I smirked at the memory. “One moment,” I replied as I pulled out of my driveway, but almost immediately slowed to a stop again. Lowering my window, I gestured for Damien, the head of our family’s security, to come over. Nikolai fell silent immediately.
“Alexander,” Damien said as he approached, dipping his head in a show of deference.
“It’s done. Get the body moved and the office cleaned,” I ordered, and he nodded assent.
“I’m sorry,” he offered, his face a picture of frustration, “I should have known. I could have stopped what was happening earlier.”
I held a hand up to stop him. “No one could have known his treachery. What’s done is done. Have the situation dealt with and my father’s office spotless before we return home tonight, and all will be forgiven.”
Damien nodded once again and stepped away from the Maserati. I rolled my window back up and continued to drive. For a normal person, someone not born into a world of darkness, what had just happened in my father’s office would cause distress. They’d be emotionally distraught, unable to function.
For me, it was just another day. Just another death. I felt nothing.
“Now, where were we?” I asked, alerting Nikolai that he could speak.
“You were telling me about the crazy party we were going to tonight. Lots of women, lots of alcohol, and lots of drugs, yes?”
I laughed, “how did you guess? That’s exactly how it will be.”
“Please tell me that there’ll at least be some women our age? We don’t have much longer before we’ll be married with no time to have any fun,” Nikolai whined.
Just like me, he was reluctant to marry. Yet we both knew it had to happen. And sooner rather than later. We both must follow in our fathers’ footsteps, which meant an heir was needed to continue the bloodline. Of course, Nik had it easier. His father was dead, honorably so in service to the family. Though, my own father treated Nik like a son and both of our mothers were also eager to have us married. We’d been told all of our lives that our wives must come from good stock, whatever the fuck that meant. They had to be the products of wealthy, established families and one could only hope that they would be beautiful too.
Line the best stock up in an auction house and bid on them like cattle. The best breeder wins the hand of the Prince and his best soldier.
“There will be lots of women,” I agreed, breaking from my thoughts.
“You swear?” Nik sounded like he trusted me about as far as he could throw me.
Which was not at all.
I laughed heartily. “Lots and lots of women, all ripe for our choosing.”
It was one of the many benefits of being the son of the feared Eduard Vasilov and heir to his bloody, powerful throne; people were at my beck and call, and women were always primed for the taking.
Even at a boring-as-hell business function that I’d just tricked my de facto brother into attending with me in a bid to liven up the inevitable tedium.
Chapter Two
Marisha
“I’m not feeling well,” I averted my gaze, not looking at the reflection of my husband in the mirror as I sat at the mahogany vanity, one of the only furniture items I was allowed to bring with me when we married.
Ivan was already dressed in an impeccable bespoke suit which fit perfectly over his hard, chiseled body. He was wearing the platinum cufflinks I’d gotten him for our first anniversary two months ago. They glinted, catching the light when he moved. I hated how they sparked, how they reminded me that I was shackled to him. To this marriage. To this life.
“You are coming, Marisha. This is not up for discussion.” His voice was a low rumble, a thunderstorm threatening a downpour if I did not comply. He alone could be my shelter; he alone could give me the lifestyle I had. He reminded me constantly… that I would be nothing without him.
My family name was disgraced, my mother and father breaking Bratva laws. They’d meant well, I had to believe they’d meant well… otherwise, how could they risk their lives? My life? They’d died for their betrayal, brutally. If Ivan had not spoken for me, if he had not already asked my parents for my hand before their wrongdoings came to light, I would have died as well.
He’d saved me from a bloody fate and forced me into one of violent servitude.
There was more hate than love between us, but I was ever the pliant and amenable wife for him. Sometimes though, god sometimes, I wondered if death might not have been easier.
He was all about control. I was arm candy, sex, the woman who must give him an heir. And I felt those burdens with every inch of my tortured soul and bruised body.
“I said that I do not feel well, Ivan.” I studied my face in the mirror, still refusing to look back at him. “I have not felt well all week. You know this.”
I was searching for sympathy to escape this awful night, but I should have already known that it was futile.
“What I know,” he moved behind me, and moments later his hands clamped around my shoulders, “is that you have moped and avoided your duties this entire week. You will be the wife I need you to be, tonight of all nights.”
My duties… I had avoided his advances in the bedroom. I’d avoided the business meeting a few nights ago at our house when I should have played my part pouring drinks and running the kitchen staff. I’d avoided being mentally undressed by his corporate partners, discreetly touched by them as I moved around the living and dining room like a good hostess.
I’d complained about it before to Ivan, that the men would touch me, and he’d said it was part of my role, that none of his business associates would dare to actually fuck me. I was to laugh at their jokes, act shy as their fingers grazed my skin, and cower against his side to show that I was already a claimed, timid thing, and that I belonged to him.
They were all pigs.
Animals.
Thinly veiled sexual references whispered at my back, followed by thick male laughter.
These weren’t Bratva men, but Ivan’s men. Men with no pride and no rules. He held so many of these small private meetings and parties at our home… only a few times had he taken me out to larger Bratva gatherings, thankfully. They suffocated me; I feared them.
“Ivan, please. I cannot face it. The crowded room, the politics, the thinly-veiled business talk and wives doing lines in the bathrooms.” I lowered my head, coppery-red curls swishing across the pale cream robe I wore.
“You will come,” Ivan repeated, his tone hard as rock, “and that’s final.”
Now I did look at him, my dark eyes meeting the steel grey of his and I cowered under the severity of it. His gaze did not waver; there was no winning this fight.
For years, I had played the preening, complacent damsel. Only lately had I felt the facade slipping, and Ivan’s patience was wearing thin with the changes.
But, god, my patience was wearing thin as well. Like tissue paper, easily ripped and ruined, I found myself growing increasingly unstable. I was sick to my stomach of merely surviving and not actually living. I once had wishes and dreams, but now all I had was the hope that I could evade his advances for another day or escape his beatings if I failed him in some way. My life had become nothing but a black hole and all I wanted to do was let the blackness bury me.