Chapter 2: The Interrogation
The guest room was a cell. White sheets, a single window overlooking a narrow courtyard, no personal effects. Mira lay on her side, staring at the blank wall. Her body ached with a deep, specific soreness. Between her legs felt swollen, used. The memory of Lya inside her, on her, played on a loop she couldn’t stop. Shame was a lead blanket, but underneath it, coiling in her stomach, was something else. A terrible, buzzing awareness. Every nerve ending felt scraped raw and sensitized.
She didn’t sleep. At 5:30 a.m., she moved on autopilot. A shower in the adjacent bathroom, scrubbing at her skin until it was pink. She found a simple black dress and underwear in the closet, her size, tags removed. Lya had prepared for this. The thought was more frightening than a spontaneous rage.
By 6:30, she was in the stark kitchen, figuring out the brutalist espresso machine. Her hands trembled as she ground the beans. The rich, smoky scent normally comforted her. Now it just smelled like preparation for the day’s execution.
At 6:45 exactly, Lya entered. She was a vision of tailored power in a charcoal suit, her hair a severe knot, makeup flawless. She looked at Mira, at the coffee and the tablet with the summaries ready on the counter, and gave a slight, approving nod. It felt like a dog being patted for performing a trick.
“The car is downstairs.”
The ride to the office was silent. Mira sat stiffly in the back, watching the city wake up. People hurried to work, anonymous and free. She was neither. She was a secret tucked into the corner of a tinted car, belonging to the woman beside her who scanned financial reports on her phone.
The elevator shot up to the fiftieth floor. The office suite was quiet, only the hum of servers and the soft tread of the earliest arrivals. Lya’s corner office door was ajar.
“Inside. Close it.”
Mira obeyed. The room was different. The usual minimalist perfection was disrupted. On the vast new desk, a replacement for the one they had fucked on, were photographs. Several of them. Alexei and Lya at a gallery opening. Alexei and Lya skiing in Courchevel. Alexei, his arm around Lya, smiling at the camera with a possessiveness that now looked like a mockery.
Lya didn’t sit. She stood by the desk, her fingers tracing the edge of a silver frame. “He gave me this for my birthday,” she said, her voice conversational. “The frame is Saint Petersburg silver. He said it was to hold our future.”
She looked at Mira. “You’ve seen him naked. You’ve heard him groan. Tell me, did he ever mention this frame?”
Mira’s throat closed. She shook her head.
“No. Of course not.” Lya picked up the frame, studied it, then placed it face down on the desk with a soft, definitive click. “Strip. To your knees.”
The command, here in the glass box where she’d once fetched coffee and filed contracts, was a new level of violation. Mira’s eyes flicked to the windows. The blinds were open. Anyone in the adjacent tower with a strong enough lens…
“Now.”
Her fingers were clumsy on the zipper of the dress. It pooled at her feet. The cool office air raised goosebumps on her skin. She knelt on the hard floor, the posture already feeling familiar, degrading.
Lya opened a deep drawer. She pulled out not a file, but a slender, wicked-looking leather crop. She flexed it, the air whistling softly.
“Bend over the desk. Hold the far edge.”
Mira rose, bent, pressing her stomach and breasts against the cold, polished wood. The photographs of Alexei and Lya were just inches from her face. She turned her head to the side, squeezing her eyes shut.
The first stroke came without warning. A sharp, biting crack across the center of her ass. Mira jolted, a gasp ripped from her.
“One,” Lya counted, her voice calm. “Where did he first kiss you?”
The pain was a bright, shocking line of fire. “In… in the supply closet,” Mira stammered into the wood. “By the archives.”
Crack.
“Two. Was it your idea?”
“No! His, it was his, he pushed me in—” The second stroke overlapped the first, the burn deepening.
Crack.
“Three. Did you fuck him in his car?” The crop landed lower, on the tender crease where ass met thigh.
“Yes.” The admission was a sob.
Crack.
“Four. Did he tell you he loved you?” This one diagonally across the existing welts.
“He… he said he might.” Each word was a struggle.
Crack.
“Five. What did you think would happen?” The strikes were methodical, covering every inch of her backside with searing precision. The pain was no longer separate lines but a single, roaring blaze.
“I didn’t think! I was stupid, I was so stupid!” Mira was crying freely now, tears smearing the desk.
Crack. Six. Crack. Seven. The questions became shorter, the intervals between strokes shorter. “His favorite spot?” “Did you swallow?” “Where is the mole on his thigh?”
Mira answered through wails, her body jerking with each impact. The shame was molten, mixing with the pain until they were indistinguishable. Her skin felt flayed, alive and screaming.
Crack. Eight. Crack. Nine.
“The last time,” Lya demanded, her breath slightly hitched now. “The hotel. What did you do after?”
“We ordered champagne,” Mira wept. “We fucked in the shower. He said… he said I was a relief. From you.”
A beat of silence, colder than the strike. Then—
CRACK.
