Viktor stood up and walked to the window. Behind the glass, the abandoned garden darkened, bare branches of trees scratched the sky like the fingers of the dead. He thought about what he had heard and tried to put it into a coherent picture.
“You said he sees weaknesses,” he said without turning around. “What did he see in my daughter?”
Grekov was silent before answering.
“I don’t know the details. But Arkady once mentioned that Anya is the ideal victim. Said she herself is looking for someone who will control her. That it’s in her blood.”
Viktor closed his eyes. Arkady’s words from the study sounded in his head again. About Lidia. About how she feared her husband. About how she cried at night.
“He told me the same thing,” Viktor said quietly. “Said he was like me.”
He turned around and saw Grekov looking at him with an incomprehensible expression.
“Is that true?” he asked cautiously.
Viktor was silent for a long time. The fire crackled in the fireplace, casting trembling shadows on the walls. When he finally spoke, his voice was hoarse.
“I never beat my wife,” he began. “Never raised my voice at her. I was the perfect husband on paper. A respected surgeon. Decent salary. Non-drinker, didn’t cheat. Everyone told Lidia how lucky she was.”
He returned to the chair and sat down, looking at his hands.
“But I controlled her every step. Decided what she would eat, what she would wear, who she would be friends with. She wanted to work—I said ‘no.’ Your place is at home. She wanted to visit her sister—I said ‘no.’ I need you here. She wanted to have a second child—I said ‘no.’ One is enough.”
He clenched his fists.
“I did it with love, with care. I knew better. I was smarter, more experienced, stronger. She had to obey because I wished her well. That’s what I thought. That’s how I justified myself.”
“What happened to her?” Grekov asked quietly.
“She fell ill at forty. Doctors said—heart. But I’m a doctor myself, and I know the heart had nothing to do with it. She just stopped wanting to live. Stopped eating, stopped sleeping. Faded away before my eyes, and I couldn’t do anything. Or didn’t want to see.”
Viktor raised his head.
“She died at fifty-two. In our bedroom, in our bed. I came home from work and found her. She was smiling. For the first time in many years.”
Silence filled the room, broken only by the crackle of the fire.
“Anya didn’t cry at the funeral,” Viktor continued. “I thought she was too shocked. But then I realized—it wasn’t grief. It was relief. Mother was free, and Anya was happy for her.”
He looked at Grekov with a direct gaze.
“After Lidia’s death, I found her diaries. Thirty years of entries. Every day. Thousands of pages about how unhappy she was. How she feared me. How she hated her life. How she dreamed of running away but had nowhere to go. How she prayed for death.”
His voice broke.
“I read them all. Every word. And I understood that I was killing her all these years. Slowly, unnoticed, with love in my heart. Killing her without even noticing.”
Grekov handed him the glass of cognac. This time Viktor took it and drank it in one gulp.
“Arkady is right,” he said. “Anya grew up in a house where love meant control. Where care meant submission. She didn’t know anything else. When she met him, she recognized the familiar. Felt at home.”
“That doesn’t make you guilty of what he’s doing to her,” Grekov said.
“No,” Viktor agreed. “But it makes me responsible for her being defenseless. I taught her to mistake violence for love. I created the victim he found.”
He stood up, and there was a new determination in his eyes.
“But I can still fix this. I can’t return the years I took from Lidia. Can’t undo what I taught Anya. But I can get her out of there. I can give her a chance at a different life.”
“How?” Grekov asked. “He has money, connections, lawyers. You have nothing.”
“I have you,” Viktor said. “You know people. You know where to look. I have medical knowledge, I understand what he’s doing to her. And I have something he doesn’t.”
“What?”
“I have nothing to lose.”
Grekov looked at him for a long time, and something changed in his face. Fear gave way to something else. Maybe shame. Maybe resolve.
“Alright,” he said finally. “I’ll help. But you must understand what you’re getting into. If we lose, Arkady will destroy us both, and Anya will be taken to a place from where no one returns.”
“If we don’t try, she won’t return anyway,” Viktor replied.
Grekov nodded and took out his phone.
“I have a person in the prosecutor’s office. Honest, as much as possible nowadays. Traces of drugs in her blood, witness statements, CCTV recordings… There are cameras in the house, but only Arkady has access.”
Grekov shook his head.
“The staff is intimidated, they won’t talk. And the doctors who write her prescriptions are bought completely.”
“There must be someone,” Viktor insisted. “Someone who sees what’s happening and can’t live with it.”
Grekov thought.
“There is a housekeeper,” he said slowly. “Zoya. She’s been working there from the very beginning, even with the first wife. I saw how she looks at Arkady, as if she wants to say something but is afraid.”
“Can you contact her?”
“I’ll try, but it’s dangerous if Arkady finds out…”
“Take the risk,” Viktor said. “For my daughter. For your debt.”
Grekov looked at him and nodded.
“I’ll call you tomorrow evening. Stay in the city but don’t show yourself near the mansion. Let Arkady think you left.”
Viktor extended his hand. Grekov shook it, and in this handshake was more than a formal agreement. It was the redemption of a twenty-year debt.
“Thank you,” Viktor said.
“Don’t thank me,” Grekov replied. “Nothing is done yet. And it might not work.”
“It will work,” Viktor headed for the door. “We have no other option.”
He walked out into the cold night and wandered down the empty street looking for a taxi. In his head, the words from Lidia’s diaries, which he remembered by heart though wished he could forget, echoed: “Today he said ‘no’ again. I asked for little. Just one day at my sister’s. But he knows better. He always knows better. I no longer ask myself if I love him. I ask when this will end, and I fear the answer”…
