Chapter 6: Behind Glass Desires
The prison visiting room wasn't a room at all. It was a fluorescent-lit vacuum, a space designed to suck the warmth out of human connection. The air was cold and smelled of industrial cleaner, ammonia, and the faint, sweet decay of old sweat. A thick plexiglass wall, scratched with a thousand micro-scars, divided the space. On her side, a wobbly stool bolted to the floor. On his, the same.
Julia straightened the hem of her skirt—a charcoal grey pencil skirt, professionally severe—and sat, placing her leather portfolio on the tiny metal ledge. Her stilettos, a calculated weapon of authority, clicked against the concrete. She was Prosecutor Orlova here. Not the woman from the costume party. That woman felt like a phantom limb, a buzzing echo in her nerves that she forcibly silenced.
She looked through the glass.
He was already there, being led in by two guards. Maksim Volkov, known in certain circles as ‘The Hammer.’ His murder conviction was a career highlight in her first year at the prosecutor's office. Ten years ago. He’d been a mountain then, a shaved-head bull of a man, a rising star in the underground MMA circuit with a sideline in debt collection that involved breaking kneecaps with startling efficiency.
Time had condensed him. Not shrunken, but hardened. The muscle had lost its youthful puff, sculpting into dense, ropey cords under his standard-issue grey t-shirt. His face was a topography of old violence: a flattened nose, a scar through his eyebrow, a jaw like a slab of granite. His eyes, a pale, cold blue, locked onto her the moment he shuffled into view. They didn’t register surprise. They were predator-still.
He sat, the movements stiff but controlled, and picked up the black phone receiver on his side.
Julia picked up hers. The plastic was greasy. “Inmate Volkov.”
“Prosecutor Orlova.” His voice through the line was a low gravel grind, worn smooth by cigarettes and disuse. A ghost of a smile touched his lips. It didn’t reach his eyes. “You haven’t aged a day. Still the most beautiful woman to ever cross my path. Besides my mother, of course.” The joke was flat, deadpan.
“This isn’t a social call,” she said, her tone cool, opening her portfolio. “I’m reviewing old conviction files. Yours has some procedural anomalies I need to clarify for an appellate summary.”
“Procedural anomalies,” he repeated, as if tasting the words. His gaze wasn’t on her papers. It was on her face, then tracing a slow, deliberate path down her neck, over the crisp white blouse that strained slightly at her chest, down to her crossed legs. The skirt had ridden up a calculated inch when she sat. She made no move to adjust it.
“Yes. The chain of custody on the murder weapon. The statements from—”
“You look tense, Prosecutor,” he interrupted, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. He leaned forward slightly, his massive shoulders bunching. One of his hands, knuckles a permanent landscape of scar tissue and callus, pressed against the cold plexiglass, fingers splayed. “All coiled up in that smart suit. Carrying the weight of the law on those pretty shoulders.”
Julia’s pen stopped moving. A slow, familiar heat bloomed low in her stomach, a treacherous echo from the party. This was different. This was danger, pure and undiluted. It felt like a key sliding into a lock she didn’t know she had.
“My tension is none of your concern, Volkov.”
“Maksim,” he corrected softly. “Call me Maksim. We’re past formalities, don’t you think? You put me in here. That makes us intimately acquainted.” His thumb rubbed a small circle on the glass, as if he could feel the texture of her skin. “I see it in your neck. The way you hold your jaw. I was a fighter. I know bodies. I know stiffness. I know ways to work that stiffness out.”
The words hung in the static of the phone line. They weren’t a lewd whisper. They were a calm, clinical statement of fact. Her breath felt tight in her lungs. The sterile room seemed to tilt. His eyes were absolutely focused, absorbing every micro-reaction: the slight flare of her nostrils, the unconscious press of her thighs together under the desk.
A sudden clatter made her flinch.
Behind her, the young guard who had escorted her in fumbled with his key ring, sending it skittering across the floor. It came to a stop near the toe of her right stiletto.
