Chapter 10: Pet
The fire had sunk to embers, and the simulated stars had gradually brightened to a soft, predawn grey when Erye finally pushed himself upright. Every movement was a negotiation with pain. His knee screamed. The deeper cracks across his ribs and abdomen pulsed a dull, internal light, like faulty wiring under his skin. The surface, his face and hands, was flawlessly smooth again. The cost was a profound, hollow exhaustion.
He found the arch Vic had indicated. It led not to a simple bathroom, but to a chamber that felt like a sunken Roman temple crossed with a greenhouse. The floor was heated black slate, steaming slightly where moisture met it. A vast, irregular pool of water, naturally green and milky from minerals, lay in the center, fed by a silent waterfall trickling down a rock wall thick with ferns and luminous moss. The walls were glass, looking out into a private, snow-dusted courtyard where more exotic, dormant plants twisted in intricate metal cages. The air was humid, fragrant with earth and blooming night-blooming jasmine.
Erye let the torn, blood-stained clothes fall to the floor. He looked like a vandalized art piece. He lowered himself into the water with a stifled groan. The heat was immediate and penetrating, seeping into the cold marrow of his glass bones. He sat on a submerged ledge, the water up to his chin, and simply breathed for a long time, watching his breath mist the air.
After a while, he reached for the simple stone shelves carved into the rock wall. The products there weren’t labeled, but their scents were unmistakably, expensively familiar. His brands. Rose absolute, bitter orange, smoked musk. Vic, or someone on his payroll, had stocked this place for him. The specificity of it was more intimate than the kiss, more unsettling than the cage. It was a declaration: I see your vanity. I provide for it. It belongs to me too.
He washed slowly, meticulously. The ritual was a way back into his own body. Lathering the rose-and-citrus soap over his iridescent skin, feeling the suds catch on the rough, glowing edges of the fractures. Working sandalwood conditioner through his short silver hair. The mundane actions grounded him. For twenty minutes, he was just a person in a bath, not a broken creature in a mob boss’s mountain lair.
When he emerged, the steam rising from his skin in the cooler air, a thick, black silk robe was draped over a warming rack. He put it on, tying the belt loosely. It smelled of cedar. He limped to a low, tufted chair in a corner lush with hanging ivy and sat, blotting his hair with a towel. He felt closer to normal. Or at least, a facsimile of it.
The door, a heavy slab of darkened wood, shuddered once. Then, without a click or turn, it swung inward.
Vic stood there. He’d changed into dark trousers and a simple grey sweater that did nothing to soften his shoulders. He looked like he hadn’t slept. His black eyes swept the room, missing nothing, before landing on Erye.
“You’re clean,” he observed. It wasn’t a question.
“Reasonably. The knee’s still a bastard.”
Vic walked in, the door shutting itself behind him with the same eerie finality. He stopped in front of Erye’s chair. “Stand up.”
Erye tilted his head back, a smirk playing on his perfectly healed lips. “That’s not a very nice greeting after my traumatic abduction and rescue.” But he pushed himself up, gripping the chair arm. The robe gaped slightly at his chest.
“The robe. Off.”
Erye’s smirk widened. He met Vic’s gaze, his eyes shifting to a challenging, fiery violet. He understood the game. The performance was a welcome script. He let his fingers go to the silk belt. He pulled the knot slowly, with a seducer’s practiced leisure, never breaking eye contact. He let the heavy fabric slip from his shoulders, pooling at his feet on the slate.
He stood naked in the humid air, steam still faintly curling from his glassy skin. He arched a brow, the picture of offered debauchery.
Vic’s expression didn’t change. He didn’t look at Erye’s body with hunger, but with a cold, clinical assessment. He glanced down at the pile of discarded supplies on a nearby bench—rolls of a peculiar, putty-like bandage, a basin of water.
Erye’s seductive posture deflated into a slouch. “Oh, come on. Really?”
“Your healing is inefficient. The structure needs support.” Vic’s tone was that of a mechanic diagnosing a faulty engine. He lifted a hand.
The roll of bandage levitated, unspooling with a faint whisper. A length of it dipped into the basin, soaking, then rose dripping. It moved through the air towards Erye’s left knee, where the joint was swollen and visibly misaligned beneath the skin.
