Chapter 3 - Iosif
She appears to be in a near-catatonic state. It’s convenient, given that she at least keeps moving where directed. She didn’t say a word the whole drive here. She doesn’t say one now, either.
It’s a good thing that Janella Driscoll’s face may as well have subtitles.
In the car, she wore her panic over my texting the entire drive. Even if she was smart enough to aim her displeased frown at the windshield. Now, she wears her fear plain as day while the elevator doors open directly into the penthouse. I watch it transform to astonishment in real time.
It’s been a while since I’ve brought a woman home.
I almost forgot the way it must look to someone unaccustomed to the glamor.
I try to view the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Boston’s financial district through her eyes.
The city lights spread out like a sea of neon fireflies, and their novelty has lost its luster for me. That same novelty blows her away.
Her eyes go wide as saucers, a matching companion to the stunned part of her mouth.
Her fear gives way to disbelief. There is an innocence to her that I’m a little baffled by.
Her father is who he is—and my intel’s already told me it’s far worse than I initially thought.
There’s no mother in the picture either. She’s hardly sheltered.
So, what other explanation is there?
“This way,” I tell her, and lead her through the apartment.
The space is entirely open-plan by design.
A living room flows into a dining area. There’s the kitchen, decked out in sleek, state-of-the-art appliances I never touch—with the exception of the coffeemaker—since I either eat out or have food brought in.
It’s all very impressive. And all totally wasted on me.
I walk her past all of it, leading her down the hallway that leads to the bedrooms.
“That’s my office,” I point out the door on the left. “My bedroom is the door at the end of the hall.”
Of course, that isn’t the door I walk her through. She sticks to me like a shadow, her eyes darting all over the place. Understandably, she looks overwhelmed. I open the door to the guest room and nudge her inside when she loiters in the doorway.
“Sit,” I instruct, staring at her until she sinks down on the edge of the bed. Her hands are in tightly bundled fists. She sets both of them in her lap, resolutely looking at the floor.
I shrug off my jacket, pulling my phone out before I toss the jacket on top of the desk in the corner. Hitting a number on speed dial, I tuck the phone between my ear and shoulder as I roll up my sleeves. It barely rings twice before he answers.
“Bring me the first-aid kit,” I say and hang up.
It takes three minutes for Ivan to arrive with a white box in hand.
Unsurprisingly, Janella recoils as soon as he walks through the door.
Jesus Christ, he isn’t the fucking Loch Ness Monster.
Still, every muscle in her body goes visibly rigid.
She looks exactly like a feral kitten trapped in a corner.
What the fuck have I gotten myself into?
“You’ll have to get used to having men around,” I inform her candidly as Ivan sets the kit down on the nightstand and exits. “At least this one isn’t throwing shit at you.”
I’m not sure this woman won’t have a stroke if I sit on the bed beside her. One can only guess what she imagines is about to happen here. I grab the chair slotted beneath the desk instead and drag it over. I pluck the kit from where Ivan set it and take a seat in front of her.
I ignore the full-body flinch when I grab her elbow to get a closer look at her wound. Her gash is almost the width of the axe that made it. It isn’t too deep, but deep enough to need stitches. It’s stopped bleeding for now, but it looks raw and inflamed. Definitely needs to be disinfected.
That Hernandez fucker didn’t look like the paragon of good hygiene.
Opening the box, I grab what I need—gauze, antiseptic, a needle, and thread.
I can feel her gaping at me with those wide, terror-filled eyes when I also pull out a flask.
I sigh. “Calm the fuck down. It’s vodka.
I’m not going to give you an anesthetic.
With your luck, you’ll probably be allergic and keel over in my fucking guest room. ”
I unscrew the flask cap and hand it to her.
It takes her a minute to accept it. Even as she does, she looks at it like a grenade without a pin in it.
I try to be patient when she doesn’t drink it immediately.
But when she keeps on staring at it, like there’s some hieroglyphs on it she needs to decode, I snap, “Drink. It.”
This time, I roll my eyes at her jumpiness. At least she finally drinks. She takes a small sip. It’s barely enough to wet her lips. Her eyes, however, water without a problem. Her entire body is shaking.
“More, Janella.”
