"The image I’m projecting is 'survivor,' Papa," I snap. I lean back, trying to calm myself but everything I’ve been through tonight is not helping, my nerves are scattered all over the place and I feel this strange adrenaline, maybe from fear, I don’t know, but I do know I need to let it out. "Which is more than I can say for the you and all your businesses.”
My heart thumps aggressively against my chest from rising anger.
Fuck this! How could he stoop so low? I know he is not the best person on earth, but trafficking girls?
Boris’s face turns a mottled, angry red. "You ungrateful brat. You should be on your knees thanking me that you’re even sitting at this table. After the shame you brought to my house, I should have let the system swallow you whole."
"The only thing you’re worried about is the system swallowing your profits," I counter. Behind me, I feel Mikhail shift, he’s restless and that’s not a good sign. It’s a warning. "You married me off to repair an alliance. Let’s not pretend you’re a grieving father."
"You don't know your place," My father looks like he wants to send that glass in his hands across the table and on to my head. "You never did." He hisses, his voice dropping an octave.
My place? I know my place and that’s finding him and getting the hell out of this shit hole.
"Her place is at my side," Mikhail interrupts as he finally takes a seat on the chair next to mine. He doesn't look at my father, he looks at Vladimir.
“Shall we?” Mikhail says dismissively, already digging into the plate in his front.
The meal continues in a suffocating silence, punctuated only by Vladimir’s rude remarks to the staff and his daughters. He speaks to Milana like she’s a servant who hasn't cleaned the silver properly and to Calina like she’s a failure for not having a husband of her own to manage.
The relationship between them is a disaster. I can see the way Milana shrinks into her seat every time her father opens his mouth and the way Calina’s jaw is set so tight it looks like it might snap.
"My sons have grown soft," Vladimir muses, swirling the wine in his glass. "Artyom is playing house with a nurse, and now Mikhail is playing hero for a woman who would have happily watched him burn six months ago. It’s pathetic."
"Watch it, Pa," Mikhail warns, his voice a low, tectonic rumble.
"Why? Boris is right.” Vladimir sneers, waving a dismissive hand at me as if I were a piece of spoiled meat. "She's an asset for a union, nothing more, yet she lacks basic discipline."
My father takes a slow, bored sip of his vodka, nodding in cold agreement. "She is a spoiled creature," he mutters into his glass. "I tried to correct her when she was sixteen, yet she still hasn't learned her place."
The blood drains from my face so fast the room tilts.
A cold, familiar dread settles in my gut. I can almost feel the heat of a leather belt—the "corrections" Boris used to give me when I was sixteen, when I was terrified and asking for help.
Mikhail slams both hands down on the mahogany table.
I can’t stop the scared gasp that escapes my lips, my now slow heart starts to race again.
Crystal glasses shatter. Silverware jumps. Mikhail leans across the table until he is inches from Vladimir’s face, his eyes wide, dark, and full of a violence that makes my heart stop.
"Listen to me, old man," Mikhail grits his teeth, his jaw locking. "You can hate me. You can resent the fact that Artyom took your crown while you were still breathing. You can even try to run your filth through my docks. But you will never speak to her like that again."
Vladimir blinks, his arrogance faltering for a split second as he looks into his son's eyes. "Mikhail?—"
"No!" Mikhail roars, the sound echoing off the high, gilded ceiling. "She is my wife. In this house, her word is my word. If you insult her, you’re insulting me. And if you do it again, I won't just walk out—I’ll burn this entire estate to the ground with you inside it."
He turns his head to my father, I can see the tick in his jaw stares with a blank expression. "And you, Boris. If you think you’re done living a good life, I dare you to agree with him one more time. I dare you to call her spoiled while I’m in the room."
A huge lump clogs my throat as I try to breathe. I’ve spent six months fighting this man, thinking he is the ultimate hunter, the man who wants to put me in a silk-lined box. But looking at him now, standing between me and the man who has spent my whole life trying to break my spirit... my brain can’t comprehend it.
Is he… He is protecting me?
Not the alliance. Not the Morozov name. Me?
I-I… I don’t know what to think anymore.
Boris looks like he’s seen a ghost, his glass frozen halfway to his mouth. Calina and Milana are staring at their brother, and for the first time, I see a small flicker of actual awe in Milana’s eyes.
"Mikhail," Vladimir says, his voice shaking with what looks like fury. "You would threaten your father? Over a girl?"