“Sorry, ma’am,” he muttered, his ears pink, bending to retrieve them. His glance was a quick, nervous flicker—not at her face, but at the line of her leg, the vulnerable arch of her foot in the high heel. He snatched the keys and retreated quickly to his post by the door, his gaze studiously fixed on the far wall.
The interruption was a bucket of cold reality. And yet.
Julia didn’t look at the guard. She kept her eyes on Maksim. He had watched the entire exchange, his expression unchanging. He’d seen the guard’s look, the cheap thrill of proximity to a woman like her in a place like this. He’d seen her notice it.
When he spoke again, his voice was even quieter, a secret for the receiver alone. “See? Even the boy in the uniform sees it. The animal in the cage sees it clearest of all. You’re a feast in a famine, Julia. May I call you Julia? In my head, I always have.”
She should have stood up. Ended the visit. Reported him. Her professional self screamed the protocols.
Her body was a traitor. A pulse throbbed between her legs, a stark, hungry beat in the silence. His hands, pressed against the barrier, were enormous. The memory of Gregori’s size, the shocking, fulfilling challenge of it, flashed through her, followed by a wave of shame so hot it felt like rage. This was a convicted murderer. A brute.
“You think of me in here,” she said, her voice miraculously steady, ignoring his question. It wasn’t her prosecutor’s voice. It was something lower, almost contemplative.
“Every day,” he answered without hesitation.
“Every day,” he answered without hesitation. His frankness was a weapon, disarming the script she’d prepared. She watched his thumb continue its slow orbit on the glass, opposite her clavicle. “I have a lot of time to think. To remember the way you looked in court. All that fire, packed into that perfect suit.”
Julia shifted on the stool, a tiny adjustment that made the leather sigh. The sound was loud in the static-filled quiet. “Your recollection is irrelevant to your sentence.”
“Is it?” He leaned back, the phone cord stretching, and his gaze became a physical sweep. It traveled from the dark roots of her hair where it met her scalp, down the line of her throat, lingering with open, appreciative hunger on the swell of her breasts against the blouse. He didn't hide it. He conducted his inspection like a man assessing a car, a piece of art he intended to own. “You dress like a queen holding court. But your body tells another story. It’s built for something a lot less… parliamentary.”
Her face grew warm. She gripped the receiver tighter. “That’s enough.”
“It’s the truth. You have the hips of a woman who can take a proper pounding. I noticed that, too, in court. All the other suits in the room were jealous. They just wanted to fuck you. I wanted to know what sound you’d make when you finally broke.” He let that hang, then smiled, a flash of crooked teeth. “Hypothetically, of course. Since I’m in here.”
The vulgarity was so blunt it circumnavigated offense and became a strange kind of honesty. It scraped against the raw place the party had exposed. Gregori had been sweet, awed. This man was picturing her coming apart. The image, unwanted, flashed in her mind: those wrecking-ball hands on her, not gentle.
“Your fantasies are your own problem,” she managed, but her voice lacked its prosecutor’s edge.
“Not just mine.” His tone shifted, becoming conversational, conspiratorial. He leaned in again, his voice dropping. “You know, I’ve got friends. From the old circuit. They visit. Big boys, like me. Bigger, some of them. We talk. They’ve seen you on the news, too.” He let the implication settle, his eyes glinting. “They have… opinions. Appreciative ones. One of them, Sasha—they called him ‘The Bear’—he saw you leaving the courthouse last month. In the rain. That trench coat you wear.”
Julia remembered that day. The cold drizzle. She’d hurried to her car.
“He described it to me over a smuggled cigarette. The way the wet wool clung. To your… silhouette.” Maksim’s voice was a gravelly whisper. “He’s a man of few words. Grunted that a woman built like you was a ‘national treasure wasted on desk work.’ Said he’d pay a year’s fight purse just to watch you walk across his room in those heels. Nothing else. Just walk.”
