Violence has always been my clearest language.
Not because it defined me, but because it worked. People understand quickly when boundaries are drawn in blood, when authority isn't negotiated and control isn't loaned out. I built an organization where everyone knows their place, who gives the orders, and what happens when you make a mistake. I have many people beneath me, loyal or afraid—most often both.
There are rare moments when I'm alone. So rare that the fact I was out on the street without an escort that evening seems, in retrospect, like an anomaly. Or an intervention of fate, if I were the kind of man who believed in such things.
I'm not.
And yet, that's how I met Alla.
Since then, nothing flows straight anymore.
Anger keeps me awake. Restlessness gnaws at my nerves. Desire—a word I never use for myself—sits under my skin like a slow burn. I know her name. Alla. Four letters that refuse to fall into order, that surface in my thoughts at the most inappropriate moments, that break my concentration precisely when they shouldn't.
Gaston, my right hand, identifies her quickly. He's efficient—exactly as I raised him to be. He brings me information without asking questions, without raising an eyebrow. From there, things slip slightly out of control.
I start learning her routine. The hours. The route. The small habits. I watch how she constantly tries to make herself invisible—how she hunches her shoulders, how she avoids eye contact, how she lives her life inside a narrow, careful circle, as if a single step outside it could trigger a catastrophe. She has no one. Or rather, she lives as if she isn't allowed to have anyone.
I tell myself it's concern. That I'm just making sure she's okay.
It's a lie.
The truth is simpler and more uncomfortable: my interest moved past curiosity a long time ago. The fact that she works in the club irritates me in a visceral way. Other men's eyes anger me. The mere fact that she has to exist in their space awakens instincts I've always kept under control. Possessiveness isn't a romantic feeling. It's a dangerous one.
Her refusal should have made me walk away.
Instead, it pulled me in deeper.
She isn't afraid of me. She looks straight at me. She doesn't provoke me, but she doesn't shrink either. In her eyes there is no fear—only clarity. That stirs respect in me in a way that surprises me.
Her reaction hit me immediately, harder than any physical resistance ever could: no hysteria, no screaming, no theatrics. Just pure panic—contained, silent. The kind of fear you only recognize if you've seen it too often, too closely, in people who have already been forced to learn how to survive. That's when I stopped. Not because anyone made me, but because the sensation in my body—the mix of desire and lucidity—frightened me.
I understood then, with an uncomfortable clarity, that she wasn't afraid of me in the simple sense of the word. She was looking at me as a known danger—assessed, anticipated. As something she already knew how to manage. And the fact that my desire had awakened at that exact moment, when she raised all her walls, made me wonder—for the first time in years, after not asking myself pointless questions—what I was doing wrong and, more importantly, why I couldn't stop.
The stalking. The testing of boundaries. The insistence disguised as care.
That isn't me. Or at least, it shouldn't be.
I'm sitting now in my large, perfect house, at the living room table set for twenty-four people, even though tonight it will be just me and Ivar the Russian. Everything is impeccable: cutlery aligned, glasses polished, lighting calculated to impress. Around me moves a small army of well-trained servants, people who know better than to seek my attention or meet my gaze. Ivar is due to arrive with contracts and documents for our next collaboration—one that, on paper, will make me a billionaire in the most banal and definitive way possible.
I should be satisfied. If men like me can ever be happy, I've reached exactly the place I fought for years to reach. And yet I'm standing here with a glass of cheap cognac in my hand—the same one she poured for me at the bar, convinced it was good enough for me. The thought makes me smile briefly. What a joke.
Because instead of thinking about contracts, cargo, numbers that shift hierarchies, all I can feel is her skin under my palm. Her eyes. Her lips. Her breasts. Her thighs—especially her thighs. Raw, sensual thoughts that steal the air from my lungs and leave no room for me inside my own body. Desire has nested itself in me and refuses to leave, no matter how many perfect tables or empires I build around it.
Seen from the outside, things are simple. I'm about to sign an extremely profitable partnership with the Russians, and for that I'll need to leave for Moscow for a few weeks. My relationship with Ivar isn't a warm one. It doesn't have to be. It's functional. It's about money, influence, and a series of cargo shipments that need to arrive where they're supposed to, when they're supposed to. The risks are high. The structure has to remain intact.
Muffled laughter drifts from the hallway, followed by the Russian's heavy, dry voice and the sound of his deliberate footsteps approaching. Gaston guides him in easily, with the politeness and self-control he learned as a child, back when he served my father. He's impeccable in his role—present without being intrusive, attentive without seeming servile.
Ivar enters with broad shoulders and the confident smile of a man accustomed to being listened to. I extend my hand; his grip is firm, measured.
"Duca," he says, scanning the room with calculated interest. "Your house is impressive. You can see the hand of a man who knows how to build—and how to keep what's his."
"I'm glad you appreciate it, Ivar," I reply calmly. "A house is like a good business: it has to be solid, discreet, and ready for anything."
He smiles broadly, satisfied.
"Exactly the kind of philosophy I respect."
"That's why we're at the same table," I say.
