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My brows pull together. “Your… man?”

“Yes. Roman.” Her voice drips with disgust. “You go back to whatever hole you crawled out of and leave him alone.”

Confusion washes over me. “I don’t understand. You did this because of Roman?”

Her expression darkens instantly. “Shut up.”

I flinch.

“Roman is my man. He was supposed to marry me! Everything was going perfectly according to plan,” she snaps. “I was going to be Bratva’s queen. I was going to stand beside him, be his wife, have everything I’ve always deserved.”

She gestures angrily toward me. “Then you crawled out of nowhere and ruined everything.”

I stare at her, completely lost. I knew she had a thing for Roman, but I had no idea it ran this deep.

“Roman was the one who came for me. I never—”

The slap comes so fast I barely see it. Pain explodes across my cheek. My head jerks sideways, and the chair groans beneath me as my body strains against the restraints.

“Shut up! You lying bitch,” Katerina hisses.

My cheek burns. She grabs my chin and forces my face back toward hers.

“You ruined everything,” she says. “Everything was finally falling into place for me. I was finally going to have Roman. I was finally getting the respect I deserved from my family.”

Her fingers tighten around my jaw. “Do you know why my father agreed to go into business with Roman?”

I say nothing.

“Because of me.”

Her eyes flash.

“I convinced him. I told him that working with Roman would bring me closer to him. That it would give me a chance to marry him. That joining our families would give us more power.” She releases my face with a shove. “I was supposed to be Roman’s wife. His queen. I had everything planned. I was finally getting respect from my father. From my brothers. The same ones who always treated me like I was nothing but a woman. Everything was falling into place. And then you appeared.”

She paces in front of me, heels striking the concrete floor with angry clicks.

“And now look at me. Back to being a failure in their eyes. The one thing I promised my father I would deliver; Roman as my husband, never happened. All we have is a business alliance. Nothing more. Do you know how that feels?”

I can see the raw fury in her face. The veins at her temples stand out. She steps closer, close enough that I feel the heat of her body and the cold brush of her breath against my bruised cheek.

“It’s humiliating, Aurora. And I don’t like being humiliated. I tried to warn you. But you wouldn’t listen. You thought you were untouchable because you had Roman’s protection. Do you have any idea how hard it was watching you on his arm? Going out with him? Taking the place that should have been mine?”

Her voice drops into something darker, almost intimate in its hatred.

“And then that day in his office… I walked in and you were right there. Being fucked by my man. Moaning. Screaming. Loud enough for me to hear every second of it. Do you know what that does to a person?”

The memory of that afternoon flashes behind my eyes. “I’m sorry for whatever it is you’re going through Katerina, but Roman isn’t your man.”

My response earns me a slap across my face again, harder this time. Pain explodes along my cheekbone. My head snaps to the side, the ropes at my wrists and ankles biting deeper into already raw skin. The copper taste of blood floods my mouth. My ears ring.

“He is mine,” she hisses, so close now that spit lands on my split lip. “You’re the intruder. And today it ends.”

She leans in until her forehead nearly touches mine. I can see the tiny flecks of gold in her brown eyes, the slight tremor of barely contained rage in her jaw.

“If I can’t have Roman, then no one can. No one.”

The finality in her voice freezes my blood. She means every word.