I laugh scornfully. “You don’t know a damn thing about me.”
I hate that he can be so fucking calm, while I feel like I’m about jump out of my skin. Even now, he looks at me without giving anything away. It makes me feel like I’m close to tears or tearing my hair out half the time.
“Perhaps. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“I’m not like the women you’re used to, you know,” I tell him, trying to get to a place where I feel like I’m solid ground.
“Oh?” he asks, raising his eyebrows. “And what women are those?”
“Women without a moral compass. Women who care about money and power.”
“You don’t care about money or power?” he asks.
I know already that he’s trying to lead me into a trap but I can’t help walking into it anyway. “No, I don’t.”
“That’s because you’ve always had it.” He runs a hand through his thick hair absent-mindedly.
“Okay, yes,” I admit. “I was raised in luxury, I had everything money could buy. Except my freedom. Ask me if I’d trade it all to be free. I would—in a heartbeat. And as for power… money or not, I’ve never had any of that.”
“Your father protected you—"
“No,” I correct, “my father controlled me. I wasn’t allowed to go to a normal school with other kids because he didn’t want me to be influenced by ideas other than his. He didn’t want me meeting boys or having a life of my own. I was raised in a cage, and I thought when my father died, I would be free from it. But here I am again, right back where I started. Same bird, different cage.”
He looks at me in a measured way, but I can tell he’s purposefully keeping his expression vague.
I hate that I can’t tell what he’s thinking.
I hate that I’m giving him so much…
But I can’t seem to help myself.
Now that I’ve started talking, it’s hard to stop.
“At least when I was growing up, I had my brother,” I whisper, stumbling over my words just a little. “I had someone to rely on and talk to. He really loved me. Protected me. And now… now I don’t even have him.”
Something rages in Artem’s eyes for a moment. A flicker of something that I can’t put a name to. He sits forward a little, his gaze slipping from my face for a few seconds before he brings it back to me again.
“You two were close?” he asks.
I tense up.
I shouldn’t have mentioned Cesar at all. It’s too personal a topic to discuss with Artem. Especially when I’ve already let him in far too deep.
So I turn away from him and try to breathe through the aching hollowness in my chest.
“He’s been dead a long time now,” I say numbly. “Another reason I hate this world.”
“Another reason you hate me.”
It isn’t a question, but I feel the need to respond. “You’re just like my father—”
“I’m nothing like your father, or your brother,” he snarls, with a whiplash of anger so fierce it has me cowering back for a second.
At least, until my own anger surges up to meet his.
“Then you’re delusional. You crave power and position just like they did,” I snap. “They did whatever it took to get what they wanted. I loved my brother, but I knew he did horrible things to people who didn’t always deserve it. He killed men and women, he bought and sold drugs, he tortured innocent people to get information they didn’t have. And you’ve probably done the same and worse. You can pretend all you want. But you’re no different from them, or any other man who willingly chooses this life.”
He stands abruptly. I stand, too.
My skin is hot, but I don’t know if I’m feeling desire or fear. Sometimes it feels like the two things are one and the same wherever Artem is concerned.
He crosses the space between us in one stride and looks down at me, leaning in a little so that he’s all I can see.
“How long are you going to keep this up?” he demands.
“Keep what up?”
“This tough woman front. Fighting me every step of the way.”
I narrow my eyes at him and jut my chin out. We’re inches apart but I can already feel his heat encroach into my space. His smell—salty, masculine—flows into my nostrils and overwhelms me.
I raise my gaze defiantly to his face.
“Until you let me go.”
He stares at me for a moment, conflict raging behind his eyes.
Which begs the question… what is Artem Kovalyov conflicted about?
“That’s never going to happen,” he says softly.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” I say bitterly, unable to keep the words inside me any longer. “You’ve always been in control of your life. Every choice you make is your own. But me? I have no voice. I have no independence… I’m passed around like… like…”
I choke on the last word and I stop short. I don’t know how to go on. How to put it in words what it’s like to hammer at the bars of this invisible cage day after day after day.
He’ll never understand it.
Artem hasn’t moved but I know he’s still looking at me.
Then I feel his hand under my chin, forcing me to face him again.
He doesn’t say anything. Just looks at me, as if that is enough for him right now.
“Some things are out of our hands,” he replies cryptically.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I didn’t have a choice either,” Artem replies. “I married you because my father needed me to. Because the Bratva needed me to. What I wanted didn’t matter. It still doesn’t. It never will.”
My heart constricts uncomfortably. This is not the first time he’s hurt me, but it’s the first time he can see exactly what he’s done.
“Let me go,” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “No.”
“What do you want from me?”
He contemplates for a moment before he sighs and answers, “I don’t fucking