A shudder, deep and involuntary, ran through her. It wasn’t fear. It was a terrifying, glittering electricity. The idea of being discussed so crudely, so specifically, by men like that—it should have revolted her. Instead, it poured fuel on the embers Gregori had kindled. It made her feel seen in a way Dmitry never had, in a way that bypassed her brain and spoke directly to her blood.
“You’re trying to unnerve me,” she said, attempting to reclaim the ledge.
“Is it working?”
“Is it working?” he repeated, his voice a low hum in the receiver.
Julia placed the phone back in its cradle with a definitive, plastic click. The connection severed with a hollow void of sound. She didn’t answer him. Words felt useless, contaminated. She gathered her portfolio with deliberate, slow movements, sliding the manila folder against the metal ledge. She stood, the motion fluid and controlled, feeling the stretch of her skirt across her thighs, the bite of the stilettos as they took her full weight.
She did not look back at him through the glass.
Turning, she walked towards the heavy secured door where the flustered guard stood waiting. Her heels struck the linoleum floor with a sound like frozen gunshots, each step an act of reclamation. The corridor was a blur of pale green paint and institutional lighting. She could feel a weight against the plexiglass, a pressure. She knew, without seeing, that his eyes were on her. They were not on her face.
They were fixed on the sway of her hips, the full, round shape of her ass outlined perfectly by the tight charcoal wool. They tracked the deliberate, powerful rhythm of her walk, a walk that had turned heads in courtrooms and now held a murderer’s gaze captive in a concrete box. The guard fumbled with his key card, his own eyes darting away from her as the door buzzed.
As she stepped through into the administrative hallway, the slightly warmer air hitting her skin, she finally allowed herself a single, steadying breath. It shuddered in her chest. Behind her, through the closing door, she caught the final fragment of the scene.
Maksim ‘The Hammer’ Volkov hadn’t moved from his stool. He sat, a mountain in prison greys, the black phone receiver still dangling from his massive hand. His face was turned toward the empty space where she had been. And on it was a wide, unmistakable, shit-eating grin.
The metallic shriek of the prison’s outer gate felt like it was tearing open a seam in her own composure. Julia walked to her parked car, a sleek black sedan, on autopilot. The sharp autumn air bit her cheeks, a relief from the stifling, sanitized warmth inside. She slid into the driver’s seat, the leather creaking, and just sat there for a full minute, hands resting on the cool steering wheel.
Her knuckles were white.
She could still feel the pressure of his gaze on her back, a tactile imprint. It was nothing like the awestruck stare of Gregori the physics post-grad. This was an appraisal, a claim staked. ‘The hips of a woman who can take a proper pounding.’ The crude words cycled in her head, not as an insult, but as a diagnosis. A terrifyingly accurate one. She started the car, the engine purring to life, and drove away from the complex without turning on the radio. The silence was full of his voice.
A week later, she found herself pulling into the same lot.
Her justification was paper-thin, a footnote in the Volkov file about witness intimidation that truly could have waited for a clerk’s review. She told herself it was professional diligence. The skirt she wore was black, just as severe, but the knit fabric clung with a subtle elasticity the wool had not. Her blouse was silk this time, a pale pearl grey. The difference was negligible, meaningless. And absolutely deliberate.
The same young guard processed her. His eyes flickered with recognition and a fresh nervousness. “Prosecutor Orlova. Visiting Volkov again?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice leaving no room for conversation.
The ritual was the same: the buzz, the lock, the chill, the smell. He was already seated when she entered the visiting booth. He looked like he’d been waiting for hours, a monument of patience. He picked up the receiver as she sat.
“You forgot your pen last time,” he said by way of greeting, his eyes drinking in the new outfit.
“I didn’t forget anything.”
“Liar.” He smiled. It wasn’t friendly. It was a shared joke, just for them. “You thought about it. Our conversation.”
“Your monologue, you mean.”
“See? You’re thinking about it right now.” He shifted, the fabric of his trousers pulling tight across a powerful thigh. “Your friend. The blonde. Does she know you visit me?”
