Ivan finishes his calls and sits by the window, staring out at the city through the glass.
I remain at the door, still and present and useful.
When he turns his head and looks at me again—longer this time, searching—my face gives him nothing back.
Not because I want to hurt him.
Because I don’t know how to stand in front of him as a man anymore.
So I stand there as the thing he trained.
And I wait.
11
IVAN
His "Yes, sir"hits like a backhand.
It's the same sound every time—flat, clean, stripped of humanity—yet my body reacts as if it's new. My jaw locks. My fingers curl against the edge of the granite counter until my knuckles whiten. Something sharp stirs behind my ribs, a heat that wants out.
Days of this.
Days of watching him move through the penthouse like a ghost. Days of standing close enough to touch his wrist, knowing he would let me—knowing he would let me do anything I commanded—and still feeling like I'm staring at a sealed vault.
He saw the file.
I don't need a confession. The change is evident in the architecture of his behavior. In the way he keeps the distance exact. In the way his gaze skims past my face instead of landing. In the way he answers before I finish speaking, anticipating the command to ensure the interaction ends faster.
He read my handwriting. He understood the mechanism.
And now he is giving it to me.
Perfect. Polished. Unreachable.
I've tried pushing at the edges. I've rearranged his tasks, handed him situations where he used to offer an opinion, put him in positions that should have forced a reaction. Nothing. He executes the order, then stands there and waits for the next one, as if his body is merely a vessel for my will.
The man who knelt beside my chair—gone.
The man who looked at me in the bathroom with his mouth parted, his pupils dilated—gone.
What's left wears his face, keeps my house secure, and makes the espresso the way I like it.
What's left is making me want to put my fist through a wall.
I don't regret shaping him. I don't regret building the structure he runs on, because without it, I would be dead. I know what my world requires. I'm not interested in the morality lecture that some softer man would give himself to sleep at night.
But I didn't plan for this.
I didn't expect the thing I made to starve me.
I stand at the window and stare down at the city—lights blinking in the grid, traffic crawling, life continuing as if my chest isn't tight enough to crack a rib. The glass reflects the room behind me. In that reflection, I catch him: stationed by the door, straight-backed, hands still, eyes fixed on the empty air.
I don't turn around.
Every time I look straight at him, the absence punches harder.
This stops now. Not because I need comfort. Because I need him alive. Because the version of him I need is a man who thinks, who sees, who reacts—who doesn't fold himself into a clean, silent shape just to stop bleeding.
