“I doubt it,” Viktor replied smoothly, hating himself more with every word. “She’s not ambitious. Content with her current role, grateful for the work. You know how it is with women like that—give them enough busy work to feel important, and they’re perfectly happy.”
The lie was so far from the truth it might as well have been fiction. Anka was the most ambitious woman he’d ever known, hungry for challenges and purpose in ways that every man in her life had systematically denied. She wasn’t grateful for busy work—she was brilliant enough to transform mundane tasks into strategic advantages.
But Nick was nodding dismissively, his predatory interest finally cooling. “Pity. Though I suppose not every woman can be... intellectually stimulating.”
The rest of the meeting passed in a blur of territorial negotiations and subtle threats. Viktor managed to maintain his diplomatic façade while internally cataloging every slight, every veiled insult, and every indication that Nick was building toward something that would require a violent resolution. By the time Nick finally left, Viktor’s jaw ached from clenching, and his hands were cramped from maintaining relaxed positions when they wanted to form fists.
“Pleasure doing business with you, Viktor,” Nick said as he headed toward the elevators, his tone suggesting it had been anything but pleasurable. “Give my regards to your... administrative staff.”
Viktor waited until the elevator doors closed before allowing his mask to slip. The protective rage that had been building throughout the meeting needed an outlet, but more pressing was the growing certainty that he’d just made a terrible mistake.
He looked through the glass walls toward Anka’s desk, expecting to see her absorbed in contracts as she had been throughout the meeting. Instead, he found her gathering her things with mechanical precision, her movements careful and controlled in a way that suggested barely contained emotion.
Had she heard? The conference room wasn’t soundproof, and if she’d been listening...
“Anka,” he called as she stood to leave. “We’ll be leaving in ten minutes.”
She nodded without looking at him, her voice professionally neutral when she replied, “Of course, Mr. Nikolai.”
Mr. Nikolai. Not Viktor, not even the more casual tone she’d been using over the past few days. The formal address was like a slap, confirmation that something had shifted, that she’d heard enough to understand what he’d said about her.
The drive home was torture. Viktor attempted conversation twice, asking about the contracts she’d been reviewing and whether she’d had lunch, but Anka’s responses were polite monosyllables that confirmed his worst suspicions. She stared out the window with the kind of studied indifference that screamed hurt and rage in equal measure.
He’d protected her from Nick’s attention, but at what cost? Every dismissive word he’d spoken had been designed to shield her from becoming a target, but from her perspective, it must have sounded like genuine contempt. Like confirmation of every insecurity her family had ever planted in her brilliant mind.
“Everything alright?” he asked as they pulled into the mansion’s circular drive, though he already knew the answer. “You seem... distant.”
“Just tired,” she replied, already reaching for the door handle with obvious desperation to escape.
“Anka—”
“I have some work to finish upstairs.” She was out of the car before he could complete the thought, her heels clicking rapidly across the marble foyer as she fled toward the stairs.
Viktor caught up with her before she could disappear, his hand closing around her wrist more gently than his desperation warranted.
“Talk to me,” he said, his voice carrying that commanding edge he used when negotiations were falling apart. “Something’s wrong.”
She yanked her arm free with a violence that confirmed every fear he’d been nursing during the silent drive home. When she spun to face him, the fury and devastation in her hazel eyes hit him like a physical blow.
“Wrong?” The word was sharp enough to draw blood. “Why would anything be wrong? I’m just no one important, right? Just part of the staff, filing contracts and grateful for the work.”
Fuck. She’d heard everything. Every calculated dismissal, every protective lie designed to keep Nick from targeting her. From her perspective, it must have sounded like genuine contempt, like confirmation that he saw her as nothing more than a useful burden.
“You heard—”
“I heard everything.” Her voice was rising, years of suppressed frustration finally finding an outlet. “I heard how disposable I am, how unimportant, how perfectly content I should be with busy work designed to make me feel valuable. I heard exactly what you think of me, Viktor, and it’s nothing I haven’t heard before.”
The pain in her voice was devastating, but it was the resignation that really gutted him. Nothing I haven’t heard before. How many times had brilliant, capable Anka been dismissed as unimportant? How many men had looked at herintellect and ambition and decided she needed to be managed instead of challenged?
“Anka, that’s not—”
“It’s not what? Not true? Not what you really think?” Her laugh was bitter and broken, the sound of dreams being shattered in real time. “Because it sounded pretty fucking convincing from where I was sitting. Not too bright but competent enough for simple filing. Women like that, grateful for scraps of importance.”
Viktor’s jaw clenched as his own words were thrown back at him. In context, spoken to protect her from Nick’s predatory interest, they’d been necessary lies. But standing here watching them destroy something fragile that had been building between them, they sounded exactly like what she thought they were—genuine contempt disguised as professional assessment.
“You don’t understand the situation—”
“I understand perfectly. I understand that no matter what I do, no matter how hard I work or how much I prove myself, I’ll always be the burden you were forced to marry. The dim-witted wife who needs to be placated with make-work and pretty lies about the partnership.”
