Chapter 6 Dimitri #2
“Not to what? Actually interact with her?” Konstantin leans forward, his expression serious now.
“You’re treating her like a piece of furniture.
You’ve locked her in that house, cut off her phone, forbidden the staff from being kind to her, and you won’t even be in the same room with her.
What exactly did you think this would accomplish? ”
“I thought it would make her suffer,” I say bluntly.
“I thought it would remind her—remind all of them—what happens when you come for a Volkov. Her family killed Alexei. They ambushed and executed him in a fucking warehouse. So yes, I want her to suffer. I want her to feel a fraction of what we felt. Is that so fucking wrong?”
Konstantin is quiet for a long moment, his dark eyes probing into mine. Then, he sighs. “No. It’s not wrong,” he concedes. “It’s human. But Dimitri…” He sighs again. “Revenge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. It doesn’t work that way.”
“She’s an Ashford,” I say again, like saying it enough times will make the uncomfortable tightness in my chest go away. “This is justice.”
“Is it?” He nods toward the monitors. “Because it looks to me like you’re torturing yourself as much as you’re torturing her.
You’re watching her on those screens like…
” He stops himself, shaking his head. “You know what? Fine. Do what you need to do. But ask yourself, what would Alexei think of this? Of your locking up some innocent girl and making her miserable because of what her uncle did?”
The mention of Alexei’s name makes my hands curl into fists. “Don't bring him into this,” I warn. Konstantin may be my uncle but I won’t hesitate to smash him into the wall if he continues to bring up my brother’s name.
“He’s already in this. He’s why you married her in the first place.” Konstantin stands, brushing off imaginary lint off his jacket. “But I wonder if this is what he’d want. Your baby brother was always kind to everyone, and he believed in giving people chances. Would he want you to become this?”
I don’t want to hear this anymore. “Goodbye, Uncle.”
“Think about it, Dimitri. That’s all I’m asking.” He moves toward the door, then pauses. “And maybe actually go home tonight. Talk to the girl. She’s your wife, whether you like it or not. Ignoring her won’t change that.”
He leaves before I can respond, and I’m left alone with my reports and my monitors and the uncomfortable truth I’ve been avoiding.
I look at the screens again. Vera is back in her room now, curled up on the bed, and I can see she’s crying. Her shoulders shake with silent sobs, her face buried in a pillow.
That tightness in my chest gets worse.
I force myself to look away and focus on work. For the next six hours, I deliberately don’t look at the monitors. I handle meetings, review contracts, and deal with the hundred small crises that are part of running an organization like this. I’m productive. Efficient. Back in control.
But around four p.m., my eyes drift to the screens again.
Vera is walking slowly down the hall. She’s changed clothes, now wearing a different sweater, this one a soft blue-gray that makes her skin look even paler. Her hair is down now, falling in loose waves past her shoulders, and her eyes are swollen and red-rimmed.
She reaches the library door and disappears inside.
I switch to the monitor in the library. She appears in frame, moving to the window seat. She hunches in there, drawing her knees to her chest, staring out at the grounds, just sitting there, completely still except for the occasional tremor that runs through her body.
She looks so small. So alone. So utterly beaten.
And something in me cracks.
Before I know what I’m doing, I’m standing and grabbing my jacket. I tell my startled assistant to cancel my evening appointments, and then I’m in my car, pulling out of the garage and heading toward the estate.
I tell myself that I need to check on my investment and make sure she’s not planning anything. I need to see what’s wrong with her so I can determine whether it’s a threat.
But the truth is that I can’t stand watching her suffer anymore. Not like this. Not when it makes my chest feel like it’s being crushed in a vise.
The house is quiet when I arrive.
It’s just past five p.m., too early for dinner service, but too late for the afternoon routine. My footsteps echo on the marble floors as I move through the foyer, past the sitting rooms, and upstairs toward the library.
I pause outside the door, listening. Nothing. No sound at all. For a moment, I wonder if she’s left, if I somehow missed her on the monitors during the drive home. But no—where would she go? She has no phone, no car, no way out past the gates and guards.
