21. Cady
Cady
The penthouse is quiet when I get home.
I kick off my heels at the door and walk to the kitchen on autopilot.
My feet are sore, and my head is loud, and somewhere between the storage closet and the car ride home, I made the mistake of letting myself think, which means I’ve been stuck on a loop for forty minutes.
Three million dollars.
Misha wants to marry me to pay off three million dollars in gambling debt to a man who was already threatening to dismantle everything my father has spent thirty years building.
I’ve been used before. This life doesn’t come without that. I know what it looks like when a man sees a last name before he sees a person, and I’ve made my peace with most of it.
But this is different.
This isn’t about access, alliance, or even two families deciding their interests align. This is Misha Makarov drowning in a debt he created, looking for the nearest exit, and finding my name attached to five million dollars and a father desperate enough to hand it over.
I am a solution to a problem I didn’t cause.
The worst part is that telling my father won’t change anything.
Colin Gallagher must already know about the debt and not care, because it isn’t his problem. The more Misha needs the money, the more compliant he’ll be, which works in my father’s favor.
I pour myself a glass of water because I don’t trust myself with anything stronger tonight.
I’m still standing at the counter when the front door opens, and Misha comes through sideways.
His shoulder catches the frame, and he overcorrects. The laugh that follows is too loud for midnight and too loose for someone allegedly planning to marry me. His suit jacket is gone, his shirt is untucked, and his tie is hanging loosely around his neck.
He’s drunk.
Very, very drunk.
And he is not alone.
The woman on his arm is brunette, pretty, and still laughing when they come through the door. Her hand curled into his shirt in a way that tells me they’ve already been very friendly with each other tonight.
This is someone he’s probably fucked before, too.
I set down my glass when Misha sees me, and his face is exactly what I’d expected. Surprise first, then a glassy warmth that only exists when someone is too drunk to manage their expressions.
“There she is,” he announces. “My future wife.”
My eyes narrow. “Go home, Misha.”
He crosses the kitchen toward me, hands finding my waist like it’s automatic. Like he hasn’t just walked through my door at midnight with another woman giggling behind him.
The brunette is still smiling vaguely, probably far too drunk to understand or care that she’s walked into the middle of something.
“Come on.” He pulls me toward him. “I came to see you, baby.”
I step back but don’t get far. “No, you came here drunk with someone else.”
“Don’t be like that.” His grip tightens in warning that I should stop fighting. “I missed you.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Something flickers across his face.
“You’re in a mood.”
“I’m tired,” I grind out. “Let go of me. Now.”
His hands stay where they are.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asks. “I sent you two hundred and forty roses.”
This again?
“I know.”
“Two hundred and forty, Cady,” he continues. “You didn’t even mention them.”
“There was nothing to mention.”
“Nothing to—“ He stops, and his confusion now has an edge to it. “I proposed to you.”
“You sent a card that read like a business memo with a lot of flowers I didn’t ask for. That’s not a proposal.”
His glassy eyes bulge in disbelief. “Most women would’ve been thrilled to receive flowers from me.”
“I’m sure they would have.”
“So, what’s your fucking problem?”
He picked the wrong girl.
“My problem is that it’s midnight,” I convey calmly, “and you’re drunk, and you brought someone into my home. So, for the last time, Misha, go.”
“Why? Because you don’t want me? Is that it?”
“It’s not—“
“Every woman in the club tonight wanted me. Every single one of them, and I came here. For you.” He steps closer, and I step back. “And you’re standing there looking at me like I’m something you scraped off your expensive heels.”
“I’m looking at you like you’re drunk, Misha.”
He scoffs. “You’ve never wanted me. Even from the beginning. You let me touch you and fuck you, but you look at me like you’re somewhere else.”
I don’t respond, which isn’t what he’s looking for.
“Say something,” he demands, squeezing my wrist.
“There’s nothing to say that will make you feel better right now.”
“Try.”
