The late afternoon light filtered through the floor‑to‑ceiling windows of your gilded cage, casting long, skeletal shadows across the canvas before you. Ivan had called it a solarium—as if giving it a prettier name made it anything other than a prison with a panoramic view.

Your brush moved in deliberate strokes, mixing greys and blues to catch the cold sprawl of the Moscow skyline beyond the glass. You’d been silent for three hours now. You knew because Ivan had been standing near the doorway for at least two of them, his presence a constant weight you refused to acknowledge.

The air still held a faint trace of expensive perfume—jasmine and sugar—from this morning, clinging stubbornly to the velvet chair and the new silk curtains. The French interior designer he’d flown in “for you” had left hours ago, all perfect red lipstick and curves poured into a pencil skirt, batting her lashes at him every time he so much as shifted his weight.

You, the supposed client, might as well have been another piece of furniture.

“You have not touched the lunch I brought,” he said finally, his accent curling around the words. “The pelmeni—I had the chef make them fresh. You said you liked them. Tuesday.”

Your brush didn’t pause. Another stroke of titanium white for the clouds. The plate on the side table cooled untouched, steam long since faded.

“Solnyshko,” he tried again, closer now. His cologne—dark, clean, expensive—cut through the ghost of the designer’s perfume. “You are upset.”

Brilliant deduction from the criminal mastermind.

“Is it the books? I can have more sent. Any books you want. First editions, even. I know you like the old ones, with the—” he gestured vaguely, searching for the word, “—the worn covers.”

Stroke. Stroke. Stroke. The silence was your only weapon here, and you wielded it precisely.

You heard him exhale—a sound caught between frustration and something that might have been hurt on anyone else. His footsteps circled you like a predator trying to understand why his captured prey refused to eat from his hand.

This morning flashes behind your eyes: the designer’s bright laugh a shade too loud, French vowels dripping over his name; the way her attention snapped to him every time he breathed, how her manicured fingers brushed his wrist as she held up velvet swatches. How, when you answered one of her timid questions about your preferences, she didn’t even turn her head—waiting for his opinion instead.

A room “built for you,” discussed entirely over your head.

“I had this room built for you,” Ivan said now, and that edge of confusion slid back into his voice—the one that appeared whenever you didn’t react the way he’d scripted in his head. “You stood by that window at the main house, you looked so… sad. You wanted to see outside, yes? So I give you outside. All of Moscow, spread before you like a gift.”

A view of the city you can’t leave. With drapes she picked out while she undressed you with her eyes. How thoughtful.

He moved into your peripheral vision, close enough that you had to actively focus on the canvas to avoid looking at him. Dark slacks, white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, the platinum watch on his wrist catching the light. He’d dressed down—for him. No suit jacket. Maybe he thought it made him less threatening. More approachable. More… human.

It didn’t.

“Tell me what I have done wrong,” he said quietly. The earnest confusion in his voice would have been laughable if your situation weren’t so dire. “I will fix it.”