Chapter 20
CHAPTER 20
VIKTORIA
"M s. Zat-a-sevo," the professor shouted, still butchering my last name.
His face reddened and twisted.
Several people around me looked away with hands slapped across their mouths to conceal their laughter.
Everyone else either gawked at me with open mouths or disdain in their eyes.
"I'm sorry professor, what was the question?" I asked, heat and humiliation burning my cheeks as I fell into his trap.
I knew better.
This professor hated everybody, but he seemed to loathe me the most, using every opportunity to publicly humiliate and isolate me.
From day one, I had been determined to prove him wrong, done so much to prove myself to him. Prove that I deserved to be in that class, to be learning, and that his prejudice had no basis in fact.
Worked harder than anyone else in this class and still was ridiculed for being a woman, Russian, a transfer student, someone with a community college education, and any other quality he could find lacking in me.
And now, instead of making it harder for him to single me out, I had just handed him a reason.
Everything with Artem had my mind so preoccupied that instead of focusing on whatever the professor was lecturing about, I was lost in my own little world, trying to think of ways to escape Artem's attention.
I had been going over possibilities in my mind, playing them out.
Everything from refusing to shave my legs or shower regularly to becoming such a nuisance, he'd want nothing to do with me.
I had even considered doing the opposite of what every single piece of modern advice on how to make a man fall for you told you to do, and thinking of ways to love-bomb him until he got sick of me.
"Ms. Zatasevo, I was asking you to expand on the UNIDROIT Principles," the professor said as he stood in the walkway halfway across the lecture hall.
I hated how he always insisted on walking up and down the stairs while lecturing, like getting his steps in was far more important than the ability for all the students in the class to hear him.
"The UNIDROIT Principles?" I asked.
I had no idea what that was.
"Yes, it was part of last night's required reading. You did the required reading, didn't you?"
For the first time since I started this class, I hadn't done the required reading.
This was actually the first time he had ever brought up the required reading in class.
It just had to be the one time I didn't do it.
Between getting kicked out of my study group, finding out that I had been moved, going to confront Artem about the gilded cage with the cameras and then getting fucked to within an inch of my life, I had forgotten to do my stupid fucking coursework.
Maybe this was the real trap.
It wasn't the domestic bliss he had given me a preview of last night and this morning; it wasn't the passionate arguments, or the gilded trappings of the life he was trying to force me into.
The real danger was that I was going to be so distracted by all of that, I forgot to do my goddamn coursework.
I couldn't even blame Artem for this.
I had just accused him of giving me an opportunity and then setting me up for failure, but I was the one who forgot to do the reading.
It wasn't even like I didn't have the time.
I could've done the reading before I confronted him.
I could've done it this morning while he was reading the newspaper on his tablet.
A vision of me reading textbooks while sipping coffee across the table from Artem reading the newspaper flashed in my head. My heart fluttered.
I pushed the thought aside.
That was something that I was going to have to work out in therapy later.
At that moment, I needed to smooth this over with my professor, so I didn't get thrown out of this class.
The professor walked up through the dreary lecture hall, his hands held behind his back as he took his time sauntering down one aisle until he got to mine and stopped directly in front of me.
Note to self: stop sitting at the end of the aisle.
"Ms. Zatasevo,” he said, glaring down at me. "I expect your full attention while you are in my class."
"I'm sorry, professor. You have my full attention. It won't happen again."
He pursed his lips as he glared down at me, and I felt about three inches tall.
"Tell me why I shouldn't just throw you out of this class."
"I—" I started to answer him, but then he kept talking and I realized it was a rhetorical question.
"Every other student in this class has had to earn their space. None of these students have community college courses on their resume, as if that were somehow good enough. Or even relevant.”
No one else here had to pull strings to get transferred mid-semester.
“I have no idea how you got into this class." He looked at the guy next to me and stage-whispered, "But I think we all have a few ideas."
Giggles erupted around me.
My cheeks burned.
"But regardless, you are here. If you are to be in my class, I expect you to apply yourself and meet my expectations as if you earned your space honorably.”
The vein in his forehead pulsed.
More people around us erupted into barely stifled giggles.
Hot, angry tears burned behind my eyes, but I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction.
"I did not?—"
"Don't waste any more of my time or yours by lying. It is irrelevant how you got here, but you will do the work.
“You will show up and you will figure out how to raise your diminished intelligence and intellect into something that I can at least tolerate calling a student."
I clenched my jaw until it ached.
I said nothing.
There was a torrent of profanity-laced insults behind my teeth, but I couldn't let them fly.
I couldn't tell this pompous asshole that no, I did not get here because I fucked my way to the middle.
I couldn't tell him that if I was fucking my way into a class, I would have actually done my research and been placed with a better professor.
And I absolutely could not have pointed out that I was the only one in this room who had actually earned a spot and who had actually worked for it instead of having their daddy pay a bribe to Admissions.
I had applied to this school while I was in high school and was approved for early admission.
I was more deserving of this spot than every other person here.
The only reason I wasn't able to go was because at the time I couldn't afford the tuition.
Unlike the others here, I wasn't born with a silver spoon shoved up my ass.
I wanted to tell the self-righteous son of a bitch exactly where he could take his outdated reading material and his narcissistic insistence that everyone in this class buy his book just so he could get the royalties.
I would've loved to point out the hypocrisy of having such a misogynistic douchebag teach International Contract Ethics.
But I didn't.
With the strength only women possess, I held my rage back.
I refused to let even a single hot tear fall down my cheek as I condensed that rage and stored it for later.
It was going to fuel every late-night study session I had.
If I told this professor exactly what I thought of him, his class, and all the other entitled students here, then they would win.
