Page 16 of Owning Him
I remember all the old-money galas where people whispered behind their champagne flutes. They all said he should have washed his hands of the situation the moment that prostitute showed up on his doorstep, heavily pregnant.
Yes, I call my biological mother a prostitute. Because that is exactly what she was. She baby-trapped a powerful, wealthy man for his money, only to throw me at his door like trash the second I was born. After that, she spent years demanding money for her drugs and her designer heels.
My father could have killed her. I know he could have. But he didn't. He swallowed his pride and paid her off, month after month, year after year, for one reason only: he didn't want me to grow up to hate him.
My father wasn’t a good man. I am under no illusions about that. But he loved me. And that is more than she ever did.
He died of a heart attack years ago, leaving the entire empire in my hands.
If I retire now, if I actually try to enjoy my life, I am just disappointing his memory. I’d be making the people who still remember him think that he really should have aborted me, that he should have married some aristocratic society woman instead and had a proper boy to inherit his throne.
Never. Fucking never.
I don’t give a shit what people say about me. They can call me a cold-hearted bitch or a mistake. I don't care. But he’s where I draw the line.
Yes, I love my devil of a father. Yes, I am probably sick for doing so. He hurt a lot of people, manipulated hundreds, and took advantage of the naive to build what he had.
But he loved me.
The only person in the entire world who ever truly loved me was a devil. And I will burn myself to the ground before I let anyone tarnish his name.
Chapter Eleven
Viktor
Ihave showered three times today.
It does not matter. It is past one in the morning, and the sweat is already drenching my skin again, gluing my hair to my forehead. Between five in the evening—the exact hour Valentina was supposed to be back—and now, I have worked out four separate times. For hours, I have pushed my body like a feral beast.
Eventually, I gave up on showering. I don’t think I’m able to stop pushing my body to the brink until she returns.
Where is she? Why has she not returned? Why do I even care? What changed between then and now?
At midnight, a dark thought crept into my mind, and now it refuses to leave.Could she be at an auction?
The room narrows until I see black at the edges of my vision. My hands fist so hard my knuckles pop. No. She said she does not pay for sex. She said she does not pay for men. But if she is not letting me fill her, is she getting filled somewhere else? By some aristocratic bastard?
Fuck. No. Fuck no.
Why the hell do I care?
Because I want to be the one to fill her up. I want to be the one to make that cold, arrogant queen scream and cry and beg me to stop—and I would never stop. I want to watch her completely fall apart in my hands, even if I am nothing compared to her. I know what I am. I am the scum beneath herdesigner heels while she eats caviar for breakfast and sleeps on pure silk sheets.
Damn it. I have to work on myself. I have to become something she won't be ashamed to have in her sheets in the dark—never mind the light of day.
Why? Because she’s the only woman I’ve ever actually wanted to fuck. And she wants nothing to do with me but marvel at my sadness.
The sharp click of the front door echoing through the foyer breaks my thoughts.
I stride out of the gym, my bare chest gleaming with sweat. She looks exhausted, her coat hanging slightly loose off her shoulders, her dark hair a fraction out of place.
"Where were you?" I demand.
Valentina looks me up and down, her heavy-lidded eyes dragging slowly across my bare, sweating chest, tracking the hard lines of my abs down to where the grey sweatpants hang low on my hips. Even through her exhaustion, I see the flare in her nostrils. She is ogling me, drinking in the sight of my body.
I like it.
"You are acting like a possessive boyfriend, Viktor," she says. "I do not like that."
