Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 77879 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77879 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 389(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Gregor stilled. His jaw flexed.
But there was something like satisfaction in his gaze.
He could enjoy his victory all he wanted.
He wasn’t going to win.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat, past the part of me still waiting—hoping—for Roman to show up. To stop this.
I pushed that naive part of me aside.
The girl who wanted fairy tales. The girl who hadn’t been left behind in Russia after all.
I let her die, right here in this room.
I lifted my chin, steady even as hopes and dreams I didn’t admit to shattered.
Control. I needed to find my control.
“Yes, I’m sure,” I said. “Send me…home.”
Home. The corrupt word left an acidic burn on my tongue.
CHAPTER 26
ROMAN
Over my dead fucking body…
She was not leaving. There was no way in this life, or in any other, I would let her get on a plane and go back to Russia.
She belonged here with me.
Zoya was mine by right.
I had taken her, cared for her, and I was the one who saved her…again.
“Leave,” I demanded, talking to the guard standing outside of her room. A guard that Gregor must have posted when he went to talk to her an hour ago.
I didn’t want Gregor to be the one who spoke with her. It wasn’t right.
I wanted to tell her about the deal myself. She would have questions only I could answer. A marriage, even one like this, was more than just a contract. I needed to be the one who told her what being my wife was going to mean, what it would look like.
Gregor insisted he be the one to tell her and gauge her reaction. He said it was nonnegotiable. That he needed to see the acceptance of her circumstances in her eyes himself.
He needed to know she could be trusted.
I fought him, but he threatened to take the option off the table indefinitely.
Artem insisted as well, and just like that, there was nothing I could do about it.
“Let him do this, cousin,” Pavel whispered in my ear. “If she is smart, she will agree, and you will be in the clear. You will have your girl and not have to worry about the implications of where your loyalty lies.”
Until he came back with a smug smile and informed everyone that he would arrange a private flight for her within the week. Per her request, he was “sending the banshee back to the frozen lake in the center of the hell that she crawled out of.”
I tried to argue, but he shrugged and said she made her choice.
Pavel and Kostya crowded around me, making sure I didn’t lunge for Gregor. It was tempting. But I knew he wasn’t lying.
Gregor was a man of his word. If she agreed to the marriage, then he would’ve held up his end as soon as the ink was dry and her ring in place.
Zoya was just stubborn enough to make this difficult.
She had refused me, and I was going to find out why. I stormed through the house. Heat rising from my chest to my neck and crawling up the sides of my face.
If she was being sent away, there was no longer a point in keeping my distance. I had agreed to marry her, so there was no trying to prove I wasn’t thinking with my cock.
Maybe that was what she needed.
Could I fuck some common sense into her?
The guard at the door pushed back his shoulders and acted like he was going to stand up to me.
I glared at him, bared my teeth, and pulled a blade from the back of my belt, twirling the freshly honed steel between my fingers.
The color drained from his face as he shrank down, then pushed his way past me and fled down the hall, probably pissing himself.
A smarter man, a man who had more control, would have stopped outside the door, collected himself, and then calmly entered the room. I was so far beyond that man, it didn’t even register as an option.
I had the forethought not to walk into that room armed. Even in my haze of rage, I would not hurt her, but at that moment, I didn’t trust her not to steal my knife and bury it in my back.
I stabbed the blade into the wooden doorframe.
With one quick yank, I ripped the door open, and then slammed it shut behind me. It rattled so hard I wouldn’t have been surprised if it fell off the hinges or shattered the frame.
The gods answered my anger with a lightning strike that flashed in the window and a rumble of thunder.
Zoya was right where I left her. Handcuffed to the goddamn bed like the captured queen she was. She stared at me with a defiance that fired up my temper and tightened my fingers into fists at my sides.