Page 25 of Untamed Beast
“Look at me.”
I do, though I’m scared what I might see. He’s cold, calm, restrained.
“You know the reason I married you, Natalia. It’s your last name. Nothing more. Don’t forget that.”
I instinctively drop my eyes to the floor. I’m getting this all wrong.
“This is your room. I sleep on the other side of the apartment.”
He’s not raising his voice, but I can sense his anger. I know how this goes. He’s a violent man. The cruel words start first. The blows follow later.
When I look up, Aleksandr is gone from the room. I don’t see him again that night, which I suppose should come as a relief.
Instead, I just feel very alone.
The squeal of relief that my mother lets out gives me hearing damage. Aleksandr can probably hear it on his side of the apartment.
“Maksim! Maksim!” I hear her calling my father over to the phone. “Natalia is still pure. They did not consummate the marriage.”
“Malyshka, you did well. Whatever you said to keep that monster away from you, well done.”
I fiddle with the velvet comforter, not telling her that I didn’t do anything to keep Aleksandr away from me.
I’d had an overwhelming day, and I wasn’t thinking rationally. I don’t want a man like that to come near me.
I’m waiting for someone better than all the fiancés my parents have shoved in my face — and Aleksandr Zhukov is certainlynotthat.
Now that I look around me, I see all the reasons I couldnever be with a brute like him. I won’t invite him anywhere near me again.
In the light of day, things are worse than I thought. Dasha comes to complain at me for breakfast and I scoop her onto my lap, needing some reassurance that my old life did exist.
That places more beautiful than converted warehouses in the port district do exist.
I feel utterly small in this cavernous, cold room with half of my old things in an entirely unfamiliar environment.
“Mama, things are ugly here. The walls are steel. There are no drapes over the windows. And my sheets, Mama… please, you have to send me some sheets from home. These ones are awful.”
I never knew sheets could be so scratchy. I’ve never been good at sleeping, at the best of times, but in these sheets it was utterly impossible. Maybe Aleksandr has his own normal sheets and he’s given me these specifically to torture me.
My mother tuts her tongue on the other end of the line. “I knew that man didn’t have the resources to keep you the way you deserve. I don’t know what your father was thinking when he agreed to this marriage. Living in a place like that, with a man like that, will ruin you. And that’s not to mention how it will ruin us, as a family.”
Everything happened in such a rush yesterday that I hadn’t had time to consider what might be at stake for Papa. Aleksandr is his sons’ killer. If my family’s nightmares center on one thing, it’s Aleksandr Zhukov. And yet in the time it took me to unlace my corset and celebrate the continuation of my single life with one mouthful of champagne, Aleksandrwas able to convince my father that he was the right suitor for me.
Huh.
I hear my mother murmuring to my father in the background of the call.
“You do want us to get you out of there, don’t you?”
“More than anything,” I reply.
“We need—” My mother stops talking abruptly and I hear my father take the phone from her.
“Malyshka,I’m working on a plan. It’s too dangerous to discuss on the phone. If you can get that brute to allow you to visit us, we can start putting it into action.”
The call ends with an abrupt click. I stare at the empty phone screen, wondering how on earth I’m going to get Aleksandr Zhukov to let me visit his mortal enemy.
Dasha kneads at my lap and I kiss her between the ears. “Mama and Papa will get us home,” I tell her. “Don’t worry about a thing.”
