Darkness has an advantage I never thought I would live to appreciate: it doesn't force me to see.
I don't see the walls. I don't see the floor. I don't see how filthy I am. I don't see the shirt still stuck to my skin, stiff in places where Gaston's blood dried in the folds of the fabric. I don't see that deep red that, if I had to look at it, would probably make me start screaming and never stop.
It's good that it's dark.
I sit on the floor with my back against the cold wall, my knees pulled to my chest, trying not to move too much, because every movement drags me back into my body, and my body hurts everywhere. It isn't a sharp pain. It's heavy, exhausting, like a fever that refuses to break. I'm cold, even though the air doesn't feel cold. I think the chill comes from inside.
I don't know how much time has passed. Hours, probably.
In the dark, time doesn't flow anymore. It gathers, thickens, becomes something you breathe without realizing.
At some point, I hear footsteps.
They aren't Hugo's—I already know the sound of his steps, heavier, more deliberate, more certain of themselves—and these are different, quieter and more calculated, as if each step had been chosen with care.
The door opens, and a thin blade of light slices across the floor. I squeeze my eyes shut automatically, even though it's only a sliver.
Ivar walks in.
I recognize him by his silhouette, by the way he holds his shoulders slightly back, as if he were posing even when there's no one around to admire him. The light behind him makes him seem taller, broader, more threatening. I look at Gaston's killer and, for a second, I don't know how I'm supposed to react—to scream, to attack him, to spit at him, or pretend I don't understand what he's done. Inside me, hatred, fear, and a strange, paralyzing emptiness churn together, because the truth is I'm not strong enough for any of those choices.
"Get up," he says.
His voice is calm—far too calm for what stands between us—and I don't move, not because I'm brave, but because I'm so exhausted that something inside me refuses to react immediately to commands, as if it has already learned that any gesture can be turned against me.
"Be ready," he continues, stepping closer. "You're leaving."
Leaving where, I wonder silently, because he explains nothing and offers not the smallest clarification, letting the words fall between us like a door slammed shut—final.
I slowly lift my gaze to him and, in the sharp light spilling in from the hallway, I see his face clearly: the smile is thin and perfectly controlled, his eyes cold and calculating, as if he's already weighing the consequences of every reaction I might have.
It's that calm way he looks at me that frightens me more than any outburst ever could, because Ivar isn't the type who shouts or strikes first—he's the type who smiles before deciding how much it's going to hurt.
"I'm not going anywhere," I say, and my voice is hoarse, almost unfamiliar. "Not without Duca."
His name slips out automatically. I don't know whether from hope or instinct.
Ivar tilts his head slightly, as if he's just heard something amusing.
"Duca isn't here."
"Then I'm not going," I repeat. "I don't trust you."
It's the first honest thing I've said without crying.
I don't trust him.
He feels unstable. Like a floor that looks solid but you know is hollow underneath. He's the kind of man who can stroke your cheek and shoot you in the same breath, if he decides it suits him. It's not as if I haven't seen him do exactly that before.
His smile disappears.
He moves so fast I don't have time to react. He grabs my hair and yanks me off the floor with a force that knocks the air out of me. I let out a short, involuntary scream, and my knees slam into the concrete.
"You think you have options?" he hisses, his face inches from mine.
I feel his breath against my cheek. He smells clean, expensive—wrong for this place.
"You have two choices," he continues. "You come on your own. Or I take you."
He jerks my head back harder. Tears spring to my eyes before I can stop them.
"And believe me," he adds, "if I choose, you won't like it."
"I'm not… not going…" I grit out, even as the pain splinters my thoughts.
"Boys," Ivar calls.
The door swings fully open and two more men step into the cell without a word. The way they look at me—cold, impersonal—makes it clear they don't see a person, just an object to be moved from one place to another. They seize my arms, one on each side, and pin me to the wall with quiet efficiency—one locking my wrists, the other gripping my shoulders. The difference in strength between us is so obvious that I understand, without the smallest doubt, that I have no power against them.
While I'm held in place, Ivar smooths his jacket with a calm, almost bored gesture, as if this scene is nothing more than a necessary formality. Then he slips a hand into his pocket and pulls out a syringe. I see it clearly in the light—thin, transparent, the clear liquid inside catching a cold glint—and he doesn't need to explain a thing, because in that instant my heart begins to pound wildly, as if it wants to break through my ribs and run in my place.
"No," I whisper.
"I don't want to force you," he says, almost gently. "But if you insist…"
He brings the syringe closer to my arm.
I imagine everything going dark. My body going slack. Losing the ability to speak. To move. To control anything.
Panic surges up my throat like a wave.