I open the door.
She’s still huddled in the window seat, exactly as she was on the monitor. The late afternoon sun streams through the glass behind her, turning her hair into burnished copper and gold. The light is harsh and unforgiving, showing every detail I couldn’t see on the security footage.
Dark circles under her eyes, skin so pale it’s almost translucent.
A hollowness to her cheeks that wasn’t there at the wedding.
Her eyes are red and swollen from crying, her lips slightly chapped.
She’s wearing that blue-gray sweater with dark jeans, and the clothes hang looser than they did a few days ago. She’s lost weight.
She looks fragile. Breakable. Like a strong wind could shatter her into pieces.
And beautiful. Even like this she’s stunning.
I shove that thought away violently.
She startles when she sees me, her eyes going wide. The book in her lap nearly falls to the floor. She catches it at the last second, her movements jerky and uncoordinated.
“I—I didn’t expect you,” she stammers, sitting up straighter, clearly trying to compose herself. “Mrs. Kozlov said you wouldn’t be home until late. I can leave if you—”
“It’s my house,” I cut her off, my voice coming out harsher than I intended. “I don’t need to announce myself. And I certainly don’t need permission to enter any room in my own home.”
She flinches—actually flinches, like my words physically hurt her. Her hand tightens on the book, knuckles going white. “Of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
She stops herself, biting her lip hard enough to draw blood. A small red dot appears on her lower lip, and I watch her tongue dart out to taste it. She winces.
I should turn around and walk out before this gets more complicated than it already is. But instead, I find myself moving further into the room, closing the door behind me with a soft click that makes her tense.
I study her. Really look at her, not through a security monitor but in person, with the afternoon light showing me everything.
From the way she’s positioned in the chair, she’s trying to make herself smaller.
The tremor in her hands that she’s trying to hide.
The way she keeps swallowing, like she’s fighting nausea.
“What’s wrong with you?” I ask bluntly.
She blinks. “What?”
“You’re sick,” I state. “Every morning for the past three days, you’ve run to the bathroom. You barely eat. You look like death warmed over. So what’s wrong with you?”
I watch the blood drain from her face, her brown eyes going wide with what looks like panic. She clutches the book even tighter.
“I-I’m not sick,” she says, but her voice quavers. “I’m just—it’s just adjustment. To everything. New place, new... situation. Stress. Homesickness.” She forces a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “I’m fine. Really.”
She’s lying. I can see it in every line of her body and hear it in the way her voice pitches higher. She's a terrible liar, and right now, her face is showing me fear. Pure, undiluted fear.
Why? What is she so afraid of?
“You’re not fine,” I say flatly. “And I don’t believe you.”
She shrinks back against the window, pressing herself into the corner of the seat like she wishes she could disappear through the glass.
“I swear, I’m not sick. I’m not contagious or anything.
It’s just—” She stops, swallows hard. “It’s just stress.
That’s all. Adjusting to—” She gestures vaguely between us. “To this. Being here.”
To being my prisoner, she means. Being trapped in this house with people who hate her. Being married to a man who can barely stand to look at her except through security monitors.
That uncomfortable tightness is back in my chest, worse than before.
I should push and demand the truth. Whatever she’s hiding, I have a right to know. This is my house, she’s my—my responsibility. My property, legally. I have every right to know what’s going on with her health.
But something about the fear in her eyes stops me. Something about the way looks so small and fragile and utterly terrified of me.
Maybe it is just stress. God knows I’ve put enough of that on her shoulders by locking her in this house, cutting her off from her family, and making it clear she’s unwelcome. Maybe that’s all it is—her body responding to the hell I’ve deliberately created for her.
Job well done, right?
I feel sick.
I need to think. I need space to process this and not be standing here watching her shrink away from me like I’m some kind of monster.
Even though that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to be.
“You’ll eat dinner with me tomorrow,” I hear myself say. The words come out before I’ve fully decided to say them. “Seven o’clock. No arguments.”
Fear flashes across her face, so quick and vivid it’s like watching lightning strike. “You want me to—to eat with you?”
