Page 69 of His Contract Queen

Now I despise it.

The door to my bedroom opens without a knock.

He steps inside, closes it behind him with a soft, final click of the latch and shifts the lock into place. The sound of the bolt sliding home is louder than the blood rushing through my ears. I shift on the edge of my mattress.

There is no concern on his face when he finally turns to look at me. No flicker of the father I once believed existed underneath the politician’s mask, nothing to suggest that he might regret what’s devolved between us.

There is only irritation, thin-lipped and cold. The look he reserves for his aides who have disappointed him, for scandals that have leaked too close to the surface with problems that refuse to stay buried.

He’s still wearing his gala suit and tie—a crisp navy wool, medals gleaming over his breast under the low light. The collar is slightly askew, the cuff of his right sleeve bearing a small, dark smear of something that looks a lot like dried blood. There is an old bruise blooming along his jawline, caked with badly applied makeup.

For a long while, we simply stare at each other.

His voice is quiet. “You are a reckless little fool. Do you have any idea what you’ve done? What was your plan? Expose me in front of the entire gala? All for what, to satisfy your grievances with me? You humiliated me. You’ve become a liability, Katerina. What am I supposed to do now?”

Every word is designed to slice exactly where it will hurt most. He dissects me with that same pointed discipline he’s always used for his subordinates, reminding me that I am not his daughter in this moment, I am only a problem.

An embarrassment to the Borchin name.

A crack in the perfect façade he’s spent four decades polishing.

He paces two slow steps closer, his hands fisting at his sides. “The footage is everywhere. Every major channel has it. Every foreign outlet is sniffing around for more dirt.” His gaze flicks over me, tight with anger. “Do you understand what this means for me? For the family name? For everything your mother and I sacrificed to build?”

He stops in front of me, close enough that I can smell the faint trace of his cologne still clinging to his ruined clothes.

Anger boils in my veins. “Mom would hate you for what you did to me.”

He flinches, backing away from me.

I shake my head at him. “Blaming me for lashing out is ironic. You destroyed my life to save your own and you have the nerve to callmethe problem? You did this to yourself. All I did was expose it.”

His face darkens in a way I’ve never seen before. Color floods his cheeks, his eyes narrowing to slits. The careful mask of paternal disappointment cracks open to reveal something raw and furious underneath. He takes another step forward again, looming over me, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to hold his gaze.

“You ungrateful brat. I gave you everything. And this is how you repay me? By trying to drag me down because of some childish vendetta?” The word is bitten off, hissed between clenched teeth. His hands twitch at his sides, fingers curling as though muscle memory wants him to strike me and reassert the control he is rapidly losing.

I rise slowly from the edge of the bed until I’m standing. “You sold me. You sat across from Aleksandr Volkov, a man you knew could hurt me, and offered me up to him anyway. Why are you surprised things have turned out this way?”

His breathing is audible, harsh bursts punched through flared nostrils. He lunges forward, too fast for me to react. He swings at me. The knuckles of his fist connect hard across my cheekbone before I can pull my arms up to protect myself. Pain explodes white-hot behind my eyes as my head snaps to the side. Blood floods into my mouth.

My body crumples to the ground, disoriented from the sudden hit. The room spins, my vision swimming as I slowly force myself off the floor and sit upright again. I spit blood onto the carpet between us.

When I’m oriented enough to look up at him, my eyes are burning. “Next time, you'd better kill me.”

He stares at me for a long second, expression blank as though he’s looking at a stranger and not the daughter he raised for twenty-two years. Then he turns, walks to the door, and shuts it behind him.

I swallow more blood that coats my mouth. Whatever fragile thread of fatherhood I still clung to unconsciously snaps. He isn’t my protector anymore. Maybe he never was. All he is nowis a man who will break his own child to preserve his power and will still sleep soundly at night afterward.

If he doesn’t have the guts to kill me, he will keep me imprisoned here until one of us dies. I will never leave this house again. Never walk the streets freely or breathe air that isn’t filtered through the vents cut out in the floorboards.

And I will never see Aleksandr again.

That last thought cuts deeper than the punch did.

In the days that follow,I try to reach the staff.

They are the same people who once carried me on their shoulders when I was small, who slipped me extra sweets when my parents weren’t looking, who bandaged my scraped knees and told me stories when nightmares woke me in the middle of the night.

They were my first family in many ways, quiet and steady, always there when the house felt too big and my parents felt too distant while building my father’s military career.