Chapter 20: The Cost of Opulence

Leo Vance

I woke up slowly, every nerve in my body humming with a deep, punishing ache that wasn't exhaustion—it was the profound, physical memory of total occupation. The huge bed was empty beside me, but the indentation where Dmitri had rested was still warm. The space on my other side, where Ivan had been, felt cold and mocking.

The shame was a physical weight, pressing down on my lungs. The terrifying part wasn't the violation; it was the sickening, involuntary thrill of finally, absolutely, stopping the fight. They had taken everything, and in return, they had given me the one thing I desperately craved: safety from myself. Now, I was truly theirs.

I pulled the covers tighter around me, trying to disappear into the soft sheets. I heard voices coming from the adjacent room—a vast, sunlit space with a long, stone table, clearly used as a morning workspace.

I didn't try to move. I just lay there, listening, feeling the isolation of the house settle deep into my bones. The voices were low, relaxed, the cadence of brothers who had been working together for decades.

“The board is going to push back on the severance package,” Ivan’s voice drifted in. It sounded surprisingly normal, like a man discussing a slight annoyance. “It sets a bad precedent for future clean-ups.”

“It’s irrelevant,” Dmitri’s voice responded, sharper, yet still casual. “The Ohio division is dead weight. If we give them the standard two months, they won’t cause a fuss. We need that factory cleared and prepped for the new owners by Tuesday. It’s an easy trade.”

I closed my eyes, realizing they weren't talking about a broken machine or a failed shipment. They were talking about people.

Ivan sighed, a sound of mild frustration. “We agreed on the efficiency model, Dmitri. This means seven thousand people will be on the street in a week. The PR fallout will be manageable, but the local council will make noise. We should offer three months, just to quiet the chatter.”

“No,” Dmitri stated flatly. “Two months. We don’t overpay for compliance. We are restructuring the entire manufacturing arm of that company; those people were always expendable resources in this specific transaction. They were warned. Let the local manager handle the paperwork. We fly out tomorrow morning. The deal is signed. It's done.”

My blood ran cold. Seven thousand people. All their lives—their mortgages, their kids' tuition, their entire sense of security—being wiped out, decided in a casual, five-minute chat over coffee in a beautiful, remote mansion. This was the true cost of the opulence that surrounded me.

I crept out of bed, pulling on a silk robe I found hanging in the closet—another marker of my new life. I walked to the entrance of the adjoining room and stopped in the doorway.

They were sitting side-by-side at the table. Dmitri, sipping dark coffee, looking at a spread of architectural blueprints. Ivan, scrolling through a thick financial document on a tablet. They looked like two powerful, normal men preparing for a flight.

“Good morning, Leo,” Ivan greeted me, looking up with a neutral, calm expression. “Sleep well? We’ve already arranged for your breakfast. Come sit down.”

I walked toward them, feeling dizzy. “Seven thousand people, Dmitri? You’re just… cutting them off? Just like that?”

Dmitri looked at me, his eyes betraying nothing. “It’s a necessary excision, Leo. The company we acquired—Davies Industries—was bloated and inefficient. We are keeping the core intellectual property and shutting down the non-performing physical assets. The division lost money for five years. It’s not sustainable.”

“But they have families! They worked there their whole lives! That’s not sustainable for them, either!” I pleaded, the sheer injustice of it making my voice shake.

Ivan looked genuinely puzzled by my distress. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “Leo, you’re looking at this with a romanticized moral lens. You just agreed to let us save your gallery—a business that was barely supporting five people—by injecting capital and wiping its debt. The money for that relief, for your safety, comes from decisions like this. This is the difference between art and commerce. We create stability by eliminating weakness. You understand the math, don't you?”

“It’s not math, Ivan! It’s cruelty! You were just… you were just so gentle last night. You looked at me like I mattered. And now you’re talking about destroying people’s lives like it’s a pest control issue!” My voice rose, the disgust and terror overwhelming the fragile peace I had found.

Dmitri put down his coffee cup, his expression hardening slightly. He wasn't angry; he was simply correcting a faulty component.

“Last night was about internal consistency,” Dmitri explained, his tone patient, almost pedagogical. “We were removing the conflict between your will and your desire. That was personal. This is structural order. The two are not mutually exclusive. My desire for you is absolute, and my decision regarding that factory is absolute. Both are expressions of the same command: My word is the final order.”

Ivan pushed the tablet across the table, showing me a detailed financial chart that spiked sharply upward with the projected savings from the layoffs.

“Look at this, Leo,” Ivan urged. “This is the reward for the ruthlessness. The capital freed up here allows the foundation to diversify, to stabilize our market position. It allows Arthur to fund projects that actually matter. Like your gallery. The money we are using to keep your art alive comes directly from the efficiency of this cut. Your safety is bought with their instability. That is the cost of living in our world.”

My thoughts was screaming: I am a beneficiary of this slaughter. My clean, beautiful gallery is being washed in the blood of seven thousand lost jobs. I was so disgusted by their touch, but the touch was honest. This—this calm, casual destruction—is the real horror.

I stared at the screen, at the clean, beautiful line of the profit graph, knowing that every upward tick represented a family's ruin. The knowledge was paralyzing. I hated them, but I couldn't reject the money, because the money was now woven into the fate of my gallery, Sasha, and my mother.

“So I’m… I’m just supposed to accept that I’m standing on the shoulders of the people you crushed?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper, thick with shame.

Dmitri pushed his chair back and stood up, walking around the table. He stopped right behind me and placed both hands on my shoulders, squeezing gently. The touch was possessive, a silent reminder of his claim and my recent, total surrender.

“You are meant to accept that you are protected by the decisions we make, Leo,” Dmitri corrected, his voice close to my ear, warm and utterly dangerous. “You asked for choice to be removed. We have removed it. We deal with the large, necessary cruelties so you can deal with the small, beautiful ones—your art. Now, you will sit down, you will eat the food we ordered for you, and you will allow us to brief you on the future earnings of your gallery. You are safe. That is all that matters.”

Ivan looked at me and offered a small, unsettling smile. “We don't need you to like it, Leo. We just need you to understand the price. The price of the opulence, the price of the structure, and the price of our protection. Now, let’s talk about that new Japanese artist you mentioned.”

He was moving on, transitioning from the ruin of thousands to the future of my art without skipping a beat. I sank into the chair, defeated, the weight of Dmitri’s hands on my shoulders the heaviest burden of all. I was trapped in their ruthlessness, completely dependent on the

very power that disgusted me.