Page 47 of The Brat: Prequel

“Of course I do. Nobody understands me like he does. Nobody⁠—”

“Victoria, you’re still young and naive to the way men like that work,” she implores.

“I haven’t been young since I watched you bite off a man’s dick.”

“I asked you not to look,” she rasps.

“I watched my sister, the sister who left us to deal with that monster alone, who ran, transform in front of me.

“I never held running away against you. Why wouldn’t you get out of that house if you could? But I knew you were weak. Just like I thought I was. Then, you bit his dick off and…” She cringes. “…it was fucking amazing,” I praise, amused when she jerks back in stunned bewilderment. “You were amazing. You were so strong, and I recognized I’d been wrong all along.

“You were a fighter. A warrior. And I figured that out without knowing you killed that bastard sperm donor of ours.”

They stare at me. Utterly aghast.

I’m used to it.

I shock them. When I don’t vomit at Maxim’s gifts. When I don’t have nightmares about them, just the other random shit that’s happened in our lives.

They think I’m like them.

I’m not.

“Neither of your marriages had the best starts but they turned out right. Nobody’s forcing me into anything. I’ll walk down that aisle happily because he gets me and I get him. Now that I know he has to court me first, I won’t stop that from happening. I’ll wait out his proposal. But I’m choosing him, Camille. You don’t have to feel guilty about that.”

“Victoria,” she pleads like I condemned her. “Please, don’t⁠—”

“The second he sent me that head, I was his, Camille.” Before I knew about the deal. Before Timofai Stepanov made certain of that. “It’s fine⁠—”

“No,” she wails. “It isn’t.”

“Why are you upset about this? I know who I’m going to marry and it’s a man I chose before I learned any of this.”

And I did choose him.

Every message I sent. Every call I made.

I actively kept him in my life.

Never allowing him to cut himself out.

Always reeling him back in whenever I felt too much distance creep between us.

I’m eighteen now. And he hasn’t married. I can have him.

“He’s a monster.”

“So’s Brennan. And Eoghan. They’re all monsters. But their masks are honest. You know what you’re getting with them. It’s the bastards out there who you’d be afraid of if you weren’t O’Donnellys. I don’t have their last name. I don’t have that protection. But, one day, I’ll have Maxim’s.”

“Why are you so… fine with this?” Inessa blurts out. “You’re calm. Not even shouting. I-I don’t understand. I yelled at Father when he told me he’d set my wedding date as my birthday.”

I can’t make them understand.

There’s no understanding my feelings for Maxim.

Dusha ne lezhit—my soul doesn’t lie and it’s known who he is for a long time.

Abramovicz’s lifeless eyes slither into my memory.