“Misha—“
“Tell me you want to marry me.” His hands come up to my arms, gripping hard now. “Just say it. That’s all I’m asking. Just say you want it.”
“Let go of me.”
“Say it, Cady.”
“I’m not going to say something I don’t mean.”
I watch the emotions move across his face, from confusion to offense, and then anger. He’s never been told no by someone he wanted, and he has no idea how to handle it.
“You know what your problem is?” His voice drops. “You think you’re better than me. You walk around with that face, and that family name, and you think that makes you something special.”
“Let go of my arms, Misha.”
“I’m offering you everything.” His eyes are glassy and mean. “My name. My family. Five million reasons your father said yes to without blinking. And you’re standing here in your fancy kitchen acting like I’m not good enough for you.”
“Don’t you mean five million dollars to pay off your three-million-dollar debt?”
His skin reddens because his little secret is out, and there’s nothing magic around us anymore.
His ego is bruised because I won’t blindly follow him into marriage while he tries to look like a guy in love.
But he’s not in love with me.
He’ll never be in love with me.
“The sex wasn’t bad either, right, baby?” His fingers dig into my flesh, and I’m seconds away from kneeing him in the balls. “I wanted you to want this. I wanted you to be… different.”
“I am different,” I say quietly. “That’s the problem.”
Something shifts around him, and Misha suddenly lets go of me. And for one breath I think it’s over, think he’s pulling back, coming down from whatever edge he’s been standing on since he walked through my door.
Then, he reaches into his waistband.
The gun comes out smooth and practiced. He presses the cold barrel underneath my chin with enough force to tip my head back.
I can’t move. He’s unhinged, and I’m the reason he’s upset.
“I’m not asking anymore,” he whispers. “I’m telling you. You will marry me. You will smile at the right people and say the right things, and you will do it because your father agreed and Benedikt agreed, and because the only person in this situation who seems to think your feelings matter is you.”
This is the moment where panic gets people killed. I’ve been raised in rooms full of men like this my entire life. I know that the worst thing I can do is react to what he’s just said.
“Put the gun down, Misha.”
“When you say yes.”
“You’re drunk.”
“I’m asking you a question.”
“You’re not asking,” I say carefully. “You’re threatening. And threatening me won’t get you what you want.”
“Fine,” he says. “You want to see a threat? Let me show you what happens when I stop asking.”
He turns his head toward the doorway, where the brunette still lingers, watching with wide, eager eyes.
A vulture circling the tension.
“Lena,” he calls. “Come here.”
She moves, hips swaying and a faint smile on her lips. Oh, she knows her role tonight.
Misha doesn’t look away from me as she approaches. He backs up until he hits the edge of the granite kitchen island, then leans against it, spreading his legs. Lena steps into the space he makes, her back to his front, and he curls an arm around her waist, pulling her against him.
“Watch,” he tells me as his hand slides down from Lena’s jaw, over her throat, then lower, cupping her breast through the thin silk of her dress.
She gasps softly, arching into his touch. Misha’s gaze remains fixed on me, a cruel amusement lighting his eyes.
“You think you’re special, Cady?” He pinches one of Lena’s nipples, making her whimper. “You think your hesitation is noble? It’s just inconvenient.”
He unzips his trousers with one hand, and I begin to move toward the front door until he raises his gun back at me again.
“Watch,” he commands. “You’re going to watch me fuck her.”
I make a face. He’s pathetic and sick.
Lena reaches back to help him.
He pushes up the hem of Lena’s dress, revealing that she’s wearing nothing underneath, and a rough, approving growl leaves his throat.
“Hold onto the counter,” he orders her, his voice rough.
Lena bends forward, bracing her palms on the granite as Misha positions himself behind her, one hand gripping her hip, the other still with a gun pointed at me.
Then, he pushes inside her.
Lena cries out, a sharp and pleased sound, but Misha’s eyes never leave mine.
“This,” Misha says, as he starts moving, slow and deep at first, each thrust rocking her forward. “Is what a woman who doesn’t make things difficult looks like.”
