I let my words trail off. I’m going to have to talk to Misha. I can handle anything he throws my way. He can force me to marry a stranger, and I’ll do it to protect Svetlana, but why involve an innocent life in this? Why force me to have a child? It’s too far. Too much.
“What if we ignore the stipulation?” I suggest.
“Read the contract.”
“Or you can just tell me what it says since apparently, you’ve read every word of it. Wouldn’t that be easier?”
“No.” He closes the distance between us suddenly, until he’s so close I can feel the warmth from his big, muscled body. “I’m not going to be on the hook for any misconceptions you have.”
I refuse to back down. I’m not his hostage anymore, even if I have no more free will now than I had then.
“What do you mean, misconceptions?”
He steps even closer suddenly, every inch of him pressing against me, and bends his head. “I might not like the idea of getting married any more than you do, but once you’re mine, you’re fucking mine,cara mia.”
Without another word, he walks out of the gym, leaving me standing there with a pounding heart, a fluttering deep in my belly, and a floor covered in the marriage contract I don’t want to read.
Katya
“You’re home,”I say tonelessly when Misha finally comes through the door at three a.m.
I’ve been waiting for him to return ever since Scorpion left this afternoon. Waiting and hoping to talk.
If he’s surprised to find me awake at this late hour, he doesn’t show it. He takes off his coat and shoes slowly, carefully, saying nothing. Misha has a routine for everything, and he’s a neatfreak. The drawers in his kitchen, every cabinet, even the bath towels, are ordered and uniform and tidy.
When he hangs his coat and turns toward me, I notice the red spattered over his white button-down shirt.
He glances down, following my stare. “Late night at the office.”
His knuckles are bruised and bloodied.
“Is the blood yours?” I ask, although I already know it’s not.
He gives me a small smile. “What do you think, Katya?”
I was curled up on one of the couches under a throw blanket, but now I stand up, not wanting to give him the advantage of towering over me. “I think it’s someone else’s.”
“Someone who didn’t obey the rules as he should have done.”
Misha’s rules, I assume. I almost ask if the man is still alive, but I’m sure I know the answer to that question too—dead. Whether by Misha’s hand or someone else’s, it doesn’t matter. The ending’s the same. Just like it will be for me if I step out of line.
There’s a subtle, unspoken threat in my brother’s voice.
He goes to the kitchen area and washes his hands. He must have come directly home from whatever went down, or he’d have cleaned up first. It’s not like Misha to go around wearing the blood of his victims. But then, maybe there was another reason for that.
Maybe he wanted to intimidate me, to remind me of what will happen to me or Svetlana if I don’t marry Scorpion a few days from now the way he wants.
“I thought you would have been back sooner,” I say, trying to match his nonchalance. “Yana made dinner.”
And it wasn’t healthy, but I ate what little of it I could stomach without complaining because I know she reports directly back to my brother. I’ve been trying to stay on his good side. No one wants to be on Mikhail Sidorov’s shit list.
Misha chuckles, the only other sound the spray of the water in the sink. “Waiting up for me,sestrenka?”
Sister. He used to call me that once, when I was a girl. It was a pet name, one I cherished until I got older and realized what kind of monster he is.
“I wanted to talk with you,” I say hesitantly, leaning against a wall of kitchen cabinets for support.
I’m not sure how this is going to go.