I’ve never lacked confidence, so I try to push past it.
“I’m not hungry. Well… not for food.”
My flirting skills could use a polish, but Mikhail shoots them down like they’ll give him the clap. “You need food. You haven’t eaten since last night.”
“I ate breakfast?—”
His eyes floating up from the floor steal the rest of my lie. I haven’t eaten breakfast since my preteens, and Mikhail knows that. We had many arguments about it because it gave us plenty of excuses for makeup sex.
I can see his fight not to lower his eyes to my breasts, and smell the torment on his skin, but he does it. He maintains eye contact while instructing me to get dressed again.
Victory flares through his eyes when I give in.
As I stomp to the closet to fetch my coat, he says, “Let’s eat. Then we will discuss the terms of our contract.”
“I don’t need to discuss the contract. I’ve read it.” I come across as a whiny brat. That’s expected. That is precisely what I am.
I sling my eyes to Mikhail when he forces his next question through a tight, stern jaw. “Did you readallof it? Or just the parts that included a cash payout?”
I nod during his first question, preferring to lie without words. But my nod switches to a snarl during his last question. I skimmed the parts that lacked a monetary figure in front of them, opting for the bread and butter that will keep my family afloat. For good reason, of course. Time is not in my favor.
With Mikhail’s cocked brow demanding a worded response, my chest sinks with a sigh before I add words into the mix. “Getting married rewarded us a ten-thousand-dollar bonus. If we fuck—like we have done a million times already, so what’s another one added to the list?—the figure jumps to one hundred thousand. Attending a pompous gala with your father’s favorite benefactors will add only five thousand to the tally. The rest of the terms have a similar value to the gala.” I roll my eyes, praying the burn of their roll will stop stupid moisture from forming in them. “Except birthing an heir, and we’d have to have sex to do that. I also know your thoughts on procreation with someone you don’t know. Considering you haven’t stopped looking at me as if you have no clue who I am since you arrived at Lidny, I set that dot point aside for a much,muchlater date.”
As I suck in some big breaths to calm my climbing anger, I go over the contract terms in my head. Although extensive, they’re pretty basic. I’m clueless about why Mikhail is making a big deal out of them. I know his thoughts on having children out of wedlock and his dislike of schmoozing his father’s backers, so I went for a term that should have been easy for us to cross off.
Or so I thought.
When Mikhail’s nostrils flare as if he’s disappointed in me for my nonchalant and somewhat arrogant reply, anger burns me alive.
He has no right to judge me.
None whatsoever.
“I know what I’ve gotten myself into, Mikhail.”
“I disagree,” he immediately fires back, his narrowed eyes straying to the contract. “So pick something else on the list for us to cross off first, and maybe, if you ever get your head out of your fucking ass long enough to scrub the money signs from your eyes, we will come back tothatone later.”
The way he says “that” ensures I can’t mistake what marital privilege tasks he’s referencing, and when paired with the arrogance of his tone, it sends my blood pressure rising.
Too angry to see through the madness swamping me, I shake my head so fast that my hair slaps my cheeks.
“No.This”—I jab the sole term left on our contract I’m willing to cross off since sex can be seen as an emotionless transaction when it is done with a man who no longer has a heart—“is what I’ve chosen.Thisis what I want to do.”
This is about far more than stubbornness. The monetary amount of every other item on our list is a pittance compared to the payout I will get for this. They’ll also take weeks and months to achieve.
I won’t survive being in Mikhail’s presence that long. My heart is already in tatters. It can’t sustain more damage.
With Mikhail seemingly unwilling to budge on his terms, I fold my arms under my chest, soundlessly announcing his strip of my confidence did little to my stubbornness before saying, “It isthisor nothing.”
Mikhail doesn’t fold.
Not in the slightest.
“Then I guess I will end this by saying it was nice seeing you again.”
His words are like a punch to the stomach. They wound and devastate me.
I’ve never felt more betrayed.
