His grip tightened slightly without being painful.
“You think I did this lightly?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t care how you did it.”
“You think I wanted war accelerated?”
“You accelerated it.”
“Yes.”
“For me?”
“Yes.”
The admission silenced me for half a second, but anger surged again. His honesty disarmed and infuriated me simultaneously.
“I was selfish,” he continued. “I did not want you in anyone else’s hands and the only way to ensure that was marriage and making you mine legally.”
My heart pounded.
“That’s not protection,” I said. “That’s possession.”
“Call it what you want.”
“It’s manipulation.”
“It’s reality.”
“No. Reality would have been giving me a choice, but you stripped me of that very right.” He went still, his grip loosening slightly. “Hear and understand me clearly. I wanted you. Past tense. That does not give you ownership over me or my choices.”
“I don’t want ownership. Never wanted it,” he said quietly.
“Then what do you want?”
“You.” The word was uttered with a certainty that made my stomach flip in a way I despised, and I shoved at him again. Harder this time, but this time he even let me. I stepped back from him, my chest heaving with quite exertion.
“You’re just a man who couldn’t separate desire from strategy.”
His eyes darkened slightly. “It wasn’t just desire.”
“Please just leave me alone. I want nothing to do with you, and I don’t even want to see your face. I know you have me trapped inside this penthouse, but it is only a matter of time before my family finds me. Until then, stay the fuck away from me.”
“Elisse,” he began speaking, but I raised my hand to stop him.
“Leave me alone.”
His jaw tightened, but he didn’t argue.
“I need space.”
He studied me for a long moment, his gaze measuring and calculating my response in the way only he knew how to do. I could see he was deciding whether pushing further would fracture something irreparably, and finally, he nodded once.
“I’ll be in the study,” he said, but I didn’t respond.
He moved past me, controlled as ever, and disappeared down the hallway, the penthouse feeling even more enormous once he was gone. The place was empty, but I still did not feel free. I stood there, breathing hard, and staring at the skyline, realizing I was married to Fyodor Romanov. Not by love or choice, but by war instead. And somewhere beneath all of that, something about this entire thing felt dangerously real, and that is exactly what I hated the most of all.
Chapter 10 - Fyodor