Erye stiffened. “You’re going to do this telekinetically? You don’t know how to wrap a bandage.”
“I know physics. And I don’t like the smell of antiseptic.” The wet bandage, cool and firm, pressed against his knee. It began to wind itself with impossible, precise tension—not too tight, not too loose, conforming perfectly to the joint’s shape. The magic in it was a subtle, soothing chill that bit into the inflammation.
Erye watched, grudgingly impressed, as the invisible force worked. It moved to his right wrist, where the deep bruises from the chain were still a violent amethyst under the skin, then his left, wrapping them with the same detached efficiency. Finally, longer strips of the dry bandage wound around his torso, a gentle but unyielding corset that supported his cracked ribs.
“It’s a composite,” Vic said, as if reading his thoughts. “It hardens slightly to the body’s temperature. Acts as an external skeleton. You’ll keep them on until the glow goes out.”
Once done, the supplies floated back to the bench. Vic’s gaze finally tracked over Erye’s now-bandaged form. It wasn’t lust. It was possession, the satisfaction of a collector who has repaired a prized, damaged artifact.
“Now you can get dressed.”
“You’re no fun,” Erye muttered, bending—with significantly less pain—to pick up the robe.
“I didn’t bring you here for fun.” Vic turned towards the door. “I brought you here to be secure. And mine. Put on the clothes on the rack. We’re taking a walk.”
The clothes were simple, expensive: soft black linen trousers, a charcoal cashmere sweater. They fit as if tailored. Which, Erye realized, they probably had been. He slipped on the provided socks and a pair of leather slippers, feeling bizarrely like a patient in a luxury asylum.
When he emerged, Vic was waiting in the star-room hallway. Without a word, he stepped forward and, before Erye could protest, slid an arm under his knees and behind his back, lifting him.
“I can walk now,” Erye complained, though his arms instinctively looped around Vic’s neck.
“I know. I want to carry you.” Vic’s voice was matter-of-fact. “I enjoy having you at my disposal. It’s simpler.”
He carried him like that, effortlessly, as if Erye weighed nothing more than a thought. They moved through the heart of the mansion.
Vic didn’t give a narrated tour. He simply moved through spaces, allowing Erye to absorb them. A kitchen that was all stainless steel and cold halogen light, spotless and seemingly unused. A room that was nothing but shelves of vintage audio equipment, reels of tape, and thousands of vinyl records in crisp white sleeves. A library two stories high, with a spiraling cast-iron staircase and ladders on rails, the books all bound in uniform black or blood-red leather, titles stamped in silver.
They passed a hallway lined entirely with mirrors—floor to ceiling, wall to wall—but the reflections were wrong. In one, Erye saw himself as a child, small and silver-haired, looking lost. In another, Vic’s reflection showed him drenched in the red mist from the warehouse, his face a mask of serene fury. Erye looked away, his stomach clenching.
“That one’s imperfect,” Vic said casually, not breaking stride. “The glass was treated with something hallucinogenic decades ago. I keep it as a reminder.”
“Of what?”
“That nothing shows you the truth. Especially not yourself.”
They entered a room that was one enormous aquarium, a slow, silent blue world where strange, bioluminescent fish drifted like living jewels. Another was a cold, concrete vault containing nothing but a single, ancient-looking motorcycle on a pedestal, spotlit from above.
It was a house of compartments, of sealed worlds. Each room felt like a different facet of Vic’s psyche: the controlled curator, the isolated audiophile, the brutal archivist. There was no warmth, only intense, focused aesthetic intention.
Erye, his head resting against Vic’s shoulder, finally spoke into the quiet. “This is all very impressive and psychologically revealing. But it’s a museum. Where’s your favorite place? The one that isn’t for show.”
Vic looked down at him. He didn’t answer immediately. He changed direction, heading down a narrower, darker corridor that ended at a plain, unmarked door. He shouldered it open.
The smell hit Erye first. Chlorine, damp concrete, and the green, cold scent of vast, open water. The room was a cavernous, echoing space. One entire wall was glass, looking out over a sheer drop down the mountainside to the endless, snow-capped pine forests below, cloud-smoke weaving through the valleys.