He keeps his eyes on me the entire time.
That’s been the point ever since he walked through my door with her on his arm and liquor on his breath, furious that the one thing he’s decided he wants won’t fall into place.
Every woman in that club wanted him. Every woman wants him except the one who he’s decided matters, and that’s been eating at him all night.
He wants me to break.
To flinch, to cry, to beg him to stop, to say “yes” just to make it end. He wants proof that I’m affected, that he has power, that the rejection I’ve handed him tonight means nothing because “Look! Look at what I can do! Look at what you’re refusing!”
So I stand in my kitchen, and I look directly at him, and I feel nothing except the quiet certainty that I’ve felt since the storage closet, since the car ride home, since I stood at this same counter and understood what I am to Misha Makarov and what he is to me.
He’s nothing, and he knows it. That’s why he’s doing this.
“You could have this,” he says. “A ring. A name. A life where you want for nothing. Or you can have nothing and watch someone else take what could’ve been yours.”
His free hand slides up Lena’s spine and into her hair, and he fists it. He yanks her head back, arching her body so his thrusts hit deeper.
She moans, her eyes fluttering shut as she pants like a bitch in heat.
Then Misha looks at me, really looks, and his expression hardens.
“You still think you have a choice?” he snarls, and in one brutal motion, he releases Lena’s hair and swings his open hand at me.
The impact snaps my head to the side, and the kitchen goes white at the edges. A sharp ringing settles into my left ear, and there’s a metallic bloom of blood where my teeth cut the inside of my cheek. I catch myself on the edge of the counter and regain my breath.
Then I straighten slowly and look at him.
He’s still watching me, chest heaving, the brunette a dazed and forgotten detail behind him now.
His expression has moved from violent to smug. He finally got the reaction he wanted.
“Look at her,” Misha taunts, still pounding into Lena, who’s watching me with a dazed, perverse thrill. “Look at what you’re making me do, baby.”
Misha is a dead man.
I don’t cry or flinch as I watch the satisfaction curdle when he realizes he still hasn’t broken me.
I stand straight to meet his drunken, lust-filled state through the sting and the throbbing settling into my cheekbone and eye socket. I know what it will look like tomorrow.
A masterpiece of purple and black.
A public mark.
“You see?” Misha pants, his rhythm becoming frantic, nearing his end. Lena chants something, a broken stream of, “Yes, yes, yes!” He grins, a savage, triumphant smile. “This is the reality you live in now. My reality. You don’t get to opt out.”
After a final, brutal thrust, he stills, burying himself deep inside her as he comes, and a low groan tears from his chest. He holds there for a moment, both of them trembling, before he pulls out.
He lets Lena slide to the floor in a satisfied heap of limbs and rumpled silk.
He tucks himself away, steps over the brunette like she’s something he’s already forgotten, and crosses toward me.
He stops close enough that I can smell everything on him — liquor, perfume, and the sour edge of contempt.
His thumb presses gently against my cheekbone.
I hold firm. Not because I’m not repulsed, but because pulling away is the last thing I’m going to give this prick.
“That’s going to bruise beautifully.” And the admiration in his voice is suddenly the most disgusting thing about this night.
“Tomorrow, when people ask, you’ll tell them you walked into a door.
” His thumb presses harder, and I remain still.
“And you’ll smile when you say it. Because you’re going to marry me, Cady. This is your yes.”
He drops his hand and steps back.
“Clean this up,” he demands.
Then he turns and they both walk out while I stand in the quiet of my kitchen, one hand gripping the countertop.
The eye will be bad by morning; I can tell by the way it’s throbbing.
I think about who’s going to see it.
I think about Artem.
I think about the “wrong brother” comments, the storage closet, and the way he looked at me.
I press two fingers gently to my cheekbone and feel the heat underneath.
Tomorrow, I decide, will be a very different kind of day.
If I know anything, it’s that my brothers are going to kill Misha Makarov for this.
For me.