5. This was becoming a problem. （Tamara）
THIS WAS BECOMING A PROBLEM. (TAMARA)
“This is the bedroom.”
Aleksander’s voice breaks the long, airless stretch that began the second we left The Velvet Echo.
I stop just inside the doorway.
Dark wood. Glass. Steel. Floor-to-ceiling windows with Manhattan scattered beneath them like broken light. The room is immaculate, designed to impress and intimidate in equal measure.
And at the center of it—
The bed.
Massive. Unavoidable.
For one stupid second, I am back in the cathedral, being handed from one man to another.
“Ours,” he adds quietly.
Of course it’s ours. We’re married. I know that. I know what tonight is supposed to mean. Rings. Crowns. Applause. A contract wrapped in incense and God.
But knowing it and standing here are not the same thing.
The champagne is still in my blood, but the room sobers me fast. The dancing, the laughing, the reckless refusal to break in public—none of it belongs in here.
Aleksander sees me calculate the distance between us.
“The bed doesn’t mean what you think it means.” He stays where he is.
My laugh is sharp and humorless. “Then what does it mean?”
“It means we share a room. You don’t owe me your body.”
I turn toward him fully, because if this is a trap, I want to see the mechanism.
“That’s not how this world works.”
“No,” he agrees. “But it’s how I work.”
He doesn’t look at the bed. When he looks at me, there is no hunger or expectation. Nothing for me to defend against.
“We’ll share the bedroom because appearances matter,” he continues. “But I won’t touch you unless you ask me to.”
I almost don’t understand him. Not because the words are complicated. Because they are not a demand.
“And if I never do?”
“Then I won’t.”
I listen for the part he isn’t saying. Men like him always come with catches. Conditions. Hidden costs.
But there’s nothing there except certainty.
“You think you have to let me fuck you because obligation’s been trained into you,” he says. “But I’m not interested in that version of consent.”
A cruel man would have been simpler. I know exactly what to do with cruel men.
His restraint makes everything harder.
“The closet’s through there,” he says after a moment, nodding toward the adjoining room. “Your father had some of your things moved over. The rest will be delivered tomorrow.”
Of course he did. My father, rearranging my life in the background while I danced at my own reception. As if any of this required my presence to proceed.
“Settle in.” Aleksander steps back. “I’ll be in my study for a while.”
Then he turns and walks away.
The relief makes sense. The disappointment has no business being there.
I look around the room. It’s immaculate and controlled. No softness or chaos.
Very Aleksander.
I move automatically, peeling off the dress, setting it aside with care I don’t feel. My makeup comes next—lipstick wiped away, lashes scrubbed clean. I shower longer than necessary, letting the heat sting my skin, trying to wash off the cathedral and the champagne and my father’s hand on my arm.
When I step back into the bedroom wrapped in a towel, the book on his nightstand stops me.
A thick hardback. Dog-eared.
The Power Broker.
A thousand pages about power and political domination. That feels more alarming than if I’d found handcuffs.
The floor creaks near the doorway.
Aleksander is there. He must have come back for something. His jacket’s gone now, sleeves rolled partway up his forearms. That’s when I see the faint pale marks along the inside of his arm. Too symmetrical for injury.
Needle tracks.
I should think danger. But instead, I think damage.
I give him the courtesy of not asking the obvious question.
“You should get some sleep,” he says after a moment.
“You sound like a doctor.”
His expression closes fast.
“I’ve spent enough time around them.”
Then he leaves, the bedroom door clicking softly shut behind him.
I change into the silk pajama set waiting on the bed—clearly purchased for me, though no one asked what I actually like—and slide beneath the covers.
He could have raped me tonight.
No one would’ve stopped him. My father would’ve expected it. The world would’ve called it marriage.
Instead, he walked away.
I lie awake while Manhattan blurs against the windows and the bed stays empty on the other side. Mark is out there somewhere. Eight years old now.
Someone else’s bedtime routine. Someone else telling him what to eat, when to sleep, who he belongs to.
The thought is unbearable because it is ordinary. But I can’t fall apart.
I need information.
Then access.
Then leverage.
Then I get my son back.
And after that—
No. Not tonight. Tonight I only need the next step.
At some point, I catch myself listening for Aleksander. Irritated, I turn onto my side and glare at the rain-streaked windows.
This is insane.
I married a stranger ten hours ago.
A dangerous one.
A man with track marks beneath rolled sleeves who walked away from a bed the rest of this world would have claimed.
Somewhere between the cathedral and this apartment, I stopped being afraid he would touch me—and started wondering why he hadn’t.