Chapter 52: A Shared Nightmare

The new house felt less like a home and more like an echo chamber built entirely out of the Volkovs' wealth. Every room was perfectly lit, perfectly temperature-controlled, and utterly sterile. After a dinner of flawless, untouched food, I wandered the silent halls. Ivan was nowhere to be seen; he was often the one to withdraw after a heavy emotional confrontation, leaving Dmitri to anchor the new reality.

I found Dmitri in the large, private study wing, which was lined not with books, but with museum-quality artifacts—ancient suits of armor, Roman busts, things that spoke of power and permanence. He was standing by the massive window, looking out over the private lake, which was currently dark and reflective. He was wearing a dark robe over his clothes, giving him a softer outline, but his posture was still rigid.

He didn't turn when I entered. I walked slowly, stopping a few feet behind him. The silence between us felt different here—it wasn't the silence of anticipation, but the silence of shared, absolute truth.

"The house is beautiful, Dmitri," I said quietly, the words feeling alien and hollow. "It confirms everything Ivan said. I am the wealthiest prisoner in the world."

Dmitri turned his head just enough to acknowledge me. "The luxury is simply infrastructure, Leo. It doesn't change the substance of the transaction. You exchanged your freedom for your mother's peace. And now, you live with the buyers."

"I know the transaction," I insisted, stepping closer, needing to look past the cold facade to the man who held me so fiercely the night before. "But I don't understand the need. Ivan explained the trauma, the unified consciousness, the need for an anchor. But I still don't understand the primal, desperate fear that drives you."

I paused, looking at the immense, dark room. "You were raised by a tyrant. What was the moment, Dmitri? The single, worst moment Arthur used to teach you that failure meant annihilation? The moment that sealed your need for absolute control?"

Dmitri finally turned fully, his expression darkening as he stared past me, deep into a memory I couldn't see. He looked old for a moment, the weight of his childhood suddenly visible on his face.

"When we were ten," he began, his voice low, almost flat, stripped of all its usual dominance. "Arthur was obsessed with 'the unified mind.' He believed that since Ivan and I were identical, we should be indistinguishable in thought and execution. It was his proof of genetic perfection."

He walked over to a stone bust of a cold, stern Roman emperor and ran his fingers over the granite forehead. "He decided to test this. He gave us a single task: an advanced mathematics puzzle that required a completely unique, non-standard solution. We were given two identical slates and told to solve it in separate rooms, without consulting each other. Arthur said the outcome was simple: the solutions must be identical."

I leaned against the doorway, gripping the frame, already dreading the end of the story. "But you're two separate people. Even twins don't think exactly alike."

"Exactly," Dmitri confirmed, his voice holding a bitter echo of the child he once was. "We were ten. We were scared. We were perfect mimics of each other, yes, but when faced with a genuinely novel, high-pressure problem, our minds took two subtly different paths."

He took a deep breath, the memory clearly sharp and painful. "Ivan's solution was elegant, focused on the most efficient calculation. Mine was more complicated, focused on securing every variable, eliminating all potential risk before reaching the final number. Both were correct, Leo. Both arrived at the proper answer."

He looked at me now, his eyes burning with a remembered injustice. "Arthur came into the room. He took both slates. He looked at Ivan’s, then at mine. He didn't praise the correctness. He didn't praise the logic. He looked at us, and his face was the coldest thing I have ever seen."

Dmitri's hands clenched at his sides. "He said, 'Failure.' He threw both slates against the marble floor. They shattered. He looked at Ivan and me—two boys who had just poured their minds into proving their worth—and he said, 'The Volkov legacy is one pillar. You presented two. Two is division. Division is weakness. You have failed the test of unity.'"

The sheer weight of that expectation, the cruelty of punishing correctness for the lack of perfect duplication, was horrifying.

"What did he do?" I whispered.

"He didn't hit us," Dmitri said, a grim humor touching his lips. "He did something worse. He took us to the main vault—the place where he kept the historical documents of the family. He made us kneel on the stone floor for three hours. The rules were: no speaking, no moving, no looking at each other. Just silence."

He paused, and the darkness in the room felt physical. "Then he came back, and he started talking about our mother. He spoke about her weakness, her emotional needs, how she had failed to raise us as one mind, and how, because of that failure, she was now alone. He told us that if we ever failed to present a unified front again, we would lose everything—our names, our future, and most importantly, the only person who offered us simple affection, which was her."

Dmitri’s voice cracked slightly, losing its dominant edge for a terrifying second. "He took away the love, Leo. He made the consequence of our individuality the annihilation of the only good thing in our lives. From that day forward, Ivan and I became one entity. We anticipated, mirrored, and controlled every aspect of our lives to ensure we never presented two differing solutions again. Unity became survival."

I walked toward him slowly, my own trauma resonating with his childhood pain. "You had to become a single force to protect yourselves. And when Max died, the single force was shattered, and you lost the only other thing you loved that wasn't Arthur's property."

"Max was chaos," Dmitri admitted, his voice barely a breath. "He was a stray. He wasn't calculated. He taught us that vulnerability could be simple and good. And when Arthur destroyed him, he proved that pure, unmanaged emotion is the ultimate liability."

Dmitri looked at me, his eyes now pleading with a raw, desperate honesty. "You, Leo, are the only thing since Max that has resonated equally in Ivan and me. You are the second chance at a unified emotional anchor, but this time, you are locked within our control. I cannot risk losing you. Not to your guilt, not to your denial, not to the chaos of the outside world. I need the certainty of your heart, or I feel like I'm ten years old again, kneeling on a cold floor, waiting for Arthur to take everything away."

I reached out, my hand trembling slightly, and rested it against his rigid back. The expensive cashmere felt soft, but the muscle beneath it was steel. I saw not a monster, but a man imprisoned by a lifetime of terror. My anger was replaced by a crippling, aching empathy. I was the key to his survival, and that terrifying burden was heavier than any physical chain.

"I understand," I murmured, the simple phrase costing me everything. "The control... it’s your way of keeping us all alive."

Dmitri closed his eyes, leaning slightly into my touch. For a split second, the cold, powerful Volkov heir vanished, and only the ten-year-old boy remained, desperately holding onto the o

nly anchor he could find.