Chapter 49: Ivan’s Therapy

The vast, controlled quiet of the penthouse was the worst kind of silence. After the enforced sketching session, after the weight of the legal documents settled, I felt like I was drowning in a sea of thick, expensive air. I had drawn ugly, frantic lines in the beautiful ledger until my hand cramped, but the paper offered no solace.

I retreated to my room, but found no privacy there either. The walls felt thin, the silence too loud. I stood by the window, the city lights cold and indifferent below me.

A soft knock came at the door, but before I could answer, Ivan entered. He wasn't in a suit. He wore dark, soft lounge pants and a simple cashmere sweater, making him look deceptively approachable. He carried two glasses of something clear and pale, one of which he offered to me.

"Chamomile and a touch of whiskey," he explained, his voice low and devoid of the usual seductive edge. "The perfect blend for internal conflict. Dmitri is asleep. We can talk."

I took the glass, needing the burn of the whiskey and the false comfort of the tea. I didn't sit. I remained standing by the window, my back to the endless lights.

"Talk about what, Ivan?" I asked, my voice heavy with exhaustion. "The weather? The market? Or perhaps my schedule for self-loathing this week?"

Ivan walked to the foot of the bed and sat, adopting a posture that was unnervingly relaxed, like a therapist waiting for a breakthrough. "We talked about Max. We talked about Arthur's cruelty and the price of stability. Now, we talk about the one thing you never allow yourself to articulate: the internal landscape that makes you the perfect, reluctant captive."

He took a slow sip of his drink. "Your guilt, Leo. It's thick enough to choke on. Tell me about the shame of that night. Tell me why accepting your own desire is more terrifying than accepting our chains."

I turned, fury and confusion warring within me. "You want me to confide in you? After you just trapped me with a legal noose and cut me off from the rest of the world? You think I'm going to give you my pain so you can weaponize it?"

"I already have all your pain, Leo," Ivan said softly, the words landing like a precise strike. "I am simply offering you the chance to breathe it out, here, where it can’t hurt anyone else. You live every day terrified that you will be exposed, that the truth of what you did—what you are—will destroy your mother's happiness. Isn't that right?"

I clenched my jaw, the pressure behind my eyes intense. "You know it is."

"Why?" Ivan pressed gently. "Why does she deserve the truth, but you deserve to live a lie? Why is your desire a moral failure that must be contained, while her new life with Arthur is a blessing that must be protected?"

The question ripped the dam. My voice was tight, ragged with years of self-denial. "Because she deserves peace! She deserves a second chance after my father! And I... I spent my entire life building a wall. A wall of certainty. If I let the truth out—that I'm not who she thinks I am, that I felt... that... for another man... for two men... her image of me shatters. Her foundation shatters. And she'll think I was lying to her the whole time."

I walked toward him, the words becoming a desperate monologue. "The shame of that night in the club wasn't just about Dmitri. It was about me. The passion I felt for a stranger, the overwhelming, undeniable truth that I wanted him, that I needed that dark, raw intensity—it was a betrayal of every choice I’d made, every lie I told myself to be the good, straight, simple son. The man who wouldn't embarrass his mother."

"When I saw Dmitri across the dinner table," I continued, pacing now, the energy of my confession too much to contain, "it wasn't just fear of discovery. It was the absolute terror that the truth of me had followed me right into her happy new life. It was proof that my shame was real and inescapable."

Ivan listened, his face perfectly composed, yet his eyes were fixed on the core of my vulnerability. He let the silence hang for a long time after I finished, allowing me to fully realize the raw exposure.

"Thank you, Leo," he finally said. "That is the first honest expression of self-identity I have ever heard from you. And it took a golden cage, a legal contract, and the constant threat of Arthur Volkov to pull it out."

He stood up, walking toward me slowly. "You believe your desire is chaos, Leo. You believe it is the force that will destroy your mother's peace. But ask yourself this: Did you choose to live the lie, or did you choose the suppression of your own reality out of fear of social judgment?"

He stopped close to me, his presence warm and authoritative. "We are the first two people in your entire life who looked at that raw, undeniable desire and did not recoil. We did not demand you hide it; we demanded you express it. You ran from us in the beginning because we forced you to be honest with yourself. We forced you to recognize the man who lives beneath the skin of the 'good son.'"

He reached out and gently took the empty glass from my hand. "We didn't trap you in a lie, Leo. We trapped you in your truth. You are angry that we controlled the means of your survival, but we are the only ones who ever validated the chaos inside you. We are the only place where you can be the man who wants two men simultaneously and not be judged or destroyed for it."

Ivan’s hand settled on the back of my neck, his thumb resting just beneath my hairline—a gesture that was both possessive and strangely tender. "Your denial nearly killed you, Leo. Our obsession saved you from that self-destruction. The cage is not built to hold the lie; the cage is built to secure the truth, which is you, entirely. And you chose to stay, because deep down, you know that the only place you can safely be you is right here, with us."

He tilted my head up, his eyes serious and intent. "We are your safe harbor, Leo. A terrible, dark, necessary safe harbor. Accept the cost, and finally, accept yourself."

The words resonated with a terrifying, manipulative logic. Ivan hadn't dismissed my pain; he had co-opted it. He had taken my deepest shame and transformed it into a justification for my captivity, convincing me that the prison was the only place I could be free of the judgment of the outside world. I was left not knowing whether to hate him for the manipulation or collapse into his arms for the terrible, brutal permission

he had just given me.