The tenth stroke was the hardest, landing with brutal force on the most inflamed part of her right cheek. Mira shrieked, her knuckles white on the desk edge, her body bowing upward.
For a moment, there was only the sound of her ragged weeping and the distant hum of the city. Then Mira felt the crop, its cool leather tip, trace the swollen ridges it had raised.
“Good,” Lya murmured.
The crop clattered onto the desk. Then Mira felt hands, not violent but firm, spreading her aching cheeks apart. She flinched, a fresh wave of humiliation washing over her. Lya’s breath was hot, then her tongue was hot—a flat, wet, shocking stroke directly over the abused, burning flesh.
Mira choked on a moan. It was grotesque, intimate beyond anything she could comprehend. Lya licked slowly, thoroughly, tracing each welt as if mapping the damage, her tongue soothing and violating in the same gesture. The sting subsided under the wet heat, replaced by a shameful, crawling pleasure.
Lya straightened. Her fingers, slick from her own saliva, didn’t go to Mira’s ass. They slid around, plunging into the soaking wetness between Mira’s legs from the front. Mira cried out, her hips bucking. Lya fucked her with two fingers, hard and deep, the heel of her hand grinding against Mira’s clit with ruthless pressure.
“You come on my hand,” Lya ordered, her voice a guttural whisper near Mira’s ear. “You come remembering that every part of you, every pathetic secret, every fuck he gave you, belongs to me now. I own his kisses. I own his lies. I own your disgusting, traitorous cunt.”
The words were the final trigger. The orgasm detonated, a violence that had nothing to do with tenderness. Mira screamed, her body convulsing, clenching around the invading fingers, her vision whiting out as waves of intense, shame-soaked release tore through her.
When it passed, she was a limp weight on the desk, slick with sweat and other fluids, her punished ass throbbing in the cool air.
Lya pulled her fingers out, wiped them casually on Mira’s hip. She walked to the office sink, washed her hands meticulously. She looked at Mira’s collapsed form, then at the face-down photograph.
“Get up. Get dressed.”
Mira could barely move. Her legs were jelly. She slid off the desk, her feet finding the floor, and fumbled for her dress. She couldn’t look at Lya.
“The board meeting is in one hour,” Lya said, adjusting her cuffs in the window’s reflection. “You will attend. You will take notes. You will sit where I can see you. And you will remember, every time you try to sit down on that bruised little ass, exactly who owns you.”
She finally turned, her green eyes meeting Mira’s shattered brown ones. “Now go fix your face. You look used.”
Mira staggered to the door, the fabric of her dress whispering cruelly against the raised welts. As she reached for the handle, Lya’s voice stopped her, crisp and businesslike.
“And Mira? Cancel my appointment with the jeweler. The wedding is off. Have the press release drafted by noon. Cite irreconcilable differences.”
It was the first real confirmation that Alexei’s life was being dismantled too. Mira simply nodded, unable to speak, and slipped out. The door clicked shut behind her, sealing her into the sterile hallway, her body a map of possession, her future a locked room with only one key.
And Lya stood alone, looking at the city. She picked up the silver frame, opened a drawer, and dropped it inside atop a folder labeled “Asset Reclamation.” She didn’t smile. But the hollow, wounded thing in her chest was smaller now, packed tighter under layers of cold, controlled fury. The game was in motion. Mira was broken in. Now, for the main prize.
Now, for the main prize.
The board meeting was a theater of quiet power. Mira sat against the wall, the hard chair pressing into the fresh welts beneath her dress with each minute shift. The pain was a grounding pulse, a constant reminder. She kept her eyes on her tablet, taking notes, but her focus was splintered by the memory of Lya’s tongue on her beaten flesh.
Lya presided at the head of the vast table, flawless and formidable. She discussed quarterly projections, acquisition targets, liquidity. Her voice was a calibrated instrument, weaving certainty through numbers. She never glanced at Mira. The dismissal was absolute.
“The only cloud on the horizon is the volatility around our partnership with Volkov Holdings,” said a senior vice-president, adjusting his glasses. “Alexei Volkov’s personal brand has been… intertwined with ours. The engagement was a stabilizing narrative.”
Lya steepled her fingers. The overhead light caught the bare space on her left hand where a ring had been. “The engagement is terminated. The narrative shifts. Volatility is an opportunity for those prepared to capitalize.” Her gaze swept the room. “We capitalize. I’ve prepared a re-assessment of the Volkov partnership. Their financials are over-leveraged. Their tech is derivative. Their CEO is distracted.”
She tapped her tablet. A dossier flashed onto every screen. “This is a comprehensive analysis. It recommends we trigger the fail-safe clauses and divest by week’s end. We will announce simultaneously with our new partnership with Shenzhen Cybertek.”
A murmur rippled through the room. This was a brutal, pre-meditated strike. The dossier was too detailed, too complete. She had been preparing this for weeks, perhaps months.
“Alexei will fight this,” another board member cautioned.
“Let him,” Lya said, a glacial smile touching her lips. “My attorneys are already filing. The press has the salient points. His distractions, the misallocation of funds, the… personal indiscretions that call his judgment into question. It’s already in motion.”