The fear is back, tenfold, in her eyes. She takes another sip, though. When I keep glowering at her, she takes another—larger, this time. And another. By the fifth sip, her shoulders have at least slumped down from where they’d been hunched by her ears.
I take the flask back and set it on the ground.
“Give me your arm again,” I say.
She extends it without argument, obediently. I suppose that’s to be expected.
It’s probably how she got into tonight’s mess in the first place.
This is all a great reminder of why docile women don’t do it for me, even ones as gorgeous as her.
She wouldn’t make it in my world. It makes me wonder how fucking stupid I’ve been, hauling her into it out of some helpless impulse to save her from her circumstances.
As if I’m the best person for the job. I have no idea what the fuck to do with someone like her, who’s spent her life learning to submit, to make herself small, who would let someone degrade her the way her father did tonight.
She should have slit that bastard’s throat in his sleep a long time ago.
Pushing the thought away, I start cleaning the wound with antiseptic.
The alcohol burns, I know from experience.
Her lips purse into a hard line, refusing to cry out.
She isn’t a complainer. She just sits there—still trembling, but not as much as before—with her eyes fixed on some point on the wall behind me.
“Could’ve been worse,” I say as I begin to thread the needle.
She doesn’t respond, which is fine. I wasn’t expecting her to.
It’s better if I don’t talk while I do this. Usually, I don’t even do this shit for myself. I should probably get Ivan to handle this. One phone call, and Oksana could take over.
But I don’t reach for my phone.
I may as well get used to her being my responsibility.
I can feel her eyes on me, watching my hands work to stitch her back together. One stitch, two, then three. By the time I’m mostly through, the vodka seems to have calmed her nervous system enough that she isn’t shaking anymore.
It’s as good a time as any to tell her.
“You will not be treated that way again, Janella. My lawyer is already working on the paperwork,” I say, not looking up from her wound. “We will be married tomorrow, and you will be safe under my protection.”
For a moment, there is no response. No reaction.
Were she someone else, someone more vocal, I would’ve questioned whether she even heard me. But all I have to do is look up at Janella, and I can see that she’s heard me just fine. Her jaw has comically dropped.
“Janella—” I start to say.
“No!” bursts out of her in a startling shout.
Despite myself, I choke out a laugh. She, however, is not amused.
“What, are you nuts?” she splutters, shooting to her feet.
Her features are torn somewhere between anger and alarm.
Until this moment, when brilliant color floods her face, I’d never have guessed that pallid pallor isn’t her natural coloring.
Her tiny, ineffectual fists shove at my chest when I rise to my feet, easily towering over her.
“Oh no, no, no! Don’t you try to intimidate me with your gigantism! ”
Gigantism? I’m six feet tall. Not even the tallest of my brothers.
“I’m not going to marry you,” Janella screeches.
“That wasn’t the deal! You’re supposed to—What’s wrong with you?
! I don’t even know your whole name! Just fuck me and leave me alone.
Are you insane? You must be. Nothing is sacred to you people.
You can’t just marry someone to—someone who you don’t even know! What kind of sick joke is this?”
My brows have crawled up my forehead in the span of her sentences.
“My name is Iosif Yuri. And yeah, I’m aware it wasn’t part of the deal,” I agree calmly.
“But this night could be ending very differently for you if I hadn’t stepped in.
It would be much, much worse than you getting to marry into the most powerful bratva clan in the city if you’d been sent off with one of those fucking champions participating in that disgusting competition. ”
I level her with a grim smile. “And make no mistake, Janella. Your father was going to send you off like a common whore. Is that what you want to be treated like? Would you like me to take you back?”
She doesn’t have much to say now.
Pathetically, she repeats, “You don’t even know me.”
“On the contrary,” I scoff, reaching down to collect the flask and unscrewing it for myself this time around.
It seems bizarre that this is my first drink of the night.
“I’ve got a whole summary of your miserable life on my phone already.
I know your name is Janella Tamar Driscoll.
Born February 23rd. Your blood type is B-positive.
You were twelve years old when your mother got pregnant and lost your baby brother-to-be.
She was suffering from post-partum depression when your dear old Dad gave her the drugs that eventually led to her overdose.
I know that he’s put you in the hospital before.
I know you’ve bailed him out of jail more than once. Do I need to go on?”