scream tore through Maya’s throat, an animal sound of pure terror.
The man on top of Viktor Sokolov froze. His hands, bloodied and white at the knuckles, were still clamped around the neck of the man he was murdering.
For a second—a second that lasted an eternity—nothing moved. Anja’s room was in ruins: broken chairs, shattered glass from the vanity, the smell of blood and expensive cologne.
Roman turned his head.
The movement was slow, robotic. His eyes met hers.
Maya gasped. The eyes staring back weren’t human. They were pools of fury and pain, black and empty. He was looking at her, but he wasn’t seeing her. He was seeing the ghost Viktor Sokolov had conjured. He was seeing Anja, dead in the fire.
“Roman,” she whispered, her entire body trembling.
Her name. Maya.
It was like a stone thrown into a frozen lake. The insanity in his eyes shattered. The black fury receded, like a tide pulling back, and was replaced by something that shocked her even more.
Confusion.
And then… panic.
He wasn’t looking at a ghost anymore. He was looking at her. Tied to his dead sister’s bed. At the center of Sokolov’s sick stage.
“No,” he choked, his voice an unrecognizable rasp.
He released Sokolov’s neck as if it were on fire.
Viktor Sokolov collapsed onto the peach-colored rug with a wet, horrible sound and began to choke, pulling air in with agonized wheezes.
Roman didn’t give him a second glance.
He stood, but not like the controlled billionaire. He stumbled backward, his expensive suit torn, his chest heaving. He looked like a man waking from a horrible nightmare, only to find the nightmare was real.
His singular focus, his entire world, shrank to the canopy bed where she lay.
“Maya,” he breathed.
He ran to her. Didn’t walk. He ran, stumbling over the wreckage of the chair he’d broken.
Maya flinched violently. Instinct screamed at her to recoil. That man had just nearly killed another with his bare hands. And now he was coming toward her.
He stopped beside the bed, hovering over her. He was shaking.
Not with anger. He was shaking with panic. The same panic she’d heard in his sleep. The same panic she’d felt in him before her punishment.
“He… he…” His voice was broken. He couldn’t form a sentence.
His hands—the hands that had been on Sokolov’s neck seconds ago, the hands stained with blood and wine at the restaurant—came toward her.
Maya squeezed her eyes shut, turning her face away.
“No!” she cried out.
The touch, when it came, wasn’t violent. It was desperate.
“No, no, no, Maya, look at me,” he begged, his voice raw.
She opened her eyes. He was kneeling beside the bed. The man worth billions was on his knees.
And his hands… his brutal, bloodied hands were shaking so violently he could barely function.
He wasn’t trying to hurt her. He was trying to untie her.
He pulled at the silk ribbon on her right wrist. The knot, which she’d loosened, gave way, but the ribbon on her ankle was tight.
“Shit,” he growled, not at her, but at the knot. His fingers, clumsy with adrenaline and slippery with blood, couldn’t undo the delicate bow.
Maya just watched, in shock. That contrast. The man who’d broken a wrist was being defeated by a silk ribbon.
He stopped trying. He looked at her. His gray eyes were wild, frantic.
“Are you hurt?”
It wasn’t “I got you.” It wasn’t “You’re safe.”
It was a raw, terrified question.
He wasn’t checking on his asset. He was checking on her.
“Did he hurt you?” he demanded, and his hand came up, trembling, to her face. His fingers, covered in blood, brushed her cheek. The touch was incredibly gentle. “What did he do to you?”
Maya couldn’t speak. The shock of Sokolov’s confession—Roman is the protector, not the jailer—collided with the reality of this broken man in front of her.
The truth. It was all true. The Demand wasn’t about sex. It was about this. About preventing this from happening.
And she... she had betrayed him. She’d walked right into the trap.
A dry, terrified sob escaped her.
The sound broke her. The sound freed her.
“Damn it, the ribbon,” Roman growled. He stood, looked around, grabbed the shard of broken mirror Sokolov had dropped, and returned to her. He gripped her wrist firmly.
“Don’t move,” he ordered.
He cut the remaining ribbons from her ankles and other wrist. The silks fell away.
She was free.
The moment the last ribbon fell, Roman threw the glass aside. He didn’t give her a second to breathe. He grabbed her.
He pulled her from the bed and wrapped her in his arms, burying his face in her hair. He held her with bone-crushing force—a force that wasn’t about control, but about anchoring. He was holding her as if she were the only thing keeping him from being swept away by the tide.
Maya went rigid, her arms pinned to her sides. She could feel his heartbeat—a wild war drum pounding against her chest. He was gasping, breathing in her scent as if it were oxygen.
“I thought,” he choked into her hair, his voice muffled. “I thought... in the car... I thought he... again...”
Not again. The scream from his nightmare.
He was holding her as if she were Anja. No. He was holding her as if she were Maya, and he refused to let what happened to Anja happen to her.
Behind them, a sound. A wet, choking moan.
Viktor Sokolov was moving.
“You...” he spat, blood bubbling on his lips. “You... can’t... kill me, Lazarov...”
Roman froze.
Maya felt every muscle in his back go rigid as steel.
Did he let her go? Did he turn to finish the job?
No.
He squeezed her tighter. He moved, placing his body between her and the man on the floor. He was shielding her. He didn’t look back. He didn’t give Sokolov the satisfaction of a glance.
His hand came up to the back of her neck, cradling her head, pressing her face against his shoulder, shielding her from the sight of his defeated enemy.
“I know,” Roman replied to Sokolov, his voice a low growl vibrating through his chest and into Maya’s cheek. “But I’m going to make you wish I had.”
He was holding her with one arm. With the other, he was removing his suit jacket. The fabric was torn at one shoulder and stained with dirt.
He wrapped it around her. She was only wearing the cashmere sweater and torn pants from the escape. His jacket was enormous, warm, and smelled like him—cologne, adrenaline, and the metallic scent of blood.
He pulled her to the side, away from the bed, toward the destroyed door. He didn’t release his grip. She was pinned to his hip, her head still buried in his shoulder.
The man who had locked her in a glass cage was now her only protection.
She said nothing. She couldn’t.
She just clung to his shirt, her fingers clutching the expensive fabric, and let the broken, terrified, lethal man who had saved her life drag her out of the burning dollhouse room.