And below that window, taking up half the cavern, was the pool. It was Olympic-length, its water a hazy, hypnotic turquoise from submerged lights. The ceiling above it was vaulted stone, from which hung hundreds of delicate, clear glass filaments of varying lengths. They caught the light from the water and the grey mountain daylight, scattering it into a shimmering, silent simulation of rain or falling stars.
Vic set Erye down gently on a wide, padded bench overlooking the pool. The air was cool and moist.
“Here,” Vic said, his voice quieter. “I don’t come to look at it. I come to swim. Lengths. Until my mind empties. The rhythm of it. The burn in the muscles. The sound of your own breath and nothing else.” He stared at the perfect, placid surface. “It’s the only thing that ever made the noise stop.”
Erye watched him. The rigid control was still there, but the edges had softened. This was the confession. Not of guilt or fear, but of a single, pure need. A need for silence. For a pain he could control.
“It’s beautiful,” Erye said, and meant it. He looked at the shimmering glass filaments, the hazy water, the terrifying vista beyond the glass. It was desolate and perfect. “It feels like the edge of the world.”
“It is,” Vic replied. He sat down beside Erye, not touching him. He watched the water. “The helicopters land on the pad above us. When I come back… this is where I wash it off. The conversations. The compromises. The mess.” He finally turned his head, those piercing black eyes fixing on Erye. “You’ll wait for me here. When I return.”
It wasn’t a request. It was a foundational law of this new, shared world.
Erye held his gaze. He thought of the red mist, the cold calculation in Vic’s voice when he spoke of handling the Volkovs. He thought of the deep, silent water, and the man who swam in it to find quiet. He reached out, his bandaged fingers brushing the back of Vic’s hand where it rested on the bench.
“I’ll be here,” he whispered.
Outside, the first flakes of a new storm began to spiral past the massive window. Inside, the false starlight glimmered on the water, and the two of them sat in a silence that, for the first time, didn’t feel like a weapon. It felt like a truce, written in mineral-scented air and the slow, patient memory of pain.
It felt like a truce, written in mineral-scented air and the slow, patient memory of pain.
Vic’s side of the large bed was cold and undisturbed when Erye finally woke. The only evidence he’d been there at all was a single note, folded sharply and left on the black linen pillow. The handwriting was a violent, precise slash of dark ink. Helipad. Back by dusk. Don’t touch the bandages. No signature. Just an expectation.
Erye crumpled the note and let it fall to the floor. The silence of the mansion was different now, expansive and waiting. His knee, supported by the weird, temperature-molded bandage, felt sturdy enough for a careful exploration. He started with the kitchen, a cathedral of stainless steel and shadow. The refrigerator was fully stocked, ingredients prepped and wrapped as if by ghostly staff. He found the makings for agnolotti al plin, the delicate stuffed pasta he’d once seen Vic order three times in a single week at a now-defunct restaurant in the city. The memory felt like a weapon he could polish.
He spent the morning at the broad central island, rolling out paper-thin sheets of egg dough, filling them with a mixture of roasted veal and pork, sealing each tiny pouch with a practiced pinch. The work was methodical, quiet. It calmed the low-grade hum of anticipation in his veins. He arranged the finished pasta in careful lines on a floured tray, a tiny army of his good intentions.
The library swallowed the afternoon. He ran his fingers over the uniform black and red spines, pulling out volumes at random. A treatise on Byzantine torture methods. A first edition of Paradise Lost. A meticulously-illustered guide to mycology. He chose a worn copy of The Sun Also Rises and sank into a leather chair that smelled of old smoke, reading paragraphs but absorbing none of the words. He was listening for a distant thrum.
Later, he found his way back to the hot springs, the underground cavern steamy and silent. He slid into the milky, mineral water, letting the heat work on the deep aches the bandages couldn’t reach. The glowing cracks across his ribs had dimmed to a faint silver tracing, like old scars. He floated on his back, watching the tendrils of real moss above him, and thought of nothing at all.
By four, the weak winter light bled a dull orange over the mountain peaks. He dressed with a focus he usually reserved for a mark. The clothes were from a wardrobe he’d discovered in a room adjacent to the bath—sheer black layers that revealed more than they concealed, soft trousers that hung low on his hips. The final touch was a delicate slip-chain choker, a whisper of cold platinum against his throat. He examined himself in one of the non-hallucinogenic mirrors. He looked ethereal and strategically breakable.
