Chapter 9
LEKS
Istare at the darkening city. The patches of golden light are slowly fading.
In Siberia, there wasn’t a sunset. At least, not for those of us locked in the Ivanov Center with only a tiny patch of sky visible out the window.
That’s if we weren’t locked in a padded cell with no windows.
The days are so short in the winters and long in the summers that there’s never this gradual sense of nightfall.
I never got to watch the sun gradually slip below the skyline.
The place had been a real asylum at some point.
Then it became a clearing ground for everyone the Bratva didn’t want to deal with.
Our own and our enemies. The outsiders had a worse time than the rest of us because they couldn’t understand what the guards or nurses were saying.
Trying to follow the incomprehensible rules of the place was hard enough if you spoke Russian.
If you didn’t speak the language? You stood no chance.
People died.
Constantly.
The most common was neglect. The staff weren’t directly murdering anyone.
The place kept up the pretense of being some kind of medical facility.
The rules were strict and if you broke them, you lost privileges — eventually you ended up with no blanket, no heat, no mattress, shivering away strapped down to a metal cot.
You’d hear them, in the night, begging for God or some other fucking deity to save them in whatever language they had left. And then, mercifully, they’d fall silent until the guards came to retrieve their frozen bodies in the morning.
I have seen so much death. All because of Maksim Bryusov.
I take a gulp of vodka, the burn not nearly enough to erase the echoes of those cold nights in Siberia and the things I did to survive.
Numbing myself to it isn’t enough. I need revenge for what I went through, for what Yulia did to me, for what I had to do to escape.
And especially for the fact that the situation turned me into a sociopathic bastard who couldn’t keep people safe. Just like my father. I did what I had to do to survive…but the guilt at what I left behind eats at me a little more everyday.
I hear Natalia appear behind me, her heels clicking against the concrete floor. I wonder if she can tell that I’m fantasizing about killing her father. Maybe not, in her sheltered mind.
I bet the rumors are true and she’s a virgin. God knows her family kept her locked in that tower for long enough. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d taken out an insurance policy on her virtue.
This is a surprise. She’s been avoiding me since her night with Vera, which is faintly irritating. I run a hand over my bruised knuckles. Time to schedule another fight with Yuri to get this out of my system.
I turn to watch as she struts over to me.
If her calls home are anything to go by, this conversation will not be good news for our non-existent relationship, but the outfits she’s wearing hardly encourage me to let her go.
Every day there’s a new part of her to become obsessed with — today it’s the slight dip of her navel.
It’s a shame that she’s only here because she has to be.
She stops right in front of me, hands on her hips. Even in her heels, with her standing and me sitting, we’re at eye level.
“This isn’t working.”
She sounds…angry. I take my time with a mouthful of vodka while I admire the pants that are molded perfectly to her hips and the cropped singlet that reveals her midriff. “It’s working just fine for me.”
As usual, she either doesn’t get the innuendo or chooses not to respond to it. Both options are equally bad as far as my cock is concerned.
That green fire is burning in her eyes, looking at me with some kind of accusation. I like it when the princess mask slips. When I manage to get through to the real person that’s trapped inside that sparkly varnished shell.
I tilt the glass of vodka to her, and her face only sours further. So she’ll drink with Vera, but not with me.
“You’re not fit to be anyone’s husband.”
I huff a laugh out of my nose. “That’s hardly new information, princess.”
“It is. Before, it was only me I was worried about. Now, I don’t think there’s any woman you could marry without making her miserable.”
The good news for those hypothetical future wives is that they don’t exist.
“Womankind is safe from marriage proposals from me as long as you’re here.”
“Not safe enough, apparently.” She folds her arms across her chest and the accusation burns bright on her face. So there’s something specific I’m being accused of. That can only have come from one place: Vera.
I lift an eyebrow and take another sip of vodka.
“Fine, princess, tell me. What makes me so unfit as a husband?”
She narrows her eyes. “You went to a prostitute on our wedding night!”
I was half-forgetting that Natalia was a Bratva woman, until I see that jealous fire flickering in her green eyes as she accuses me of cheating.
As if it counts as cheating when your marriage is a business deal.
I don’t think she appreciates the shrug that I give in response.