We sit at the table. We speak calmly, precisely, like two men who know the value of time. We discuss the next steps, the moves, the people involved, the cargo, and the lines that must not be crossed. Everything flows naturally, efficiently, without unnecessary courtesies.
Gaston places the folders down—and for a moment, a photograph remains on the table.
Ivar sees it.
He laughs.
"Who's this pretty little fox?" he says. "I hope she's your gift for me. If so, we're going to do excellent business."
"Alla."
The name slips from Gaston's lips before he can stop himself.
The photo.
Gaston put it there by mistake—I'm sure of it from his face, from the way the color drains from his cheeks and he freezes, arms hanging stiff at his sides, like a child caught doing something he knows he shouldn't have done. I'd asked for it earlier. Just for me. And now it's here, under the chandelier's light, exposed.
I feel my jaw tighten. My hand slams into the table before I can think. The glasses jump. One of them shatters.
"Take your eyes off her," I say quietly.
My voice is calm, but the air shifts abruptly. Ivar freezes. His smile dies.
"I was joking," he says, raising his hands. "Just curiosity."
I stand.
"There's nothing funny here."
One step. Then another. His guards move on instinct, and mine do the same. For a fraction of a second, the room becomes a field of pure tension, ready to explode.
"Duca," Ivar says, softer now. "Let's not ruin a good evening."
I breathe deeply. I force my body to stop. Violence comes naturally to me—but now it would destroy more than it would solve.
I reach out, take the photograph, and fold it carefully, like something fragile.
"This conversation never happened," I say. "And that photograph was never on your table."
Ivar studies me for a long few seconds, then inclines his head.
"I understand."
I make a brief gesture. The guards step back. Air returns to the room.
"Let's continue," I add, sitting back down with a calculated calm. "Cargo doesn't move itself, and time has no patience for poorly managed emotions."
Ivar straightens his posture—a sign that he understood the message beyond the words. We move on like two men who know how to bury a dangerous moment without leaving traces. I redirect the discussion toward real problems: the new mayor, an idealist with hero ambitions, who dreams of cleaning up the city without understanding that the city breathes through us. I explain calmly why external threats aren't ignored, why power isn't confronted head-on but eroded slowly, from the inside.
The evening proves, in the end, productive. In a few days I'll be leaving for Moscow on business, and this alliance—built with care and cold blood—has the potential to bring me wealth that exceeds any ambition I've ever allowed myself to name out loud.
Like a well-trained animal, Daphne appears when she's needed. She doesn't enter; she slips in, with the certainty of someone who knows exactly what role she's been assigned and how to play it without asking for applause. She's beautiful in a predictable way, polished to the point of anonymity—perfect hair, calculated smile, a body built to be desired and then forgotten. A woman who wants to be my lover, though she never has been and never will be. She moves among us with practiced grace, but neither I nor Ivar truly pay her any attention.
She stops first beside Ivar. She speaks softly, sweetly, touches his arm as if by accident, smiles at him with promise, as though a negotiation could be softened with caresses. Ivar laughs politely, without responding in kind. He sees her exactly as she is: a momentary distraction, interchangeable, without stakes.
Daphne then returns to me and perches on the back of my chair—too close, too familiar. Her hand slides across my chest with a studied possessiveness, as if trying to mark territory that never belonged to her. I catch her scent, too sweet, too correct. It stirs nothing in me.
With a small gesture, almost elegant, she steals Alla's photograph from the breast pocket of my jacket. She does it unhurriedly, convinced I don't notice. But I catch her gaze for a fraction of a second—and there, unmistakably, are fury, helplessness, jealousy.
Later, I hear her tearing the photograph. The sound is sharp, repeated, almost ritualistic—the paper giving way under nervous fingers, the violence of the gesture saying more than any words ever could. I don't react. I stand there with a glass in my hand and let the noise die on its own. Daphne believes that if she destroys the image, she destroys the fire that ignited it. A small, childish mistake.
Night enters my room without knocking. It never has. She moves with confidence, with the assurance built from habit and access, from years of being told—directly or otherwise—that doors open for her. Her gestures are precise, learned, efficient. She searches for me with her body like a mechanism that knows exactly where to press to trigger a response.
It happens.
It always does.
My body responds, because it has been trained to. My mind, however, leaves. It detaches from the bed, from her sounds, from the familiar touch. I use her without truly looking at her, without choosing her. It's an empty motion, repeated, a blind force seeking a point of release.
I close my eyes.
I don't see her.
I see other thighs, tightening around my waist with a tension that doesn't ask for permission. Other skin, warmer, more alive. Another presence—one that doesn't offer itself, but stops exactly at the edge of the abyss. Desire cuts through my body brutally, dark, focused, and only that way can I reach the end—by imagining what I'm not allowed to touch.
Daphne becomes background noise. Wrong in every way that my obsession is right. Too available, too certain, too easy to use. There is no risk in her, no mystery. Only function and friction.
When it's over, I lie there, staring at the ceiling. Daphne falls asleep quickly, soothed by the illusion of closeness. I feel only emptiness. Not of the body, but of meaning.
Nothing works the way it used to anymore.
Not violence.
Not control.
Not sex.
For the first time, power is no longer enough for me.
And for the first time, I know exactly what I'm missing.