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CHAPTER 6
Naomi
A Week Later
I stood at the railing of the balcony, allowing the warmth of the sun to beat down on my face. I knew I should have on a hat or something to block my skin from being burned, but the warmth felt too good, and I didn’t want to move from the spot.
I was content. In this moment, I didn’t have to worry about anything, breathing in and out slowly to loosen the tension that seemed to have taken up residence in my shoulders.
What I wouldn’t give to have a massage or a week’s vacation.
Or just my sanity intact.
Slowly, I opened my eyes and looked at the walls in the distance. At this distance, the barbed wire covering the walls was barely visible, but not impossible to see. A reminder that I was locked in. Gavril had given me the right to leave the mansion whenever I wanted to, but I hadn’t.
For a week since that night in the study, I’d stayed indoors, conflicted as to what I was going to do with the awful truth of who my husband was.
The nightmares came frequently now. Either I was being raped or our faceless daughter was. And each dream always featured the same thing—Gavril standing there, doing nothing to stop it.
I couldn’t live like that any longer. The guilt of what I had seen, what he had done, was eating me up inside to the point where I was starting to lose my appetite.
And on some days, my will to live.
Shaking out of that particular thought, I cupped my stomach, feeling for any noticeable differences in it since the last time I had checked. Besides being sick nearly every morning, I had noticed that my breasts were heavier. But other than that, there was nothing else outwardly at least to see that I was pregnant. I didn’t know if Gavril had told anyone yet.
I hadn’t.
After all, who could I tell? The only person I cared to tell wasn’t around for me to speak with, and it killed me to know that I couldn’t share the news—happy or sad at this point—with Ilsa. My best friend would know exactly what to say, and I knew for a fact that she wouldn’t accept any of this.
Had Ilsa gone through something similar with Roman? Were all Mafia men the same in their business? A part of me wanted to doubt it. Ilsa would never have married Roman if he was involved in human trafficking.
But until a few months ago, Ilsa never would’ve married Roman at all.
Maybe I hadn’t fought back as hard as I should.
Sighing, I looked out into the distance. I wasn’t the only one who had started to change.
Gavril had also started to change, and not all of it was horrible. The way he looked at me had taken on a new kind of searing intensity that took my breath away. There was something different in his gaze. Something that made my heart jump into my throat in excitement each time I caught it.
We’d had more sex since that night in the study, but I had gone back to my usual needs instead of demanding that he use me, and he was happy to oblige.
Anything I wanted, it seemed he was bound and determined to give me. While I should be excited with having such a doting husband, I couldn’t push those images of the women out of my mind. Call me a coward for not having confronted Gavril by now, but it seemed like there was never the right moment to do so.
Drawing in a breath, I walked into the bedroom and opened the door, intent on finding Vera for a special request at dinner tonight instead of the usual. The rich food was making me sick to my stomach, and I just wanted something bland.
But as I stepped out, I found Gavril carrying a chair out of one of the rooms that lined the hallway.
“What are you doing?” I asked, surprised to see him in the middle of the day and doing actual labor. It was hard not to notice how his forearms rippled with the motion under his dark gray T-shirt, the bulge of his muscles straining against the fabric at his shoulders.
My mouth went dry, and he arched a brow. “Would you like for me to put it down and pick it back up for your personal show?” he asked in a low voice full of sensual promise.
My face flushed and I motioned for him to continue, waiting until he had placed it at the top of the stairs before saying anything.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
It was odd to see him at the mansion in the middle of the day and not conducting business.
Gavril extended his hand toward me. “Come see what I have been doing.”
Curious, I took his hand and he tugged me into the room that had been cleaned out. Sunshine streamed through the windows onto the dark hardwood floors. In the middle of the room sat an unfinished crib, the dark cherrywood gleaming. My heart raced at the sight.
He had bought a crib.
He was putting together a crib for our child.
I couldn’t even put what I was feeling into words right now. It was one of those off-the-wall, probably didn’t-even-think-about-it things that Gavril did that completely destroyed me in the process. How could he even be the same monster who had stood motionless on the docks?
Gavril tugged me closer, wrapping his arm around my waist. “Do you like it?”
Tears crowded my eyes as I stared at the lovely crib, conflicted on whether or not to throw myself into his arms and forget everything I had been thinking of just prior to finding him. These were the sorts of things I had hoped for in a partner, someone that would do something so touching that I couldn’t help but love him just a little more.
It was almost a fairy tale ending.
Almost.
Instead I was in a living, breathing nightmare, my heart torn as to what to believe about Gavril.
“Well?” he whispered in my ear.
