6. Alina
ALINA
T hat night, I join Sasha for dinner again.
It feels like a mistake the moment I step into the dining room. It feels like I’ve willingly placed my throat against a blade, knowing exactly how sharp it is and foolishly believing that if I stay still long enough, it won’t cut me.
The long table stretches between us despite our chairs being placed close together like usual, the distance between us more psychological than physical.
The polished marble floors gleam beneath the chandelier’s somber light, every crystal catching and refracting it into cold fragments.
The room feels cavernous, echoing, as if it is holding its breath along with me.
He is already seated in his usual place at the head of the table. Impeccable, as always.
His dark suit shirt is crisp, sleeves rolled neatly to his forearms as if he’s just stepped out of his study rather than into a formal dinner.
His tattoos are a stark contrast against the faint glint of an expensive watch flashing at his wrist. He cuts through the meat on his plate with precise, economical strokes.
There is no wasted motion, no hesitation, as if even eating is something to be mastered rather than enjoyed.
Everything about him is controlled. Measured. Untouchable.
I take my seat next to him without meeting his eyes.
The chair feels too large, the room too quiet. The staff move quickly once we’re seated, serving with practiced efficiency before retreating as though they can sense the tension coiled tightly between us. Their footsteps fade, and then it’s just the two of us.
The clink of silverware against expensive China is obnoxiously loud. Every small noise seems amplified beneath the hum that never quite dissipates under this roof, the constant awareness that this house always seems to be listening even when it pretends not to.
I barely touch my food.
The vegetables are arranged with artistic precision, the sauce delicately ribboned across the plate, too perfect to disturb. I poke at it halfheartedly, my appetite nonexistent. My stomach feels knotted, twisted tight with a mix of anger and unease that refuses to settle.
The silence stretches.
It grows heavier the longer I stare down at my plate, suffocating under its weight. I can feel his attention on me even without looking up. That steady, assessing gaze presses against my shoulder blades like a physical thing, pinning me in place.
It’s a tactic, I realize. One I’m sure he’s used countless times before on people far more powerful than I am. Silence makes people uncomfortable. It makes them talk or break, but I refuse to give him either.
Instead, I focus on my breathing. In through my nose, out through my mouth.
I tell myself that I have survived worse than this table, worse than this man.
I remind myself that fear is exactly what he expects from me and it’s not something I will give him the luxury of earning.
I’m done giving him things he doesn’t deserve.
Eventually, the tension becomes unbearable and finally, he speaks.
“You’re very quiet tonight.”
His voice is calm, observant, devoid of accusation. It’s worse than if he had snapped. Worse than if he had raised his voice.
I don’t look at him. I keep my eyes trained on my plate. “Maybe I don’t have anything to say.”
The words come out flatter than I intend, stripped of any emotion I had the first night we were forced to eat together.
If I’m being honest, it’s more of a shield than anything.
If I give him nothing, maybe he’ll take nothing.
Wishful thinking, I know, but what else do I have control over in a place like this?
He pauses, and I can feel the shift beside me as he leans back slightly in his chair. The faint creak of leather follows the movement. I imagine his eyes on me now, studying every line of my posture, every subtle tension in my shoulders.
For a moment, he says nothing.
“Perhaps if you didn’t spend so much time pacing around your room at night, you would have more energy to spare a conversation.”
The words land with brutal precision.
The realization hits me like a slap across the face, so sudden and sharp that it steals the air from my lungs. My breath stutters, my chest tightening painfully as understanding crashes into place.
Cameras.
There have to be cameras in my room. How else would he know what I do behind closed doors if not by spying on me?
How else would he know about the restless nights, the endless pacing, the way I trace the perimeter of the space like an animal trapped in a cage? There is no other explanation that doesn’t lead back to the same conclusion. He has been watching me when I thought I was alone.
My fingers curl around my fork, gripping it so tightly, my knuckles ache. Heat floods my chest, rising fast and uncontrollable, and my face burns with humiliation so intense, it borders on nausea.
I had known—of course I had—that there would be cameras in the public areas of the estate. Hallways, entrances, common rooms. It would have been foolish to expect anything else from a man like him, a man who rules through surveillance and control as much as he does through fear.
But this is different.
Knowing you are monitored in public spaces is one thing.
Having it confirmed so plainly, so intimately, that you are being watched in the one place meant to be private is another entirely.
My bedroom was the only space I believed, perhaps stupidly and naively, might be mine.
The one place where I could unravel without an audience.
Where I could sit on the edge of the bed and fight the tears from falling while looking at my mother’s photograph before letting myself fall apart without consequence.
Or so I thought.
I lift my head slowly and finally meet his gaze.
