Page 131 of Cruel Demands

“She is not my prisoner, Mother. I am protecting her.”

“Yes.” She says it softly. “That is what your father always called it.”

I turn away from her and pour myself a drink. My mother does not let silence save anyone.

“Protection and possession look very similar in our family, Mikhail.”

I set the bottle down harder than necessary. “Taylor’s apartment is no longer secure.”

“Then secure it.”

“I intend to.”

“Good. Then she can return to it.”

“No.” The word leaves me too quickly.

Her smile is smug and unhappy. She knows who she raised, who my father raised, and she knows it is too late. There are moments when my mother does not need to speak. She can pull a confession from a man simply by watching him resist it.

I lift the glass but do not drink. “She is safer here,” I say.

“You already said that.”

I look at her. “Taylor is not a prisoner.”

“Does she know that?”

“She can leave.”

“Without one of your drivers?”

“Yes.”

“Without one of your guards?”

“If she insists.”

“Without your permission?”

My jaw tightens.

My mother sighs. “There,” she says. “That is the problem.”

“I would not stop her.”

“No. You would only make leaving feel foolish. Dangerous. Ungrateful. You would place men around her, decide which threats she is allowed to know about, and call every restriction temporary until she forgets what unrestricted feels like.”

“You think I am my father.”

“I think you are his son.”

I take a drink.

My father loved women like he loved countries. He wanted their loyalty, their beauty, their softness, their surrender. Then he locked every ugly truth outside the room and seemed surprised when it found another way in.

“He destroyed every woman he loved,” my mother says.

“I am not destroying Taylor,” I say through gritted teeth. “She is not part of this world.”