He unbuckles my watch last.
A Patek Philippe. My mother gave it to me when I turned eighteen, two months before the cardiac failure that killed her. The metal is warm from my wrist. Warm from twelve years of wearing it through every moment that mattered.
She put it on my arm herself, her fingers thin and cold even then.
“Time is the only thing we can’t buy back, Kolya. Spend it wisely.”
I haven’t spent it wisely. I’ve spent it on champagne and cocaine and women whose names I forgot before morning.
He doesn’t look at the watch before he sets it on the tray with everything else.
I am naked.
I am cold.
He crosses to the corner of the room and retrieves a bundle of gray fabric from a cabinet. He drops it in my lap without ceremony.
A smock. Thin cotton. Institutional. The kind of shapeless garment they give to patients in hospitals and inmates in prisons.
“You expect me to put that on?” My voice cracks on the last word. I hate it. Hate him. Hate this room and this chair and the precise way he’s dismantled every external marker of who I am.
He looks at me.
It’s the first time he’s really looked at me since he entered the room. The weight of his attention is worse than anything that’s come before. His eyes are pale, almost colorless.
There’s nothing behind them. No anger at my insults. No satisfaction at my degradation. No cruelty, even, which might at least be human.
There’s just assessment. Calculation. The cool evaluation of inventory.
He reaches forward. His hands are cold when they touch my shoulders. Before I can process what’s happening, he pulls the smock over my head and threads my restrained arms through the sleeves with practiced efficiency.
He’s done this before. Many times. On many men who thought their names meant something.
The fabric is rough against my skin. The hem falls to mid-thigh. I am covered, technically, but I have never felt more exposed.
Then he turns toward the door.
“Wait.” The word rips out of me. “You can’t just leave me here. You haven’t even asked me anything. What do you want? Tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you.”
He pauses at the door. His hand rests on the lock.
For one wild second I think he’s going to speak. Going to finally acknowledge me as a human being. I lean forward against the restraints with something that feels horrifyingly like hope.
His fingers move. The lock disengages. The door swings open.
He walks through without looking back. The door seals behind him with that soft arterial click.
I am alone again in the gray room with the drain in the floor and the thin cotton smock that does nothing against the cold.
I’m not fighting a man.
The thought crystallizes in the silence.
I’m fighting a process. A machine. Something that doesn’t need to speak because it already knows everything my body is telling it.
On the floor, scattered around the drain, lie the ruins of my twelve-thousand-dollar suit.
I close my eyes. I count to ten. I try to breathe.
