VIKTORIA
"How dare you," I screamed as I stormed into Artem's penthouse just to find him lounging on a black leather sofa, crystal glass of vodka balanced between his long fingers, the amber glow of the fireplace casting sharp shadows across his face.
His hair was damp, slicked back from his forehead as if he'd just stepped from the shower. He wore ripped jeans that hung low on his hips and a black T-shirt that stretched across the hard planes of his chest, defining every ripple of muscle beneath the fabric.
Damn him.
After class I'd bribed the doorman with some of my returned tuition money to tell me where Artem lived. Imagine my shock when we crossed the bridge into Washington, D.C. and stopped in front of a sleek high-rise barely a stone's throw from the freaking White House.
Of course that was where he would be. The arrogance and audacity of running a mafia empire while in full view of the seat of American government probably amused him to no end.
"Excuse me?" Artem said, his gaze traveled up and down my body with deliberate slowness, leaving a trail of heat in its wake.
I hated the way my skin prickled under his scrutiny, how my pulse quickened at his attention. I channeled that unwanted response into my rage.
"What gives you the right?" I trembled with fury.
"The right to what, Viktoria?" He shifted forward and set his glass on the table, the leather creaking beneath him. "To pay for your tuition? To keep you safe?"
"The right to act like you have a say in my life. The right to act like you own me so you get to make decisions like where I live!" The words tore from my throat, raw and unfiltered.
"It's been a long day, little girl." His jaw clenched tight, a muscle ticking beneath the stubble. "You should go back to your apartment, and be grateful I'm even letting you stay in school at all." He turned to stare into the fire again, the flames reflected in his steel-gray eyes.
It was a dismissal. A cold, uncaring, uninterested dismissal.
He had the audacity to control my life like I was nothing more than a doll.
That was it. That was exactly what he was treating me like. He clothed me, decided what I could do with my time, and even put me in a pretty apartment so he could watch me when the mood struck him.
Then he couldn't even be bothered to look at me when I addressed him because it wasn't at his whim.
Maybe his men followed his orders without question. Maybe his women acted grateful to be controlled, paid off with pretty things. All they had to do was give up their soul.
I was neither and I was not about to let him forget it.
"Grateful? You want me to be grateful?" Heat crawled up my neck, my chest heaving. "You isolated me from my friends. Then moved me into a new apartment off campus without even asking. You withdrew me from my study group and put me in a fucking gilded cage so you can watch me whenever it amuses you, and you want me to be grateful?"
My voice was going shrill, the crazy seeping in, but I didn't care.
He made me crazy.
"Excuse me?" he said, his head tipping back, exposing the strong column of his throat. His jaw flexed, tension radiating from his body even as he feigned indifference.
"There is no excuse, and you know it. You're just like my father, another power-mad jerk who thinks he owns the goddamn world. Well, news flash—you don't own me. Unlike every other woman in your life, I'm not for sale." I planted my hands on my hips and lifted my chin in defiance.
I had no idea what he was going to do, and my heart crashed against my ribs with a heady cocktail of fear and rage. My cheeks burned, breath coming in quick pants, hands trembling until I dug my nails into my own flesh. The sharp bite of pain centered me, cleared my head.
If I had spoken to my father like that, I would have been knocked to the ground and kicked a few times, but that wasn't Artem's style.
At least I hoped not.
The lingering sting of welts across my ass with every step I took should have been a reminder that he was not afraid to inflict pain.
But it wasn't the same. There was something...intimate…about how he had punished me.
"Are you finished throwing your little temper tantrum?" I caught the treacherous undercurrent to his seemingly calm question.
"I am not throwing a tantrum, I am?—"
