The silence at the Volkov company this morning was as heavy as a shroud. Alexander was submerged in his endless meetings, exercising his authority over businessmen with his usual coldness, while I languished in his office, feeling the black leather-lined walls closing in on my breath. The tattoo over my heart, the letter (V), throbbed with a faint ache, like an internal alarm reminding me of the wretchedness of my position here.
I gathered the fragments of my shattered courage and exploited Alexander's absence to lift the landline receiver. My heart was pounding violently, demanding any thread that might connect me to Sophia. I dialed the number I knew by heart, and when the line opened, I didn't hear my friend's tender voice. Instead, I heard breathing—steady, deep, and terrifyingly familiar.
"Ayla... did you think anyone could reach her without my permission?" Ivan's voice spoke. It didn't carry Alexander's arrogant cruelty; instead, it held a frightening tone of possession—a quiet obsession like the calm before a storm.
"Ivan? Where is Sophia? Please, let me speak to her for just one second!" I begged, my voice trembling.
"Sophia is sleeping now, Ayla. She is very tired..." Ivan said. In the background, I heard a slight movement, a passing moan, and then Ivan's voice whispering to someone else: "Drink your milk, my little one, and do not move from the bed." He returned to address me coldly: "Do not call again. Sophia is in my custody now, and she needs no one but you... I mean, she needs no one but me."
The line went dead, and I felt the earth shake beneath my feet. Ivan wasn't torturing her as Alexander did to me; he was doing something far more terrifying—he was erasing her. He was turning her into a dependent child, imprisoning her in the cocoon of his obsession until she no longer possessed a voice.
Sudden Punishment... Alexander's Explosion
A short time later, the office door swung open with a bang. Alexander entered, his features as rigid as a granite rock, but his grey eyes shone with a dangerous glint. He said nothing; he simply headed toward the small surveillance monitor on his desk, then looked at me.
"You've done it again," he said in a low, threatening tone. "You tried to reach your hand outside the cage."
"I only wanted to check on her!" I screamed, tears burning my eyes. "Ivan is hiding her! He is insane for her!"
Alexander approached me and gripped my jaw with a force that made my bones groan. "What Ivan does with his woman is of no concern to me. But what does concern me is your rebellion." He grabbed my wrist and dragged me toward the dark side-room attached to the office. "Since you love communication so much, I will make you communicate with your reality as a captive mistress."
In that room, the punishment this time was steeped in extreme psychological and physical sadism. Alexander was not jealous like Ivan; he simply wanted to break my will so that I would think of nothing but him. He stripped me of my formal clothes with humiliating slowness, watching every shiver in my pale body. "Look at this tattoo," he whispered, pressing his thumb over my heart. "It tells me you are mine. And yet, you still try to escape with your mind."
He began to possess me with a relentless violence, using his body as a tool for humiliation and control. The sensory and sexual moments were long and detailed; he forced me to respond to his endless desire, describing how I would remain a prisoner here and how I had lost Sophia forever because I did not respect his rules. He overwhelmed me, drowning me in an overriding lust mingled with contempt, whispering words that made me feel worthless without his shadow. With every cry of pain, my scream turned into a moan of forced pleasure, making me loathe myself even more. He was absorbing every atom of rebellion within me, turning me into a human wreck unable to breathe without his leave.
The Altar of Secret Obsession... Ivan and Sophia
Meanwhile, in Sophia's apartment, which had been turned into a fortress, the scene was entirely different. There was none of Alexander's cold cruelty; there was only Ivan's burning obsession. He had forced Sophia to remain in bed since the morning, preventing her from wearing even a single piece of clothing so that she remained constantly ready for him.
Ivan did not strike her; he worshipped her body in a terrifying way. He sat beside her, combing her hair with his long fingers, his blue eyes gleaming with the madness of possession. "Why did you try to answer the phone, Sophia?" he asked in a calm tone, as if it were a lover's reproach, but his hand was pressing into her waist with a force that left red marks.
"I... I wanted to hear Ayla's voice," Sophia whispered, trembling in his arms. She wasn't afraid of physical pain; she was afraid of this drowning within Ivan's persona.
