He reaches for his glass and takes a slow drink. “Your uncle kept you like property. He called it protection. He called it family. You lived under his rules so long you forgot what choice feels like.”
My jaw tightens. “Don’t talk about him like you know—”
“I know,” he interrupts, and there’s steel under the calm now, something that makes the room feel smaller. “I’ve watched him for years. I know exactly what kind of man Boris Andreev is.”
My hands curl into fists on my lap. My nails bite my palms. I can still feel my uncle’s grip on my jaw when I was sixteen, forcing my face upward so I’d look at the men he wanted toimpress. I can still hear his voice, soft and smiling, telling me I was lucky. Telling me he could’ve done worse to me when my parents died, but he didn’t, because hecared.
Leonid watches the shift in my face like he caused it on purpose.
“What do you want?” I ask again, quieter this time, because my anger has nowhere to go and my fear is starting to taste bitter.
He sets his glass down. “I want you to know you’re safe here.”
I push the vegetables around the plate, no longer able to stomach the thought of eating them. “You said I’m free if I escape. You said it like it’s a game. Is that what this is to you? Entertainment?”
His eyes darken. “Everything is a game,” he says. “The only question is who wrote the rules.”
I stare at him across the table, this man who speaks like he owns the air, who watches me like he’s already memorized what I look like when I’m cornered. “So what, you keep me here until I give up?”
“No,” he says, and his tone shifts into something that feels almost intimate. “I keep you here until you choose.”
My throat tightens. “Choose what?”
“Me.”
The word lands like a weight in crystal clear waters.
I force myself to breathe. Force my spine straight. “And if I don’t?”
His gaze holds mine, unblinking. “Then you keep trying to escape. And I keep catching you.”
A shiver crawls over my skin. The promise isn’t cruel. It’s worse. It’s inevitable.
Dinner ends with me barely tasting the last few bites I manage to force into my mouth. I won’t give him the satisfaction of hunger as weakness. I push my plate away and stand.
“I’m tired,” I say.
He doesn’t get up. “Goodnight, Victoria.”
I walk away before my mouth betrays me and throws something at him that will cost me later. The hallway feels colder now, the house quieter. Upstairs, my room waits like it knows I won’t go anywhere else.
But I don’t go inside.
I turn down the side corridor instead, footsteps silent, heart pounding so hard it makes my vision pulse at the edges. The locked door to his office stares back at me, sleek and modern. A challenge. A boundary.
Leonid said he wanted to see me plot.
Fine.
I kneel and pull a thin metal pick from the seam of my boot. Old habit. Old survival. My uncle never searched my shoes because he believed I’d never have the guts to hide anything from him.
The lock is electronic, but electronic locks still have physical failures. Still have seams. Still have wires you can coax into obedience if you know where to press.
I work fast, breath shallow, ears tuned for the slightest sound.
Click.
The door opens.
