Chapter 4 - Raya #2
I lean back in my chair and look at him, trying to work out what is going on behind his eyes, to find any trace of real emotion there.
I don’t know what exactly I’m looking for—guilt?
He looks back, the full weight of his attention on me, like I am the only thing in the room worth looking at.
I find it deeply uncomfortable, but I refuse to be the one who looks away first.
“What if I say no?”
“You have my word, I will take you home, right now. Yaroslav will try again; that much is certain, but next time I may not know when he’s coming.”
“Is that a threat?”
“I think we’ve already established it as fact.”
I hate this. I hate that he is right. I hate this whole damn situation and the fact that any door I choose leads to the same room; me constantly under threat of kidnap and married to a Mykros.
I look at the document on the table, already signed by witnesses, Yakov’s signature scrawled along the bottom.
I think about Yaroslav on that sidewalk, the arrogance of him in thinking he was going to take me and force me to marry him.
This is no different, except for the fact that Yakov stepped in to prevent it.
He also saved Selene when her father tried to kill her.
There has to be something to that, doesn’t there?
“My family,” I say, “are going to lose their minds, you know?”
“Selene will talk to Simon. Simon will hold your brothers back long enough to keep you out of the direct line of fire for a while—until we know how my father’s actually going to react.
He’s not predictable right now. He’s humiliated, and he’s angry.
I’d rather you were somewhere safe while we find out which version of him we’re dealing with. ”
“And when they find out that you’ve forced me to marry you?”
“I’ll deal with that when it comes.”
“You’ll deal with it,” I repeat this back to him in the tone it deserves.
“Wow, that’s very reassuring. I feel so much better about the whole thing.
” He says nothing, which is maddening. “I want it noted,” I say, reaching to take the pen from him before I can talk myself out of it, because I am smart enough to understand the alternative and won’t pretend otherwise, “that I am seriously pissed about this whole thing.”
“Noted.”
“And that you are a manipulative, high-handed, arrogant—”
“Also noted.”
“—control freak who thinks kidnapping a woman and forcing her into a marriage is a perfectly reasonable solution to a problem that your psycho family created in the first place.”
“Fair,” he shrugs, as if he’s conceding a mildly inconvenient point.
I sign the damn document and slam the pen down. I look him dead in the eye because I want him to feel the full force of the emotion behind what I am going to say. I jab my finger in his direction. “I will never forgive you for this, Yakov Mykros, never. Do you understand me?”
He holds my gaze and doesn’t flinch, doesn’t apologize, and doesn’t offer me any words of justification.
He simply says, “I do,” then picks up the certificate, folds it up, and slides it back into his inside pocket.
Done and dusted. It was a stupid dream anyway.
I basically said as much to Selene this morning.
Better to stick with book boyfriends. I turn away before he can see my face.
I look at the window and the quiet street beyond it, ordinary people living ordinary lives behind their closed doors.
What must it be like, I wonder, to wake up in the morning and live a life that is fully your own, on your own terms, not dictated by who your family is, or now, by who your husband is.
To walk the kids to school and go for a coffee, to not look behind your back constantly. That must be nice.
I pick up the granola bar and eat it, not because I am genuinely hungry and beginning to feel a little faint, but because I need something to do with my hands. I look at my empty ring finger and sigh. Maybe love was never meant for me anyway.
“You’re making a habit of that.” Yakov’s deep, level voice breaks the silence of the kitchen some time later, pulling me out of my thoughts.
I look up from the crumpled wrapper of the granola bar. He is still sitting across the table, eyes watching my face with that relentless, unblinking intensity. “Making a habit of what, Mykros?” I snap, my voice dripping with as much venom as I can muster.
“Looking at me like you’re trying to work out the amount of force it would take to drive that pen through my skull.”
“It doesn’t take working out; it takes an opportunity,” I fire back, leaning forward, resting my elbows against the wood to crowd the space between us.
“And for your information, I am not looking at you. I don’t care about you.
I am mourning my sanity, which apparently vanished the second I let you pull me into your car. ”
He doesn’t flinch. If anything, my hostility seems to entertain him, something dangerously close to a smile pulling at his lips. He folds his arms over his chest, his lean torso stretching beneath his jacket, his presence filling the clean kitchen until the air feels claustrophobic.
“The aisle and the beautiful dress will have to wait, malysh,” he says, referring back to my earlier comment. “But the reality of what’s just happened is fixed. You’re my wife now. You’d do well to remember that.”
“I am a Volkov, Yakov,” I sneer. God, I want to punch him in the face, or poke him in the eyes, something, anything.
“I signed a piece of paper under duress, having been kidnapped. You think because you have a document you’ve stolen from somewhere in your pocket that I’m going to start playing the dutiful, blushing bride? Fuck off.”
Yakov stands up from his chair, his massive frame blocking out the window light as he steps around the side of the table, stopping barely a foot away from my seat.
The sheer size of him is slightly terrifying.
He leans down, bracing his large left hand flat against the back of my chair, effectively trapping me between his chest and the wood.
“It isn’t a joke to my father, Raya,” he whispers, his breath warm against the sensitive skin near my ear, sending an involuntary, irritating shiver down my spine.
I force my chin up, glaring directly into his face, our noses barely inches apart.
I can smell the leather of his jacket, and the sharp scent of his cologne.
It makes my chest tighten in a way that hurts.
“I couldn’t care less about your father.
My brothers will turn your entire family’s empire into a pile of smoking ash. ”
Yakov leans down a touch deeper, his gray eyes darkening until they look like cold flint. The mocking, easy facade vanishes, replaced by a ruthless, blunt reality that makes my lungs seize.
“I hope they do, but make no mistake, my father will rip you apart, Raya,” he whispers, the low gravel of his voice vibrating right through my bones.
“If kidnapping you didn’t give him the power he wanted against the alliance, he wouldn’t have hesitated to put a bullet in your head and bury you under a concrete pier to ensure you were never found.
That was the alternative to this room. That is what Yaroslav was bringing you to. ”
A cold spike of dread hits my stomach, the raw, unyielding truth of his words slicing right through my anger. I hate that he is right. I hate that every door in my life currently leads back to his shadow.
Yakov studies my face, and the tiny, arrogant smirk returns to his jaw.
“But until your brothers find you, or I return you to them myself,” he mutters, his voice laced with an intoxicating arrogance that makes my stomach do a pathetic flip, “you’re sitting in my kitchen, eating my food, and answering to my name. Get used to it, malysh.”
I pull myself back against the wooden slats of the chair, trying to create a single inch of distance from his overwhelming heat. “Get out of my face, Yakov,” I mutter, turning my focus back to the crumpled granola bar wrapper to hide the scalding blush spreading across my cheeks to my ears.
“As my wife commands,” he grins, stepping away and leaving me alone in the quiet room to wrestle with the terrifying realization that my prison cell has window boxes, and my captor is the only thing keeping me safe.