He took a bottle of Barolo from a climate-controlled cellar he’d found behind the kitchen and carried it to the pool room. The hazy turquoise water was still, the glass filaments above it catching the last of the dying sun, scattering prismatic shards across the vaulted stone. He settled on the wide sofa facing the massive window and the gathering storm clouds. He opened the wine, poured a glass, and drank it slowly. Then he poured another.
The wine warmed a pleasant path through his chest. He lounged back, one arm draped over the sofa back, watching the weather conspire over the forests below. The excitement was a live wire in his stomach, a sharp and unwelcome curl of dependency. He hated it. He nurtured it. He drank to it.
By the time the bottle was half gone, the sun was a memory. The room was lit only by the submerged pool lights and the occasional distant flash of sheet lightning in the belly of the clouds. The reflection in the window glass showed a silver-haired creature adrift in a cave of blue light, waiting.
That’s when he heard it, a sound deeper than the gathering wind. A slow, methodical thump-thump-thump that vibrated through the stone, growing louder, settling into a rhythmic beat directly overhead. The helicopter. It lingered for a full minute, the sound of the engines whining down.
Then, silence. The storm’s breath against the glass. The faint hum of the pool filter.
Erye took another slow sip of wine, his eyes fixed on the doorway that led back into the heart of the house. He didn’t move. He let the anticipation build in the quiet, let it tighten his skin. Footsteps, eventually, would come down the corridor. They would be heavy, deliberate. They would belong to the only other person in this entire frozen world.
He waited. The chain on his throat felt suddenly very, very real.
The chain on his throat felt suddenly very, very real.
He didn’t have to wait long.
The footsteps weren’t heavy. They were utterly silent. Vic simply appeared in the doorway, a shadow detaching itself from the deeper dark of the hall. He still wore the clothes he’d left in—the grey sweater, the dark trousers—but they looked different now. They looked like a uniform he’d worn into a war. There was no visible blood, no mark on him. But the air in the room changed. It crackled, like the moment before lightning finds a tower.
He stood there, just inside the threshold, his black eyes scanning. They took in the half-empty bottle, the second glass waiting, Erye’s arranged pose on the sofa. His expression was flat, polished stone. Erye could smell it on him now, cutting through the chlorine: ozone, cold wind, and beneath it, the faint, coppery tang of expended violence.
“You’re back early,” Erye said, his voice carefully light. “Storm mess with the schedule?”
Vic didn’t answer. He walked forward, his movements precise but with a terrifying, coiled looseness in his shoulders. He stopped at the edge of the pool, his back to Erye, and stared into the hazy water. His hands were relaxed at his sides.
“They had a wife. One of them.” Vic’s voice was conversational, almost bored. “She tried to plead. Offered me information I already knew. It was tedious.”
He fell silent again. The tension in the room was a wire pulled taut. Erye stayed perfectly still, his wineglass poised in his hand. This was the aftermath. This was the man returning from the red mist.
“Did it work?” Erye asked quietly. “Did the noise stop?”
Vic turned his head just enough to glance over his shoulder. His profile was sharp, brutal against the blue glow. “No.” He finally moved, turning fully and crossing the space between them. He didn’t sit. He loomed, looking down at Erye. “The silence here is better. But it’s waiting. It’s full of you.”
He reached out, not for Erye, but for the wine bottle. He picked it up, examined the label with a dismissive flick of his eyes, and poured the remaining wine into the empty glass on the table. He didn’t drink it. He just set the bottle down with a definitive click.
ERYE WAITS TO SEE IF VIC WILL COME TO HIM BEFORE PUSHING HIMSELF UP AND GIVING VIC THE OTHER GLASS WHILE STROKING VIC’S BACK.
Erye waited, his heart a hard drum against his bandaged ribs. Vic remained standing, that oppressive, silent energy radiating from him. The choice was a test. Erye understood. He pushed himself up from the sofa, his movements slow and deliberate, hiding the flare of pain from his knee.