“You watch me in my room? You spy on me like some kind of sick voyeur?” I ask, my voice low, trembling despite every effort to steady it.
The accusation hangs between us, sharp and ugly.
He doesn’t bristle or snap or rush to defend himself the way I half expect him to. If anything, his expression grows colder, more distant, as if he is withdrawing behind some internal barrier I can’t breach. His eyes remain fixed on mine, dark and unyielding.
“It’s for your safety,” he says calmly.
The words are infuriating in their composure, in the way he delivers them as though they are self-evident and beyond argument. I laugh, a short, bitter sound that surprises even me.
“ My safety?” I repeat. “How, exactly? By watching me change? By monitoring how often I sleep? By making sure I don’t step out of line even when I’m alone?
” My voice rises despite myself, anger bleeding through the cracks.
“What kind of sick game is that? You’re not doing this to protect me.
You’re doing it because you want power over me. Men like you always do.”
The accusation is reckless. I know that even as I say it. But the dam has already broken.
For a fleeting moment, I think he might deny it.
That he’ll dress it up in careful language, cloak it in strategy and all the other polished lies men like him are so adept at telling.
That he’ll claim it’s protocol, or procedure, or something necessary for my own good because of his bargain with my father.
But he doesn’t.
Instead, he tilts his head slightly, a faint, infuriating smirk touching the corner of his mouth. The expression is subtle, almost lazy, and it sends a chill down my spine.
“If I wanted control, Alina, I would strip you of everything entirely,” he says evenly.
My stomach twists.
He continues, his tone measured, almost bored.
“I’ve been gracious in only taking your technology so far.
However, you are starting to make me regret that decision.
” His gaze sharpens, cutting into me with surgical precision.
“If I were you, I would stop complaining while you still have some of your more valuable items. Especially that picture of your mother.”
Something inside me snaps.
Anger that is jagged and violent, the culmination of every fear, every humiliation, every swallowed scream since the night of the bombing explodes inside me.
The heat that has been coiling inside me since I was brought here has finally erupted into a white-hot and uncontrollable burn, withering away whatever restraint I had left.
I stand abruptly.
The chair screeches against the marble floor, the sound loud and jarring, echoing through the room like a warning shot. My heart is hammering now, my pulse roaring in my ears. I don’t think. I don’t plan. I just act.
My hand closes around my wine glass by my plate before I’ve fully decided what I’m doing.
It leaves my fingers and arcs through the air in a perfect, terrible curve when I throw it. Time seems to slow, the moment stretching impossibly thin as I watch it fly. Then it shatters against the wall just behind his head with a violent crack.
Crystal explodes outward, fragments scattering across the floor. Red wine splatters across the pale plaster in dark, dripping streaks that look horrifyingly like blood.
For a heartbeat, no one moves.
The chandelier’s light catches on falling shards, turning them into brief, glittering sparks before they hit the floor.
The smell of wine fills the air, sharp and metallic.
My breathing is loud in my ears, ragged and uneven, my chest heaving as the weight of what I’ve just done crashes down on me all at once.
Shit…
Then Sasha rises.
He doesn’t even glance at the ruined wall behind him. His gaze stays locked on mine, and what I find there makes my stomach drop.
It isn’t rage.
It isn’t disgust.
It is cold indifference.
“That,” he says quietly, his voice cutting through the room, “is your first and only warning. Do not ever do that again.”
The words settle over me like a verdict.
My hands are shaking uncontrollably now, the aftermath of adrenaline crashing through my system in violent waves.
I can feel it in my fingers, in my knees, in the hollow ache blooming behind my ribs.
I want to respond—to scream, or argue, or laugh hysterically in his face—but my throat locks around every sound.
He doesn’t wait for an answer.
He moves around the table with unhurried confidence.
When he brushes past me, his arm grazes mine.
It’s a brief, almost incidental touch as though he hasn’t even registered the contact, but it feels like frost against my skin.
The cold sinks in instantly, sharp enough to burn, and I shudder despite myself.
I don’t turn to watch him leave.
I can’t bring myself to.
The sound of his footsteps fades, and then the door closes behind him with a heavy, resonant finality. The echo ripples through the dining room, bouncing off the high ceilings and polished stone, lingering long after he’s gone.
Strangely, the room feels impossibly empty.
I stand there alone, my heart hammering painfully against my ribs, every beat loud in the suffocating quiet.
For the first time since I arrived here, since I told myself I could endure whatever came next, I feel something colder than anger and sharper than fear take hold in my chest.
I am truly afraid.
Not of him hurting me in a fit of rage, but of what comes next now that I’ve proven I am willing to defy him and of how little it seems to have cost him to remind me exactly who holds the power here.