AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Four
Eoghan
As I watchedthe rerun of last night’s Yankees game, I saw Inessa tapping away on her phone and tried not to look like I was doing exactly what Iwasdoing—reading her messages.
Though I’d gone out of my way to avoid learning anything about her, it was in my nature to absorb information, even if I didn’t want it.
The file Conor had collected on her back when the wedding had been a seed in the whack job garden that was my father’s fertile mind, had been something I had managed to avoid for over three months. Then Declan, after meeting her, had started singing her praises, and I’d been left wondering what the fuck she’d done to impress my misogynistic brother.
I’d read the file, but it hadn’t shown all that much. Was I supposed to get a boner over an A grade in English Literature? That her GPA was 3.9?
I mean, fuck.
She’d been a kid.
A fucking kid her father had effectively sold to us.
So, because seeing that shit had pissed me off, I’d set a couple of the crew on her, and they’d actually managed to keep track of her when she’d done any sneaking out. What they’d failed to report?
That Inessa was being beaten.
Some days, I thought I was like my father. A little fucking nutty. Some days, I thought I was still the soldier I’d been trained to be—dedicated and disciplined. Then others, I was neither, a man capable of seeing between the lines of the law and refusing to accept something just because it was an order. But I was pretty sure, amid the chaos of my character, that I wasn’t a good man.
Even so, had I known she was being beaten the way she was?
I felt certain I’d have married her the second it was legal, and I’d have shoved her in another apartment for her to grow up in.
Knowing that her favorite food was some Russian shit calledpelmeni, her best friend a kid called Lisandra who, more often than not, got Inessa into trouble, and that she’d watchedTo All the Boys I Loved Beforeeighty times on Netflix, hadn’t prepared me for the woman who’d become my wife.
At the moment, sitting there, curled in a ball on the other end of the sofa, it was like she was there, but she wasn’t. So far, she hadn’t driven me insane, which came as a surprise.
I’d thought she’d grate on my nerves, but she hadn’t. Didn’t.
She just read. A lot. Worked out. A lot. Stared out of windows. A lot.
The sniper in me would watch her look out of her princess tower, wondering what she was thinking, even as I feared how open a target she was making herself.
Yeah. Feared. You read that right.
She was nothing to me. Not yet, at any rate. Maybe not ever. But the way she stood there? Staring out onto a world like she wasn’t really a part of it? Looking into the ant-like lives of people going about their business? It got to me. And made me glad we’d invested in bulletproof windows that were military grade.
I half wondered what she was thinking about, but equally, I knew.
We hadn’t left the apartment since the wedding, and she hadn’t mentioned Leticia once, nor had she asked about going out—either to shop, for food or clothes, or to eat out at a restaurant. Tomorrow, Winnie, my housekeeper, would come for the first time, so we’d have fresh produce and more meals, but in that time, she hadn’t even asked to Uber in something.
She was a conundrum. Someone so okay with her place in this world that she didn’t expect much else, and fuck if that didn’t mess with my head.
I’d never wanted to be married to someone so young because I was jaded, because I’d lived. Being with someone who hadn’t? At all? What the fuck was I supposed to do with someone like that? Someone so different from me, someone with nothing to say?
“I can feel you watching me.”
Her eyes were on me at this point, making me realize I was staring at her, and she was staring back, and I hadn’t noticed.
Shit.
“If you want to know something, ask.”
I had to admit…I liked how blunt she was. Not coarse or crass, not defiant or in your face, but she didn’t bullshit, and fuck if that wasn’t enjoyable. Especially when I was used to women who’d tell me I had a fifteen-inch cock if it meant I’d buy them a pretty necklace.