I'd be kicked out so fast my head would spin and there wasn't enough money in the world for Artem to buy my way back in.
This degree was going to be my ticket to freedom.
Or at least part of it.
Until I got it, I'd have to sit here and suffer through this bullshit, proving my strength time and time again.
It was something Dima taught me.
It was what separated us from the rest of our family.
The Zaitsevs were known for their rage.
It burned hot, and my father and other brother would lash out with a violence that scared most people.
They weren't the scary ones, though.
They were predictable in their anger, their rage.
Dima and I were different.
We had that same rage.
We just knew how to control it.
How to funnel that energy into something more productive.
For Dima, it meant holding on to anger until its use was strategically beneficial, whether that meant letting it explode in violence or fuel a revenge tactic, depending on the situation.
For me, it meant spite.
I was going to pass this class.
I was going to make it absolutely impossible for this son of a bitch to fail me.
Every single night would be spent reading over all the materials, going over lectures even if I had to do it all myself until my new study group met.
I was going to do it all, and I was going to do it on my own because fuck this professor.
Fuck him for underestimating me and thinking that I was less worthy because I came from an immigrant family, because I had a community college education, or because he couldn't figure out how to pronounce my name.
And fuck Artem for distracting me into forgetting why I was here.
I was going to get this degree, even if I had to live in his gilded cage with his cameras while I did it.
He wanted to watch me? Fine.
He could watch me study into the early hours of every morning, and he could watch me win where he tried to make me fail.
"Ms. Zatasevo, if you ever come into my class unprepared again, I will have you removed."
"It won't happen again," I said, my chin up as I stared him straight in his beady little eyes.
His lip curled, clearly pissed he didn't get to break me, before he turned around and went on with his lecture—which had nothing to do with UNIDROIT Principles.
* * *
After class, I went straight back to the cage, not letting go of my anger until I closed the door and looked at the opulent room.
I took a moment to take comfort in the fact that the dreary lecture room probably matched the professor's home.
You could say whatever you liked about the quality of the American higher education system and top-notch colleges, but the fact was they didn't pay their professors a living wage.
For a moment, I wondered if that was where his anger came from.
He picked on me because I was the only one that would not get him fired when I called Daddy to complain.
Maybe he just needed to take out his hatred of his ugly, mundane life on someone.
I almost felt sorry for him for a second.
Then I remembered that his bullshit was not my problem.
The only thing that man was, was an obstacle in my path.
Looking around the apartment, I felt a sense of calm for a moment.
It really was perfect except for those blinking red lights on the cameras.
The reminder that he was watching me shattered the calm the apartment gave me.
He just had to ruin the ambiance in such a blatant way.
I went to one of the smaller sitting rooms, got on a chair, and turned the cameras face down.
If Artem had a problem with it, he could bring it up to me.
Or better yet, he could fix it himself.
I spread out my books and got to work.
It only took me five minutes to realize UNIDROIT Principles were not in the reading material at all.
The professor was just a prick, and I got caught in his bluff.
Though I couldn't imagine it would have gone any other way even if I had done the reading.
The next three hours were spent going over last night's reading materials, taking meticulous notes by hand, and then going over my lecture notes again.
Confirming, yet again, that nothing he mentioned had anything to do with UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts, which I now knew were non-binding rules that helped coordinate contract law across different legal systems.
The antique grandfather clock in the main room chimed seven, shaking me out of my study focus.
There was an hour before I was supposed to have dinner with Artem.
Part of me wanted to tell him no.
To stand my ground.
But I knew that would end with him coming over here, punishing me and fucking me again.
It would only further confuse my priorities, and I was still sore from the night before and this morning.
My stomach growled, and that settled it.
I was going to get dressed, let him feed me, and try to figure out how to get myself out of this.
Maybe if I spent some time with him, had a conversation, I could come up with a plan for the easiest way to get rid of him.
I wore a fitted little black dress.
It was beautiful, with a square neck, and hugged my curves perfectly, making the slight flare from my waist to my hips appear elegant, and my legs looked sexy as hell through the slit in the mid-length skirt.
I looked perfectly presentable, demure and sophisticated.
Like any other young lady out on the town for the night with a gentleman.
I wasn't a young lady, and I certainly wasn't going out with a gentleman.
This needed something more.
Something that would make me feel dangerous, in control, powerful.
In the bag of cosmetics, picked by whoever Artem had hired, were a few Urban Decay lipsticks.
I had heard of the brand, but was never given the kind of money that would allow me to pay twenty-eight dollars for a single lipstick.
I stared at the tubes, testing the colors on the back of my hand. A dusty pink, a pretty neutral, and then a bright red.
The neutral would be more chic, the pink was pretty and would be very respectful, but that red.
That red called to me.
It was the kind of red that a woman needed to be strong to wear, otherwise it would just wear her.
It screamed defiance and self-possession.
Plus, no man would kiss a woman with demon-red lipstick on, not if he didn’t want to wear it himself. It would be my armor, my shield, my line in the sand, against any further intimacy with Artem.
Then I heard the front door handle jiggle.
Someone was unlocking the door and coming in.
It was Artem.
I knew it before I heard the door open and his strong, confident steps walk across the polished wood floor.
He hadn’t knocked.
It was intentional, to remind me he didn't have to.
He owned the apartment, just like he thought he owned me.
Looking back at the lipstick in my hand, I turned it over and read the color name.
"Unbreakable."
That was what I needed to be.
I leaned into the mirror and carefully painted the deep siren red on my lips.
When I straightened up to admire the color, Artem was standing behind me, watching me.
That same look of possession in his eyes met my look of defiance in the mirror.