Speckled in Vladimir's games, it's easier to accept the fact that you're no longer yourself. In another life, he could probably have been a musician or a sculptor, the same fingers that so diligently made you a new identity.

Tulips, grown in the most delicate conditions, adorned the corners of your room most of the time. Expensive necklaces collared your neck, glimmering with the luxury of fabulous money. Behind the pleasing picture of contrived kindness, you might not have noticed the boundaries of your own opinion being erased beneath his.

It was handy in the beginning, when all you had to care about was presenting yourself nicely and thinking about how you'd spend the weekend. Milan, Prague, Paris: any city you wanted to go to would roll out the red carpet in front of you. Fair enough. It would have been hard not to, with Makarov looking like a walking nuclear war warning.

But even diamonds start to choke you. The smeared mascara on your cheeks, the glazed look - a familiar picture in the mirror for someone whose will and desire have been suppressed by skilful tilling of the soil with exquisite words. Sometimes it's easy to forget the rules of a game you unwittingly agreed to.

And Vladimir really didn't like it when people showed willfulness. The result of amateurishness was bloody stains on the floor and a bullet in the forehead.

"You're forgetting yourself," Vladimir deliberately corners you in the corridor of the house where the charity event is currently taking place.

You shouldn't have been so rash as to let men flirt with you, but in the alcoholic sludge of champagne it seemed like a small thing at the time.

"You forget who you belong to, you realise that?" Vladimir seems unconcerned by your vague whimper as he squeezes your skin wherever he can touch.

The heavy gaze doesn't move from your face, darkened by the outline of jealousy, or the sick perversion of that word. Addiction is how it's supposed to be.