"Ayla has nothing to offer you," Ivan said, leaning down to kiss her neck with extreme slowness, exploring every inch of her skin as if carving his name upon her with his breath. "I am your world now. I will feed you, I will protect you, and I will possess you until you forget your old name. You are not an employee, and you are no one's friend... you are Ivan's beautiful 'doll'."
He began to exercise his obsession upon her in a long sensory scene—a scene that combined tenderness with absolute control. He kissed her as if he were breathing through her, possessing her in a way that made her feel she had vanished inside his hard body. Sophia was crying, not from pain, but from this emotional and physical siege that had begun to break her resistance. Ivan whispered promises to her about a whole life she would spend in this gilded prison, a life where no one would see her but him.
Alexander returned to his office, leaving me splayed across the leather sofa, feeling my dignity entirely lost. He stood at the door and said coldly: "Ivan informed me he will not allow you to call again. He is very obsessed with his woman, and I do not like my favorite assistant wasting his time monitoring your phones. So, consider Sophia dead, Ayla... unless you want me to turn your life here into an unbearable hell."
He locked the door behind him, and I remained alone with the tattoo over my heart, realizing we had drowned in two different wells: the well of cruelty represented by Alexander, and the well of mad obsession represented by Ivan. Sophia was lost in Ivan's madness, and I was lost in Alexander's sadism. There was no way out except total surrender to these two monsters.
After Alexander left the room, leaving behind the scent of tobacco and dominion, I remained lying on the cold floor, feeling the coarseness of the carpet beneath my violated skin. My breath came in broken gasps, my chest heaving violently against the tattoo carved over my heart. It wasn't physical pain that tore me apart, but the cold truth Ivan had slapped me with over the phone: Sophia no longer owned her voice, and I no longer owned even the right to worry about her.
I looked at my hands, which were trembling weakly, and tried to touch the letter (V) with my knuckles. I felt as though the ink were seeping into my bloodstream, transforming me into a creature that fed on the desire of its executioner. How did we get here? How did our simple dreams in a modest apartment turn into this gilded slavery? Alexander was breaking my will with iron and fire, and Ivan was drowning Sophia in an ocean of sick obsession that stripped her of her identity.
I rose slowly, my body groaning under the weight of the last confrontation. I gathered the pieces of my torn clothes, trying to cover the body that now bore Alexander's prints like badges of shame. The secret room attached to the office felt like a grave; its soundproof walls didn't just hide my screams from the world—they hid the world from me. I realized in that moment that Alexander didn't want me as a mere mistress for his lust; he wanted me as a "nothingness" that orbited him alone. He wanted to erase every memory of Adrian, every trace of Sophia, to become the beginning and the end.
I walked toward the small mirror hanging in the corner and saw my reflection. My eyes were clouded, framed by dark circles telling the story of long nights of insomnia and pain. I didn't see Ayla; I saw an "object" belonging to Alexander Volkov. I remembered the tone of Ivan's voice as he spoke of Sophia... it wasn't the tone of a man torturing an enemy, but the tone of a child refusing to share his favorite toy with anyone. Ivan, the man I thought was just a killing machine, possessed an obsession for Sophia that might be more lethal than Alexander's sadism; for it was an obsession that aspired to own the soul before the body.
"Sophia... please resist," I whispered to myself, but the echo of my voice returned to me miserable and defeated. I knew that Sophia, with her tenderness and weakness, would not last long against the flood of Ivan's twisted emotions. He would treat her like a princess in a prison; he would feed her with his own hands, clothe her with his desire, and deny her air if it did not come from his own breath.
When I stepped out of the secret room into the vast office, I found Alexander standing at the massive glass window overlooking the city from above. He looked like an angry Greek god watching over his kingdom. He didn't turn to me, but said in an icy tone: "Wash your face, Ayla. We have much work ahead. And this evening, I am inviting Ivan and his woman to dinner at the palace. I want you to see with your own eyes what true obedience looks like. Perhaps you will learn from your friend how to adore your shackles."
I froze in my place. Dinner? Sophia was coming to the palace? This was the final stab. He would make us see each other's brokenness, to prove to us that the old world was dead, and that we were now just shadows in the lives of our new masters. Nausea swept through my gut, and I realized that the evening would not be just a dinner; it would be a ritual of collective servitude under the cursed Volkov roof.