The question was a grenade. Julia froze. How could he possibly…?
“I see the gossip magazines in the common room sometimes,” he explained, watching her alarm with delight. “Pages are sticky, but the pictures are clear. You’re at some charity ball with her. Olga, right? Wife of General Sokolov. She looks like fun. The kind of friend who’d understand… curiosities.”
The mention of Olga, here in this grim place, felt like a violation. It also twisted the key further. Olga would understand. Olga would likely grin that wicked grin and tell her to enjoy the ride. Julia felt exposed, seen from angles she hadn’t considered.
“Leave her out of it.”
“Or what?” He leaned forward, his free hand rising to press against the glass again, aligning his palm as if to match where her face was. “You’ll have me transferred? I’m already in a concrete box, Julia. This,” he tapped the glass with a thick finger, tap, tap, tap, “this is the most interesting thing that’s happened to me in nine years. And you’re just getting started.”
Her breath caught. She uncrossed and recrossed her legs, a slow, deliberate motion. The silk of her blouse whispered with the movement. She saw his eyes track it, saw his jaw tighten infinitesimally. A current arced across the void.
“You’re confident.”
“I’m observant. You’re back. That’s all the data I need.” He let his gaze drift down, openly now, lingering on the revealing drape of the silk over her chest. “The grey is a good color. It looks like smoke. I want to see if it bruises as easy as it looks.”
“You’ll never touch me.” The statement was defiant, but it sounded like a question.
“I don’t need to.” His voice dropped to that intimate, grinding whisper. “You’re doing all the work for me. You’re sitting there, all wrapped up in that expensive, fragile silk, thinking about how my hands would tear it. Thinking about how Sasha ‘The Bear’ would probably just growl and use his teeth. You’re wondering if you could take it. The scale of it.”
She was. God help her, she was. It was a sick, thrilling spiral. The party had been play, a costume. This was a raw nerve, exposed and thrumming. This man, a violent criminal, was the first person to look at her prosecutor’s armor and see not the authority, but the strain of keeping it buckled.
“It’s not that big,” she heard herself say, the words leaving her mouth before her mind could catch them. A challenge. A flirtation. Her face flushed hot.
Maksim’s eyebrows lifted. A slow, deep laugh rumbled through the phone line, a sound of pure, delighted shock. “Oh, Julia. Now who’s being the liar?” He shook his head, his eyes gleaming with newfound respect. “You have no idea, do you? You’re playing with matches in a room full of gasoline. And you love the smell.”
The guard behind her coughed, a sharp, artificial sound. Time was up. Julia moved to stand, her legs feeling less steady than before.
“Think about my question,” Maksim said quickly, his voice holding her. “About your friend Olga. Does she know? Maybe you should tell her. I bet she’d ask for details. I bet she’d want to know what a real man’s hands look like, not some general’s limp, decorated paws.”
Julia slammed the receiver down, the plastic cracking against the cradle. She stood, her spine rod-straight, and gathered her things. She could feel his laughter, silent and triumphant, against her back as she walked out. This time, her walk was different. It wasn’t just power. It was a retreat. It was an admission.
The grin on his face as she left wasn't just shit-eating this time. It was hungry. And it knew it was about to be fed.
The hunger in that grin followed her out into the October chill, a phantom pressure between her shoulder blades that no amount of rationalization could scrub away. For three days, she buried herself in a stack of financial fraud cases, the dry columns of numbers a blessed anesthetic. It didn’t work. Her mind kept replaying the grating texture of his voice, the blunt, clinical obscenity of his appraisal. ‘The hips of a woman who can take a proper pounding.’ Dmitry, at dinner, droned on about a municipal zoning vote. She watched his thin lips move and imagined them crushed.
On the fourth day, she drove back.
She told herself it was about control. About walking into that sterile room and proving his effect on her was a fiction. Her armor was different this time: a severe navy pantsuit, the trousers wide-legged, the jacket buttoned high. It was a uniform meant to erase her shape, to project only intellect and authority. As she sat on the familiar stool, the plastic receiver cool in her hand, she felt a perverse flicker of disappointment when he didn’t immediately comment on it.