He picked up the full glass he’d poured for Vic. He closed the small distance, the cool leather of his slippers whispering on stone. He didn’t speak. He pressed the glass into Vic’s hand, his fingers brushing against knuckles that were faintly abraded.
Then, his other hand went to Vic’s back. He placed it between his shoulder blades, over the thick wool of the sweater, and stroked slowly, firmly, down the line of his spine. A simple, grounding touch. He felt the immense muscle beneath twitch, a great beast stirring.
Vic looked at the glass in his hand as if he’d forgotten it was there. He took a sip. Then a deeper swallow. His free hand came up and closed over Erye’s wrist on his back, stopping the motion. His grip wasn’t gentle.
VIC, STILL IN THE ADRENALINE AND SADISTIC POWER FILLED MINDSET FROM THE DAY, TURNS HIS FORCES TO ERYE.
He turned. His eyes were pure, depthless black, absorbing the light. The casual cruelty from the city was on him, but it was looking for a new target, something more interesting than the ones he’d left broken in a downtown warehouse.
“You’re not scared,” Vic murmured, his thumb pressing into the delicate bones of Erye’s bandaged wrist. “Even now. You smell like wine and vanity. You look like a carefully wrapped present.” His gaze dragged over the sheer fabric, the choker. “My present.”
“I’m yours,” Erye said, the words a direct echo of the new rule. His pulse hammered under Vic’s grip.
“Prove it.” Vic’s voice dropped, soft and dangerous. “Get on your knees.”
The command hung in the moist air. It wasn’t about desire. It was about topography. It was about establishing the high ground after a day spent leveling cities. Erye held his gaze for a three-count, his own eyes shifting to a pale, defiant blue. Then, without breaking contact, he sank down.
The stone was cold and hard through the thin leather. He looked up, the submissive posture at odds with the challenge in his stare. Vic took another slow drink of wine, watching him over the rim of the glass.
“You made pasta,” Vic stated. He’d seen the tray in the kitchen.
“Agnolotti.”
“You remember.” Vic swirled the wine. “That was two years ago. A Tuesday.”
“You sent the chef home crying and ate three portions. It was memorable.” Erye’s knee screamed in protest. He shifted his weight slightly.
Vic’s free hand lifted. Not to touch him. To gesture. The heavy crystal glass in his hand floated away, settling soundlessly on the table. Both of his hands were now free. His telekinesis pinioned Erye in place, an invisible vise around his shoulders and chest, not painful, but utterly, chillingly inescapable.
“You think this is a transaction,” Vic said, crouching down so they were eye-level. His proximity was a furnace. “Good behavior for safety. Seduction for favor.” He brought his hand to Erye’s cheek, his touch deceptively soft. “It’s not.”
His fingers trailed down to the platinum choker. He hooked a finger under it. “This is a marker. The bandages are a cage. This house is a beautiful jar.” He pulled, just enough to make the chain bite. “And you are the specimen. My job is to decide what to do with you.”
The adrenaline, the power, the leftover rage from the day—it was all focused now, a laser point aimed at the fragile creature on his knees. Erye’s breath hitched. The intellectual understanding of his position collided with the visceral reality of Vic’s focused attention. It was terrifying. It was exhilarating.
“So decide,” Erye whispered, his voice raw.
Vic’s cruel, beautiful mouth quirked. He released the chain. His hand slid back, fingers tangling in Erye’s silver hair. “I have.” He pulled, not hard, but with undeniable authority, tilting Erye’s head back. “Today, I dismantled a rival. Tonight, I dismantle you. Piece by piece. Until I find the part that isn’t for show.”
He leaned in, his breath warm against Erye’s throat, just above the choker. “And if I break it?” he mused, his lips almost brushing the iridescent skin. “Then I’ll own the pieces, too.”
Outside, the storm finally broke. Rain lashed the massive window in a sudden, furious torrent, blurring the world into streaks of black and grey. Inside, under the false starlight of the glass filaments, the only sound was the shaky pull of Erye’s breath and the low, satisfied hum of Vic’s power flexing in the air around them.
The helicopter was silent on the pad above. The city was miles away, a forgotten ghost. Here, there was only the experiment, and the two men trapped in its first, volatile hypothesis.