“She’s dead, and now you want to put me in her place?” I laughed. “You think I’ll go quietly? I’ll smile for your cameras and warm your bed and forget that your brother buried her with his secrets?”
“I think you’ll do what’s necessary,” Matvey said, advancing on me. His voice was the same, but his eyes…they were hardened. Cold, dark steel.
I backed away. My back hit the wall behind me.
“You don’t get to dictate what happens to me,” I snarled, but the shake in my voice betrayed me.
“You have no choice,” he said, his tone as cold as a knife. “You’ll marry me willingly…or you watch everyone you love die.”
The words were like a bullet straight to my heart.
The room was silent as death.
Lillian took a trembling breath, her eyes fluttering shut. My father said nothing, not even attempting to protest.
This wasn’t a marriage proposal or an engagement dinner. This was an execution in silk garb.
I stared between my stepmother, wringing her hands, and my father with his flat face. Neither of them cared. No one in this room cared about me or even Yulia.
They were offering me up like a lamb to appease the wolves, and that broke something inside of me.
My world shrank in that moment. It was a silent implosion.
Not a shattering of glass or a scream. No.
Only silence. Frigid and terminal.
The trap was shut.
And there was no one remaining to rescue me.
Chapter 4 – Matvey
“You’re much more of a maniac than I imagined,” Rurik said, watching me like he’d just discovered a layer to me he didn’t know existed.
“Am I? It must run in the family,” I answered coldly. “At least I wasn’t the one fucking a whore on my wedding night while my wife was outside the door listening.”
There was a flicker of emotion in his eyes. There’d been more flickers of emotions in his eyes since Yulia died than I’d ever seen him show his entire life. Whatever that was, she was dead, and it was too late to show it.
He ignored my jab. “The girl hates you already.”
I nodded. “I know. That’s why I’m keeping my distance from her.”
He huffed and shook his head. “Sure, you are. Fucking maniac.” Rising to his feet, he sauntered out of my office and closed the door behind him
I’d kept my distance from Zoella since the night our engagement was announced. She’d been in shock and refused to accept it. I’d given her space to come to terms with it.
But I hadn’t stayed away completely.
I had my eyes on her around the clock, observing, watching every move she made throughout the day.
I was watching her from within black cars parked discreetly down the street, from the security feed I had installed outside the Carter estate, and my men, who secretly tracked her wherever she was going.
I lied to myself and said that it was for her safety, but I knew it was something more. My obsession with her was growing a little more intensely each day.
But that lie was my cover with Damien when he raised an eyebrow at the frequency of the reports. That’s what I saidto Isaak when he wondered why my men were being dispatched to tail around a twenty-one-year-old woman who barely left the house.
I’d given her enough time to accept what she couldn’t change, but the distance hadn’t made much of a difference from what I could see.