Maksim looked her over, his pale eyes missing nothing. “Armor plating,” he noted, his voice a dry rasp. “Smart. But you can’t hide the engine underneath.”
“I’m not here for your commentary, Volkov.”
“You’re always here for my commentary, Julia. It’s the only thing on the menu.” He shifted, the shackles on his ankles clinking softly. “How’s your friend? The general’s wife. Still photographing well for the society pages?”
“What do you want?”
“A private audience.”
The request landed between them, simple and absurd. Julia almost laughed. “You’re a convicted murderer. I’m a prosecutor. There are no ‘private audiences.’ Everything is recorded. Observed.”
“Not everything.” He leaned forward, his forehead nearly touching the smudged glass. His voice dropped, losing its taunting edge, becoming startlingly matter-of-fact. “I have information. Exclusive evidence pertaining to the Semionov arraignment next month. The weapons trafficking case.”
A jolt, sharp and professional, cleared the fog from her mind. The Semionov case was a career-maker, a complex web linking a local oligarch to Syrian militias. The investigation was stuck, missing a crucial lynchpin. “You’re lying.”
“Am I?” He leaned back, a slow smile spreading. “Ivan Semionov’s head of security, Anatoly, used to be my sparring partner. Back when my hands worked properly. He talks when he’s drunk. He talked about a warehouse off the Novorossiysk highway, about ledgers that don’t exist on any server. About a customs officer who takes payment in vintage cars instead of cash.”
The details were too specific, too plausible. Her prosecutor’s mind, a trap of its own, began snapping pieces into place. A missing link. A motive for Anatoly to talk. Her pulse, which had been throbbing low and warm, now raced for a completely different reason. “If this is true, you give the information to your lawyer. He relays it to the investigating committee.”
“And get what? A slightly less terrible brand of cigarettes?” Maksim shook his head. “No lawyers. No committees. You. Alone. In a consultation room. No glass.”
“That’s impossible. It’s against every protocol.”
“Then I guess Semionov walks.” He shrugged, the massive movement filled with indifference. “Again. He’ll buy another yacht. Anatoly will get a bonus. And you,” his eyes pinned her, “you’ll go back to putting away accountants for tax evasion. Such a thrilling use for all that… fire.”
The insult was tailored, precise. It found the seam between her ambition and her new, terrifying hunger. He was offering a trade, but the currency was all mixed up: professional triumph for a violation of every boundary that kept her sane.
“You’re bluffing,” she said, but her voice had lost its conviction.
“Test me. Ask me something only someone inside Semionov’s circle would know.” His smirk returned, confident, languid. “Ask me about the birthday party for Semionov’s mistress last June. The one at the dacha with the imported peacocks.”
Julia froze. That detail had been in a sealed, tangential report, a piece of gossip from a coerced housekeeper. It was never made public. Her mouth went dry. The hum of the fluorescent light seemed to grow louder, a persistent insect buzz in the silent room.
He saw her recognition. “I want one hour. Unrecorded. You bring a notepad, sell it as a pro bono legal consultation. The guard outside the door, of course. But in the room, just us.” He let the image hang. “You get your case. I get a change of scenery. And maybe…” he trailed off, his gaze traveling slowly, deliberately, from her clenched jaw down the tailored line of her jacket, “maybe we finally see what happens when the armor comes off for real.”
Her mind fractured. One part screamed protocols, sanctions, career suicide. Another part, the part that had knelt on a rubber mat, calculated the risk against the dizzying reward. The part that was endlessly, achingly curious.
“I’ll consider it,” she heard herself say, the words automatic, procedural.
“Consider quickly. Semionov’s lawyers are already circling like vultures.” He placed the receiver back into its cradle, ending the visit himself. He didn’t look away as she stood, her movements stiff. The smirk never left his face. It was a quiet, voracious thing, already tasting its victory.