3. Giselle #2
“Hey, don’t look at us, we’re just the messengers caught in the crossfire. He’s been sitting here the last day and a half drinking like he has nothing else to live for. We thought you’d be able to snap him out of it.”
“Don’t pretend to be worried about me now, Maxim,” Artem spits out to him, and I can tell I’m missing some sort of tension here.
“Sorry, hold the fuck up—what the hell are you so miserable for?” I yell to Artem as I point my finger at him. “You’d be so damn honored to have the opportunity to ever have a chance with someone like me! I’m the one who gets the psychopathic, alcoholic—”
“Alright come on, you’re beating a dead horse, he’s clearly going through some shit,” Roman attempts to reason before I get to finish my insult.
“So what? You both actually feel bad for him? Because I certainly don’t.”
“Clearly,” Max says, “you didn’t exactly come through the door with a warm welcome.”
“You called me and told me to come here,” I snap back at him.
“And you came running. Interesting, isn’t it?”
My tongue runs down the inside of my cheek as I try to stop myself from launching at Max and trying to kill him.
“I didn’t come here for him, I came here because I needed an explanation. I don’t care if he’s shit-faced and ruining your night.”
“Great, you got your explanation, now you can leave. Clearly, you were the wrong person to call,” Roman speaks up, no longer amused with Max and I’s conversation.
“She isn’t going anywhere,” Artem says coldly from the couch.
“And who the hell do you think you are? You don’t get to tell me what to do, or when I can leave,” I say, my eyes burning with anger when I look at him again. He rises from the couch and walks up to me, gripping my chin like a vice.
“Not yet, solnishko, but once my ring is on your finger, once you’re under my roof, and your little pussy is full of my cum, I will be.”
An angry scoff escapes my lips as I slap his hand off me, and I hear Max laughing behind us.
“This is going to be fun,” Max says to Roman, who looks ready to blow his own brains out.
”You’re lucky I came here unarmed, you crazy fuck, or else I’d give you a matching scar on the other side!” I yell in his face, and my hand shoves him backward, pushing right on the spot on his chest where I had once stabbed him. I turn and quickly exit the room, running to go downstairs.
I burst into their kitchen and throw their large fridge doors open, rummaging through it. There’s a wide selection of fancy cheeses and fruits and I decide these fuckers owe me a good charcuterie for their insanity.
As a matter of fact, they owe me a nice bottle of wine.
I turn my attention to their wine cooler under the main counter, bending down to search through them, when a voice causes me to jump and bump my head on the counter on my way up.
“Looking for something specific, or just taking inventory?” Max stalks his way further into the kitchen, stopping a few feet away as he puts his hands in his pockets.
“Jesus fucking—do all three of you just go around sneaking up on people like that?”
“Only when there’s a mafia princess raiding my kitchen,” he says with a smile, fidgeting with his tongue piercing between his teeth.
“Don’t call me a princess.”
“You act like one, storming into someone else’s house like you own the place.”
“Yeah, well, I was fucking livid.”
He chuckles lightly, “You don’t say, I’m pretty sure everyone within a five-mile radius could tell.”
I don’t respond, just take a breath as I reach for a knife and go to cut up some cheese.
“Settling in, huh? I guess it’s fine anyway, you will be living here soon after all.”
The knife I’m using harshly slams into the cutting board when he says that.
“Look, Artem is a fucking dick, so I empathize, alright?” He comes closer and leans his elbows down on the counter.
“It isn’t even just him, all of this is bullshit. My father just gets to wave a finger and decide my life for me and I have no say in it. Worst of all, I don’t even know when he planned on even telling me himself, and I had to find out like this, it’s humiliating. I bet Artem got a kick out of it.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right for our families. Decisions first and explanations never,” he remarks with a genuine tone as his eyes flicker to mine. I didn’t even know this guy could take anything seriously, and seeing him all sincere is weird.
“I’m not saying it’s fair, but I will say this; if there’s any woman in the world who can take Artem down from the throne he sits himself on, it’s you. So, at the end of the day, I think he’s the one who’s doomed, not you.”
I shoot a half-hearted grin at his attempt to cheer me up.
“I mean, look at him, drinking himself half to death, and you haven’t even walked down the aisle yet. I can’t wait to see how he handles having you here,” he says with a toothy grin as he pushes up off the counter and stands back up straight.
“Plus, I think you’ll end up enjoying it. That’s why you and him haven’t been able to stay away from each other all these years.”
I scoff. “Enjoy it? You’re delusional.”
He tilts his head and smirks, “Maybe, but you’re still here.”
I furrow my brows slightly as he turns and leaves the kitchen, focusing back to my makeshift snack.
I take a deep breath as I knock on the door to my father’s office. Last night felt like a nightmare, and when I woke up and realized it wasn’t just a dream, the reality of my current situation settled in.
The idea that my father went behind my back and arranged for me to marry someone in general, made me annoyed. But the idea that my father settled on someone like him to marry me off to makes my heart drop.
I know he has no idea about the pure and unfiltered hate I have for Artem, because if he ever knew the things he and I have done in all these years to each other he would have had an aneurysm.