“Is that a problem?”
“No! No, of course not. I just—” She swallows again, that nervous gesture that tells me she’s scared shitless. “I thought you preferred not to... I mean, you haven’t been home, so I assumed you didn’t want—”
“Seven o’clock,” I repeat, cutting off her rambling. “Be ready.”
I turn to leave before I can do something stupid like ask her what she’s really afraid of or try to figure out why watching her fear makes me feel worse instead of better. Like reaching out to—
No. Absolutely not.
I’m at the door when her voice stops me.
“Dimitri?”
My name on her lips makes my heart clench. It’s the first time she’s said it since our wedding night, when I had her underneath me, crying out that name as she came apart. The memory slams into me with unwanted force.
I don’t turn around. “What?”
“Thank you. For…” She trails off, and I can hear the confusion in her voice. Like she’s not sure what she’s thanking me for. “For checking on me. I know you didn’t have to.”
The words hit harder than they should. Because she’s right.
I didn’t have to come here or confront her.
I didn’t have to order her to eat dinner with me tomorrow.
I could have kept avoiding her, watching through monitors, and pretending she doesn’t exist except as a chess piece in a game of revenge.
But here I am.
“Don’t think this means anything," I say, my voice cold. “You’re an investment. I need to make sure you’re... functional. That’s all.”
I walk out, closing the door firmly behind me, cutting off whatever she might have said. I make it to my office before I have to stop, bracing my hands on my desk, breathing hard like I’ve just run a marathon.
What the fuck am I doing?
I’m supposed to be punishing her. Making her pay. Using her to hurt the Ashfords the way they hurt me. That’s the plan. That’s been the plan since the moment Konstantin proposed this arrangement.
But somewhere between watching her try those locked doors and seeing the fear in her eyes just now, something shifted. Something I don’t understand or want to examine too closely.
Because if I examine it, I’ll have to admit that watching her suffer doesn’t feel like victory.
It feels like torture.
And not the kind I intended.
I sink into my desk chair and do the one thing I swore I wouldn’t do.
I pull up the security feed again and find her in the library.
She’s still sitting in that window seat, but now she’s crying again.
Silent tears streaming down her face, her whole body shaking with the force of sobs she’s trying to muffle.
This is victory. This is what I wanted, isn’t it? Her misery. Her pain. Her understanding that she’s completely under my control, that I can make her life hell whenever I want.
So why do I feel like the world’s biggest piece of shit?
Why does watching her cry make me want to go back in there and—and what? Comfort her? Apologize? Tell her it’s going to be okay when we both know that’s a lie?
I look away from the monitor and focus my attention on the reports spread across my desk. Numbers and territories and business dealings that actually matter. Things I can control, unlike the mess I’ve made of this situation.
But even as I try to force my eyes to track across spreadsheets and contracts, my mind keeps going back to that moment in the library. The fear in her eyes. The way she tried to hide whatever’s wrong with her. The terror in her voice when she insisted it was just stress.
She’s hiding something. That much is obvious. But what? And why is she so afraid to tell me?
Maybe it really is just stress manifesting physically.
The human body does strange things under extreme duress.
I’ve seen men in this business develop ulcers, heart conditions, panic attacks—all from the constant pressure and fear.
Maybe that’s all this is. Her body breaking down under the weight of everything I’ve put her through.
That's the goal, right? To break her?
But it doesn’t feel like victory. It feels hollow. Empty. Wrong in a way I can’t articulate.
Tomorrow. I’ll figure it out tomorrow at dinner. I’ll watch her, study her, maybe try to actually talk to her like she’s a human. Because one way or another, I need to understand what’s happening in my own house, and what’s happening with the woman who’s legally my wife, whether I like it or not.
I pull up the security feed one more time. Just to check and make sure she’s okay.
She’s still crying in the library, and I force myself to watch. To see what my revenge has wrought. To confront the reality of what I’ve done to her.
This is justice, I tell myself. This is what the Ashfords deserve.
But the words ring hollow even in my own head.
And the tightness in my chest doesn’t go away.