Mira’s pen stilled. Personal indiscretions. Her stomach turned to ice. She was the indiscretion. Lya was weaponizing their affair, not to shame Mira privately, but to destroy Alexei publicly.
“Meeting adjourned.” Lya stood, a signal of absolute authority. The board members filed out, casting curious glances at the silent assistant in the corner.
When the room emptied, Lya remained standing, looking out. “Come here.”
Mira approached, the ache between her legs a dull echo of the morning.
“Your work is in this,” Lya stated, not turning. “Your scent, your silence, your pathetic gasps in a hotel room. They are the nails in his coffin. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” The word was ash.
“Good. You are an instrument. I used you to learn his weaknesses. Now I use those weaknesses to break him.” She finally turned. Her eyes were alive with a cold fire. “You will watch. Tonight.”
The car did not go to the apartment. It navigated to a discreet, modernist building in the Presnensky District. A private club. Lya led her through a dim, silent hallway to a non-descript door. Inside was a small, plush room dominated by a one-way mirror overlooking a larger, opulent lounge.
Alexei was there.
He sat on a low velvet sofa, a drink in his hand, talking animatedly to a man Mira recognized as a deputy minister. He looked the same: confident, expensively casual, his laugh too loud. Seeing him sent a jagged bolt of pain through her—not love, but the ghost of the stupid, believing girl she had been.
“Watch,” Lya whispered, standing close behind Mira, her hands resting on Mira’s shoulders.
On the large television screen muted in their room, a financial news channel played. The ticker at the bottom flashed: VOLKOV HOLDINGS SHARES PLUMMET 18% ON DIVESTITURE NEWS, ALLEGATIONS OF MISCONDUCT. Then Alexei’s photo, smiling, next to the stark headline.
They watched as Alexei’s phone vibrated on the table. He glanced at it, dismissed the call. It rang again. And again. His expression shifted from annoyance to confusion, then to dawning alarm. The deputy minister excused himself, his own phone to his ear.
“Now,” Lya said, her voice hot against Mira’s ear. Her hands slid down, cupping Mira’s breasts through the dress, pinching her nipples hard. “Watch his world unravel.”
Mira whimpered, her body betraying her again, heat pooling low as she watched Alexei scramble. He was frantically scrolling through his phone now, his face pale.
Lya’s hand pushed Mira’s dress up, shoved her underwear aside. Her fingers were relentless, plunging into Mira’s wetness, curling cruelly. “This is what you chose,” she hissed, fucking her with her hand as they both watched the man below fall apart. “This is the loser you spread your legs for.”
On the screen, a new banner: EMBATTLED CEO ALEXEI VOLKOV FACES SHAREHOLDER REVOLT, ALLEGED SEXUAL MISCONDUCT WITH SUBORDINATE. A grainy, zoomed-in photo appeared. It was Mira and Alexei, entering the hotel. Her face was blurred, but his was clear.
Alexei was now shouting into his phone, pacing. He looked small.
Lya turned Mira around, pushing her back against the cold mirror overlooking his humiliation. She unzipped her own trousers, freed herself. “Look at him,” she commanded, lifting one of Mira’s legs to hook over her arm. She positioned herself and thrust in, a deep, conquering stroke that made Mira cry out.
Mira’s head knocked against the glass. Her vision blurred. Below, Alexei was a puppet in a panic. Inside her, Lya was a piston of retribution. Each hard, deep fuck drove the scene deeper into her soul. The slick, raw sound of their coupling filled the observation room.
“Tell me who owns this cunt,” Lya grunted, her pace punishing.
“You do!” Mira sobbed.
“Tell me who’s a broken, pathetic fool.”
“He is! He is!”
Lya’s hand clamped over Mira’s mouth, muffling her cries as her own orgasm approached. She fucked her with a final, brutal intensity, her eyes locked on the degrading spectacle below. Alexei was now surrounded by three angry men in suits, jabbing fingers at him.
Lya came with a sharp, guttural groan, her body slamming Mira into the mirror. She held herself there, pulsing inside her. Then she pulled out, leaving Mira shuddering and exposed.
They both looked down. Alexei had sunk onto the sofa, his head in his hands. The men were walking away, leaving him alone in the crowded room. A monument to ruin.
Lya tucked herself away, straightening her clothes with calm precision. She looked at Mira, disheveled and used, then back at the broken man below.
“It’s done.” She said it with no triumph, only finality. “Clean yourself up. We’re leaving.”
Mira slid down the glass, legs unable to hold her. She fumbled with her clothes, the taste of salt and shame thick in her mouth. She took one last look at Alexei, a man reduced to nothing. She felt nothing for him. Not pity. Not love. Only a hollow, terrifying understanding.
Lya had not just broken him. She had erased him. And Mira had been both the catalyst and the witness, her body a tool for the carving. She followed Lya out into the hall, each step a march into a new, airless future where only one will existed. The door shut behind them, sealing Alexei's downfall in silence.