“You carry my child,” I said calmly. “That makes you my property.”
“I am not your property!” she snapped, eyes blazing with fury. “I am a human being who has the right to make her own decisions!”
Wrong choice of words. I didn’t mean it like that. But it was pointless trying to explain myself. Especially now that she was crashing out with her heightened emotions all over the place.
My brows knitted together. “I don’t know what ideas you have in your head, but I’m the one who decides what happens in this house.Me.”
She locked her jaw, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Do you ever hear yourself?” Her lips curled in disbelief. “You sound patriarchal and fuckin’ misogynistic!”
I watched her go on and on.
“I am not your property! You don’t own me! And as such, you don’t get to decide to keep me locked up—because you’re not God over me!” Her voice rose with each sentence, her face a mask of fury.
Her words were sharp as a knife laced with venom, and they cut through me mercilessly. Without another word, I turned around and left, leaving her to calm the fuck down.
“Yeah, that’s right, walk away!” she yelled behind me. “Walk away knowing you’ll never own me—you hear me, Artur?! You’ll never own me!”
Once outside, I closed the door, fingers rubbing my eyes. I’d never seen her so upset before, and it affected me more than I cared to admit.
When I raised my head, Hilda was standing in front of me. “Jesus, Artur, what did you tell her?”
I drew a deep breath. “She’s all yours.” With that, I picked up my pace down the hall, allowing Hilda to handle this problem.
I’d never backed away from a fight before, never. Yet today, I did. Faced with a situation out of my control, I bailed like a coward.
For a man who’d waged countless wars in his lifetime and fought powerful men, I couldn’t handle a quarrel with a woman.
Chapter 19 – Celine
After the incident in my room, the one where I yelled at the man who had the power to end my life, I’d been avoiding myself like a plague. It was mutual because I didn’t want to see him either. Hilda said that I could’ve handled the situation better.
Maybe she was right. But in my defense, I was so pissed off by his statement about owning me like a piece of property that I lost it. I never intended to snap the way I did. In fact, I was even scared at first—until he made that condescending remark.
For some reason, I hated the fact that he said he would keep me locked up because I was carrying his child. I felt insulted, like my own opinions didn’t matter. Like I was just another car in his garage.
Despite everything that had happened—everything he put me through—I still wanted to keep the baby. The least he could’ve done was treat me like a human being. He didn’t have to exercise authority over me. He was just a man. Not a god.
Hilda also mentioned that she’d never seen him so affected by something outside his work before. As someone who had been working for his family for decades, that day was the first time she saw a domestic issue stress him out so much.
She admitted that she was shaken to her core when she saw how confused he was. Artur Tarasov, the ruthless man who had never lost a battle, had run away from a fight. She said he told her to handle the situation, that he couldn’t deal with me in that state.
Truth be told, I didn’t expect to flare up the way that I did. And even after he walked away, I kept yelling behind him, testing his patience. If I were being honest with myself, I’d admit I went too far.
Deep down, though, I loved the way he quietly left the scene before things spiraled out of control. It was something every real man would do in that situation. Perhaps he understood that my outburst was a result of my current predicament.
I was in a fragile state, both emotionally and mentally. I just needed some space to think and breathe. I wanted to be pampered and taken out of these walls for once. It would be nice to see the outside world for at least an hour after being locked up in here for months.
Anyway, it’s been three days already since the incident, and I hadn’t left my room. He hadn’t come visiting either. Maybe I scared him away. By now, my anger was gone—replaced by silence and a heavy emptiness nothing could fill.
I was bored, and the one person who’d been keeping me company these days hadn’t shown up today.
Hilda.
She wasn’t the one who served my breakfast this morning. It was one of the maids. When I asked about Hilda, she said the boss had sent her on a personal errand.
I didn’t push further, even though I thought Artur did that on purpose. Because why her? Of everyone in the house, why did he choose her? This man knew for a fact that she spent most of her time in my room. Yet he decided to make that move.
At this point, it was obvious that he did that to get on my nerves.