CHAPTER FIVE

The days passed like slow poison.

Andrei did not visit the west wing often.

Not because he feared what lingered there.

But because he loathed what it stirred in him.

He observed Zane through security feeds, watched him pace like a caged wolf, watched the way he ate with his fingers splayed like a dancer—elegant, stubbornly precise. He spoke to no one, not even Mikhail—Andrei’s longtime bodyguard and head of his security, not even the maids and servants. When addressed, he replied in clipped, civil tones—always measured, always watching.

Andrei admired that, in a way.

He appreciated silence more than most.

The boy didn't weep, didn't beg, didn’t break down in the ways Andrei had seen from others in his father’s business. That was a different life, of course, but certain patterns repeated across empires.

Zane had no pattern. No crack. Just that beautiful, burning rage.

Andrei stood alone in his study, a crystal glass of vodka warming slowly in his palm. He didn’t drink often. His father had. He stared at the fire in the hearth and thought of the boy's eyes—the way they seemed to accuse him of crimes he hadn't yet committed, those he had and those painted vaguely in his memory.

He didn’t feel guilt.

He didn’t feel much of anything anymore.

But this boy—Zane—he stirred something. Not softness. Not kindness. Something colder, something deeper.

Obsession.

Possession.

Curiosity.

And that was dangerous.

Zane had stopped marking the days.

There was no window that opened. No phone. No sense of passing time except for the meals—three times a day.

Andrei had not come back.

Not once.

It irritated him more than he could admit.

At first, Zane told himself that was good. He needed time. Needed to think. Needed to learn the rhythms of this place.

Escape was out of the question—at least for now. He’d mapped the room down to the tile count. One door with reinforced locks. No vents big enough to crawl through. No keys left on trays. No weapons that could do any real damage. He was not even given any knives or forks during meals.

So he did what he was best at. He studied.

He played the role. He played it perfectly.

He let Mikhail see him vulnerable—just a little. Flinching at footsteps. Lowering his eyes sometimes. Just enough to pass.

Inside, he was sharpening. Waiting.

He didn’t know what Andrei wanted. Didn’t know what his angle was.

But Zane wasn’t going to be prey.

He would become strong. Unpredictable. Dangerous.

He would find the weak spot. He always did.

On the seventh day at midnight, Andrei stood outside the door, listening.

No sound.

Mikhail had reported no incidents. No rebellion. No outbursts.

That was suspicious. And he didn’t care to check the footage from the cameras installed in his room.

Andrei entered without knocking.

The door swung open, and Zane sat cross-legged on the bed in shadow, a book open on his lap—one of the few he’d been given. He didn’t look up.

“You have a habit of entering like a ghost,” Zane said coolly. “Should I clap, or kneel?”

Andrei ignored the barb. “You’re reading Camus.” He said a little thrown off by the sight of him idle in bed, book in hand. He didn't know what he expected to find, but this was not it.

Zane lifted a brow. “You gave me 'The Stranger'. What did you expect—poetry?”

“I expected nothing.”

“Then you won’t be disappointed.”

Silence. The kind that scraped.

Zane snapped the book shut and stood slowly. He was barefoot, dressed in black drawstring pants and a thin sweater that clung to his frame. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t cower.

Andrei studied him, impassive. “Why aren’t you fighting harder?”

“Who says I’m not?”

Andrei tilted his head. “You think this is war?”

“I think everything is.”

A flicker of something passed through Andrei’s gaze. Not quite amusement. Not quite admiration. Something closer to recognition.

“I didn’t choose you for rebellion,” Andrei said. “I chose you because you were the only thing in that room still alive.”

"Oh I am combusting from the immense gratitude I should feel! Oh, thank you for choosing me as regards to some old, ugly tyrant." Zane exclaimed. But after a moment, he stepped closer, voice soft this time. “And what does a man like you do with something alive?”

Andrei didn’t answer.

He turned and walked out, leaving the door open behind him for just a second too long.

---

The mirror told him lies.

Zane stood before it, shirtless, the linen pants he wore, but did not consider his own, hung low on his hips. His ribs were no longer prominent, but the memory of hunger clung to his skin. He turned slowly, assessing himself under the soft lighting of the guest wing bathroom. His back bore fading bruises—old memories, not from this place. This place didn’t bruise you in the open. It bruised you in silence.

He looked better, felt better. But that would have to be a lie, he thought. Because that would mean he was settling in, caving in, giving up... surrendering. He could not accept that.

Two weeks had passed since he was purchased. Two weeks of silence, of being observed but never touched. He was given a suite too large for one man, meals he barely tasted, and clothing soft and clearly more expensive than anything he had ever owned. But he hadn’t seen Andrei again—not in the flesh, not in a while.

Zane leaned forward and pressed his fingers to the glass. "Where are you hiding, king on high?" He taunted.

He knew he was being watched.

The surveillance wasn’t obvious, but it was there. He could feel it. He could feel it on his skin, in the way doors closed just after he passed, in the whisper of air behind the mirror.

Today, he would test it. A devilish grin smeared across his face.

He stepped away from the mirror, letting his fingers trail down the waistband of his pants. He stopped just at the curve of his hipbone, watching himself, watching the reflection. A part of him whispered that it was dangerous, childish, foolish.

But another part, the one that hadn’t been broken, the one that knew exactly how to weaponize flesh and beauty and desire, smirked. That part of him—in that moment—was in control.

He rolled his shoulders back and walked into the bedroom, slow and loose. He sat on the edge of the bed. Looked down at himself and at the spaces where the camera might be hidden—up in the molding, behind the darkened corner, maybe behind the mirrored wall. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. Wherever those eyes hid, one thing was certain, he was being seen.

He pressed a hand to his now fading abs, slid it up to his chest in a trail that left his body on fire. He let his head tilt back.

Just a little show, he thought. Just enough to make the man watching remember what he bought. This was his way in, his way out.

But Zane underestimated the hunger behind that watching gaze.

Somewhere behind the glass, Andrei Dostoevsky sat in silence. Alone.

He hadn’t touched himself. He hadn’t spoken. He hadn’t moved in twenty minutes. He was all but breathing. Completely entranced by the "abomination" on display before him.

The screen showed Zane now curled on the bed, shirtless, lips parted slightly, eyes closed. His hands wandering over his body in deliberate, well calculated motion. A tease. A provocation. But not begging.

Never begging.

Andrei exhaled slowly, one gloved hand curling into a fist against the leather armrest of the chair. As he watched this boy—a storm in a bottle—bring himself over the edge, he felt his breath become shallow and rapid and his heart rate quicken. "You want trouble, don’t you?" He asked the screen before him. His eyes darkening and barely blinking, completely fixated on the beauty before him.

The man on display on the screen was a storm in human skin. A roaring tempest that posed a threat to his very existence, his identity, his person.

And Andrei wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep the gates closed.

Zane dreamed of fire that night. Smoke in his lungs, hands on his throat. Images from a time he had long prayed to forget. He woke gasping. Sweating. The sheets tangled between his legs.

He sat up, chest rising and falling rapidly.

It was morning.

His eyes caught sight of something on the table by the window.

A red rose.

Fresh. Placed neatly on the silver tray where his breakfast would usually be. Alone. A single rose.

Zane’s breath hitched.

No note. No explanation.

But he knew who left it. And he knew what it meant.

This wasn’t safety. This was possession, ownership wrapped in silk. And he would fight until his last breath; he would not become another man's possession.

He picked up the rose and pressed the thorns to his palm, just enough to sting.

He remained unmoved, unchanged.