I hear the warning. “Then you had better get used to chatting with the O’Donnellys. The Veronians have power, but not like we do.”
He shakes his head. “I had to pick the crazy one.”
“Mean!”
“Ah, yes, I’m the mean one. You’re the crazy one. Fitting.” His change of subject is abrupt but he reiterates, “It might take years to do this, Victoria.”
“The joys of being young.”
“The joys of being overconfident,” he corrects.
“When we have a son, they can inherit my life’s work.”
His dick throbs against my hip. Again, we both ignore it.
“I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” he admits finally. “To be useful, to have a purpose, yes. That’s playing at it. You could pass on tips to the O’Donnellys easily. Curry favor for Seamus by making friends with the right people. Whythis?”
“Because I was born of agirldiscarded by a powerful man and raised by some of the strongest women on the planet. They taught me that being a woman is a sin in the eyes of the world. They taught me that my body isn’t mine, that my thoughts aren’t mine, that my rights aren’t even mine. They taught me that the government wants me to breed but they resent me for that ability and they’ll hold all of their power over my head to control me.That if I’m beaten or raped or abused, if my child is beaten, raped, or abused, the manstillhas all the power.
“The system is rigged, Maxim.
“The average woman can’t avoid that. We’re all cogs in a machine. But I have a position of power that I can exploit if I play the game. Oakwood’s administration covers shit up for the Veronians on the daily. In men’s favor. Never a woman’s. The rest of the country is the same. I’m sick of it.”
“You will need to keep your plan close to the vest, Victoria.”
It’s as much of a concession as I know he’ll give me. But I can hear in his voice that he knows I’m right.
“Wynter wants to help me. She said that we should use Dyers as an in if he vouched for her.”
“Does she know what danger she’ll put herself in if she follows through with it?”
“She knows. All women know. You don’t have to be toying with a secret society to be in danger when you’re a woman, Maxim. Hell, you know that as well as I do because you’re the one who wastes millions a year protecting me with guards! You don’t do that because you think I’ll catch measles one day and might faint in the street.” I tut. “This is a way of gaining power?—”
“It’s a way of getting yourself killed.”
“Luckily for me, I have my own butcher on speed dial and he’ll hack my enemies to pieces before they can hurt me.”
With a groan, he pushes his face into the pillow beside my head.
The weight of him atop me is heavy. Hard. But surprisingly pleasant. Maybe I’ll start wheezing in a little while. Not yet, though.
I’m surrounded by him. In ways that I’ve yearned for for a long time. He’s protected me from every man in the city, himself included, and I understand that my version of sticking it to themengoes directly against what he probably wanted out of a wife.
What are mob wives if not broodmares?
I don’t think he’ll stop me. He could have nixed this on its head when I came to him two nights ago. He didn’t.
“I want you to promise me that if any of them touch you, you’ll tell me,” he grinds out, startling me because I was lost in my thoughts for so long. “I want you to promise me that if you find yourself in a situation, you’ll call me.
“I want you to promise me that if things get out of hand and you find that none of our measures protect you… if theyhurtyou, that we agree I will kill them. No matter the political consequences. They will die.”
By hurt, we both know he means rape.
The ultimate power a man has over a woman.
Unless you have Maxim on your side.
“If that happens,” I whisper, “then I want his dick on a platter and his body in the Hudson.”