I didn’t even fuck the prostitute — Callie or whatever her name was — but the way that fire flickers in Natalia’s eyes when she’s annoyed with me does something to my dick. Winding her up is becoming one of my favorite pastimes.
“We need to talk about this.” Her voice is quiet and serious, like she wants to give me an opportunity to apologize.
Not going to happen.
I rest my hands behind my head. “I’m starting to think you want the details, princess.”
Even though I never ended up fucking the girl at the club, it’s for the best if she thinks I did.
Natalia’s eyes flick to me in outrage. “So you admit it. You went to a prostitute on our wedding night.”
There it is again, that searing look.
I meet her gaze evenly and pull her closer, so she’s standing between my legs. Desire licks at me, the sultry fire in Natalia’s eyes making it even worse. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was jealous.
“And you went to bed early. Nine p.m., if I remember correctly.”
I definitely do.
Because I lingered outside the door to her room for far too long, considering the hysterics of her family. Considering how clear it was that she wouldn’t even entertain the idea that we would have a proper wedding night.
Her mother made her swear on her babushka’s grave that she’d never touch me, for fuck’s sake.
“And was it worth it?” The soft whisper of Natalia’s voice sounds like she’s actually hurt.
I can’t understand why, weeks after an unsuccessful one-night stand with a high-class but average-looking prostitute with fake tits, I’m being interrogated.
“It was fine.”
Entirely unremarkable. Unlike this conversation.
I take a sip of my vodka and tilt my head to the side.
“I don’t know why it would bother you. You don’t like me. You don’t want to touch me.”
I reach for Natalia’s delicate, perfectly manicured hand to prove my point. As I knew she would, she folds her arms across her waist to avoid me.
Her nails are a pretty pink with silver tips today, matching her strappy pink top and heels. The diamonds on her choker probably destroyed civilizations, yet I have to appreciate the result.
I thought a wife who hated me would be an inconvenient price to pay for the status I wanted in the Bratva. It didn’t even cross my mind that I’d want her.
“You’re my husband. You can’t go around sleeping with other women.”
“One thing about me, princess, is that I don’t like being told what to do.”
Natalia’s glossy lips press together in a line as she glares at me.
“You married me for my family’s power. A power that will be worth nothing if you’re out there disgracing our name and undermining us.”
So self-righteous, given her father has been ordering hits on me like they’re going out of style.
“Ask your father to stop trying to kill me and then we can talk about undermining.”
Her lips part in shock, as if she hadn’t contemplated that part of her escape plans would require my death. “I didn’t know he was doing that.”
From anyone else, I’d call bullshit. Natalia’s soft, shocked gaze is yet another reminder that she has no clue.
I reach for a curl that’s fallen across her face and tuck it behind her ear, brushing her cheek. Her skin heats at my touch.
“I’ll ask him to stop,” she breathes.
“And does he often take strategic advice from his daughter?”
“He should.” She sweeps her long blonde hair up into a ponytail, holding a hairpin in her mouth. Her rose and sugar perfume washes over me.
If she wasn’t so fucking distracting, this whole marriage thing would be easier to manage. It really would be a business deal.
A normal business deal. Where my brain was involved, instead of another part of my body.
I should be bringing this conversation to a close. Not digging a deeper hole for myself. I sigh. It seems I can’t follow my own fucking advice where this woman is concerned.
“If it matters, I didn’t even sleep with her. The prostitute. Cleo, Cassie, whatever her name was.”
“Cara,” Natalia corrects me automatically.
Fucking Vera.
Somehow my wife knows the details of the sex workers I visit better than I do.
“I haven’t slept with anyone since our wedding.”
Unfortunately.
If I had, maybe my cock wouldn’t be this hard right now.
“Well, I’d rather you didn’t go to the club at all. Strip clubs. Brothels. Whatever.”
I let out a groan. “Doesn’t that seem a bit fucking unreasonable?”
Natalia shakes her golden head, her brow creasing in confusion. She gestures between us.
“We’re married. That’s why it bothers me.”
“We are married,” I concede. “I don’t want to state the obvious, but there are certain things that married couples do that we’re not doing.”
She nods. I unwillingly follow the arc of her neck down to her mouthwatering cleavage. I think I’d pay exponentially more than what the club charges for one night with Natalia.
Fuck, this is becoming a problem.
“Things like sleeping in the same bed,” she says.