"Fine!" I burst out. "I'll come. I'll come on my own. There's no need for that!"
My breath comes apart in ragged pieces as Ivar watches me for a long second, assessing me with the same calculated coldness. Then he makes a short gesture with his hand, and the men release me immediately, retreating as silently as they entered. He steps back and resumes his composed posture, as if nothing that just happened ever truly existed.
"See?" he says calmly. "That wasn't so hard."
He slips the syringe away. Straightens his cuff.
"Come."
His tone is civilized again. Almost polite.
I bend down and instinctively smooth my filthy shirt, even though I know the gesture changes nothing. The stiff, cold fabric reminds me with every touch of the blood dried into it, and nausea climbs steadily up my throat.
I swallow hard and choose to say nothing, because I understand with painful clarity that if I want to live, I have to play by their rules—to obey without comment, to walk when I'm told, and to stay silent even when everything inside me wants to scream.
I follow him. My legs feel so heavy that every step is like walking through thick water. A dull pulse throbs in my head, and exhaustion presses down on me so hard I don't have the strength for real resistance anymore. The fear is still there, somewhere inside me—present, but numbed, just like I am—as we step out into the hallway.
The light is stronger here; it makes me blink over and over. The walls are thick, cold. Everything is too clean for what happens inside them.
And then I see him.
Mikhail Volkov.
He stands a few meters away, speaking to someone who looks like Artem, though I'm so exhausted I can't tell if it's really him or not. When he notices us, his expression shifts instantly. It sharpens, and his gaze slides from me to Ivar.
Then it stops on my clothes.
On the blood.
"What's going on?" he asks, his voice calm.
Ivar pauses a fraction of a second too long before answering, and that hesitation—small, almost imperceptible—is enough to charge the air between us.
"We're moving her," he says. "For safety."
His tone tries to stay even, but it isn't as steady as before. Mikhail narrows his eyes and studies me carefully, then looks back at Ivar.
"Was Duca informed?"
The question falls simply, but the silence that follows grows heavy. Ivar hesitates only a moment, yet that moment is visible.
"He was going to be."
Mikhail takes a step forward, and the mere act of him moving shifts the atmosphere. He doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't approach aggressively. But his authority is steady, cold, impossible to ignore.
"Was?" he repeats, without lifting his tone.
His gaze drops to me again—to the way I'm barely standing, to the filthy clothes, to the dried blood stiffening my shirt.
"You're taking her back," he says clearly. "And no one moves her without Duca's consent or mine. No one."
For a moment, Ivar looks like he wants to protest; he opens his mouth, then closes it again, and for the first time I see him without the smile, without that confident mask he always wears.
Mikhail watches him for another second.
"Was I clear?"
"Yes," Ivar answers shortly, his jaw tight.
His hand touches my elbow, but this time without the force from before—almost mechanically, like he's carrying out an order he can't refuse.
I stand motionless between them, too exhausted and too dizzy to understand whether what just happened means salvation or merely a postponement of the inevitable. But I know with a cold clarity that in this house my life does not belong to me—and that if I want to keep it, I have to survive long enough to find out who truly holds the power.
Mikhail shifts his gaze back to Ivar, and his tone turns even colder, sharper, without the need to raise his voice.
"Leave us," he says simply. "I want to be alone with her."
There's a brief pause, but long enough for the tension in the air to tighten. Ivar looks at him for a moment, as if weighing whether there's room for negotiation. Then he clenches his jaw and steps back.
"As you wish," he says, a trace of dissatisfaction lingering in his voice, one he doesn't bother to hide.
He turns and walks down the corridor without looking at me again, and Artem—whom I now see clearly in the light, broad-shouldered, impassive—remains beside Mikhail.
Silence settles heavily between us. He doesn't rush to break it. He studies me for a long time, blinking rarely, not coming too close, as if trying to read me beyond the dirty clothes and the tremor betraying my exhaustion.
He says nothing, but in the way he watches me I sense he isn't searching for fear—he's looking for something else, something harder to define.
At last, he tilts his head slightly toward Artem, who still stands by the door, and speaks in a calm, almost bored tone.
"I've been in this business long enough to know who's lying and who isn't."
The words fall simply, without drama, yet they carry the weight of a conclusion already reached.
"Come on, Artem. We have some research to do."
He doesn't explain anything to me. He doesn't promise anything. He doesn't accuse me, and he doesn't defend me. And it's precisely that absence of reaction that leaves me suspended between fear and a fragile thread of hope.
They both turn and leave the cell, their footsteps receding down the hallway, and the door closes again, leaving me alone with the darkness, with the exhaustion, and with the thought that, for the first time since this began, someone might not have looked at me as a lie waiting to be punished.
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