6. Isabella
ISABELLA
My stomach rumbles loudly as I pull the covers over my head and tuck my legs closer to my stomach, curling up like a ball.
It’s not going to make the hunger go away magically, and I might eventually pass out from the pangs that are ravaging my body, but if it keeps me in this room, behind that door, then I would rather pass out than take a step over the threshold.
Not after what happened last night.
I’m scared. I know.
As much as I hate to admit it, I am scared.
I didn’t expect to walk out of the bathroom last night and find Roman in my room. Nor did I expect him to press me against the wall and put his hands on my body.
Worse yet…I’m also ashamed. Ashamed that for a moment, I was willing to let him take what he wanted. My body, betrayer that it is, almost slipped out of rationality and into lust. Then I saw the look in his eyes, and I knew it wasn’t about lust or desire.
It was control.
His thumb on my cheek and his fingers digging into my hip—everything was about control. I couldn’t let him take my body that way, and yet I knew if I fought, he’d easily overpower me.
So I begged.
“Fuck!” I kick the covers angrily, throwing them off. I drag my fingers through my hair, yanking strands out. “Argh!” I can still see myself, like prey caught in a trap, begging for its life.
My father would rather let himself get gutted than beg for his life, and he never failed to teach me about pride.
“Never beg. It lets your enemy know they have the upper hand.”
He didn’t say anything about forcing me to get married for the family’s sake. Just sprung it on me because he knew his daughter, who would do anything to please her father, wouldn’t refuse.
All of them. My father. Roman. The big guy who drove me from the wedding and dragged me into the house while I kicked and screamed. I wish they’d all burn in hell.
But Roman Volkov most of all. If I watched him burn, I wouldn’t put out the fire. Rather, I’d get gasoline so he didn’t have a chance to survive with his charred body.
My stomach grumbles as I think of everything I’d like to do to him, and another sharp pain shoots through me, making me double over with a groan.
“Fine!” I throw my hands in the air. “I’ll eat.”
I tiptoe to the door and squint through the peephole. There’s no one there. That’s good. Exhaling slowly, I remove the chair wedged under the door handle.
There’s no one in the hallway either, and I dash through, reaching the stairs. Halfway down, I realize how I must look—if there was an audience. Like a frightened mouse without a backbone. The image is insulting enough that I straighten up, squaring my shoulders and lifting my chin as I continue.
“Miss Ricci.”
“Jeez!” I jump, hand flying to my chest, only to find Polina staring at me from the foot of the stairs. “Hi,” I mumble.
“It’s past noon,” she says flatly. There’s no emotion on her face to help me decipher if she’s displeased or just stating the time, but it doesn’t matter because she barely says more than a few words to me.
Despite the number of staff who come and go—from Polina to the gardener, the man with the van who came to deliver food supplies yesterday, and the men standing outside the house with their guns to make sure I don’t escape—it still feels like I’m the only one living here.
A large, empty house.
Because barely anyone looks my way. If Polina didn’t have to interact with me, I’m sure she wouldn’t spare a glance in my direction either.
“Oh well,” I mutter, pushing the thought aside before it festers into a deep feeling of loneliness. “What’s for breakfast?” I ask.
“It’s past noon,” she reminds me.
Oh. She’s displeased, then. “Lunch,” I correct as my stomach makes the same soul-sucking sound. “What’s for lunch?”
Lunch is a two-course meal of wild mushroom risotto with steak salad. Polina leaves me in the kitchen, and after a couple of look-throughs, I find a few bottles of red wine in the adjoining pantry.
It looks vintage, probably one of Roman’s prized collections.
“Good.” I grin. “The more the merrier.”
I open a bottle, then another. When I leave the kitchen, both bottles remain open and hardly touched, abandoned on the counter.
“Some sightseeing?” I murmur as I stand outside the door, glancing around. I haven’t been anywhere since the day I stumbled across his study.
Because the memory of being toyed and played with never left my head. And some part of me held on to the idea that—other than my plan for revenge—my father would find a way to get me out. But after trying to reach him several times without success, my hope in the latter is waning.
It’s left to me now. To find a way out.
Exhaling, I veer away from the kitchen and deeper into the house. The silence grows heavier the farther I walk, and I make turns into rooms—the drawing room, the one that smells of cigars, all of them with large windows.
The windows taunt me with their view, reminding me that I haven’t stepped out of the house since my supposed wedding day. I haven’t felt the sun on my face or what it feels like to be free.
The urge to find something heavy and break the glass is tempting, but Roman’s words do not leave my head. I might’ve thought he was pulling an empty threat before, but after his presence in my room last night, I’d rather plan carefully than take the risk of a bullet between my eyes.
I grit my teeth as I step out of the room, slamming the door hard enough that it rattles.
Find something, Isabella. There has to be something in this house. Something I can use.
My search leads me to a door that’s a different color from the others. I hesitate in front of it as if something is holding me back before I push it open.
I’m instantly bathed in stale air, the kind that hasn’t moved in years.
The drapes are drawn tight, and dust clings to every surface like a second skin.
Sheets are draped over the furniture, like ghostly silhouettes of couches and chairs frozen in time.
Even the light fixtures on the walls are broken.
But it’s not just the dust or the quiet that grips me.
It’s the familiarity—the way the drapes block the light as if keeping everything and everyone out.
Her bedroom.
My mother’s bedroom. After she died—when I was nine—my father forbade me from going into her room. He didn’t move anything out, not the sheets on her bed or the dress on her chair. It was as if he didn’t want to move on…or at least that’s what I thought.
At eleven, I learned never to mention her when he took me to the shooting range and left me there for hours.
He never said why, but I knew it was my punishment.
So instead of disobeying him, I snuck into the room now and then, sitting in the middle of the dust and smell, desperately clinging to her fading memory.
Then I left home. And when I came back, everything was gone. Not a trace of anything remained. It was almost as if she never existed.
A sob clings to the back of my throat as the childhood memories rush through my head, so vivid I can almost touch them. Almost smell her. My shoulders shudder as I press my fingers to my face, struggling to keep them from breaking me down.
“Miss Ricci?”
I quickly wipe away a stray tear before turning to face Polina.
“Were you looking for something?” she asks.
I shake my head. “I’m sorry. I got lost.” The flicker from my face to the room and back tells me she doesn’t believe my lie. “Lunch was great,” I say, hurrying to cover it with another. “Thank you.”
She remains silent, but I step around her, leaving the room before sadness envelops me again. My fingers dig into my shorts as I walk away, and frustration replaces the loneliness in my chest.
I never forgave him. I never forgave my father for erasing my mother like she wasn’t mine to mourn too. And I’ll never forgive Roman either.
Until the day he’s gone.
My tour around the house ends abruptly after Polina finds me, so I head back to my room. Somehow, I end up taking a nap for hours, then waking up to a terrible headache and the sound of a thousand drums beating at once in my head.
My head too heavy to sit on my shoulders, pounding in my ears, and my hair a mess, I stagger out of the room, heading downstairs to find Polina.
I need painkillers.
My first stop is the kitchen, but it’s empty. There’s no Polina. I try the living room—a familiar place—but she’s not there either.
I should head up and sleep some more. Maybe it’ll help. But the thought of climbing the stairs while my neck feels like a frayed thread holding my head up makes me want to puke. So I drag my feet further into the house, whispering her name in a hoarse voice.
I pass by a door—no recollection of how I got this far—and hear a voice that sounds like hers.
“Bingo!” I thrust my hand out so excitedly that it only makes the aftermath feel even worse. I’ll feel better. I just need some painkillers, and then one night without thinking about Roman. Or my father. Or my fucked-up situation.
Pushing the door open, I walk in with my request at the tip of my tongue.
It never escapes.
Because it’s not Polina.
And I didn’t walk into any random room. I walked into his room. There’s a naked Roman standing in the middle of the room, his back turned…but naked anyway.
My jaw drops while my eyes greedily wander from his broad, carved shoulders like stone slabs to his back muscles, moving with casual grace. Grace? More like power. Because it shouldn’t look so…intimidating.
A slew of silver scars of various lengths cover his back, like battle souvenirs. My fingers trace lines on my thigh as I imagine running them over his back, across the lines.
Isabella.
A part of my brain, probably the one I should listen to, reminds me that I’m standing in his room. I should get out. Turn around and leave before he either notices my intrusive presence or turns and does something I won’t escape from.