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“Now, who’s full of shit?” I throw back. “If you do everything my uncle says, that makes you his puppet too. Well, I’m tired of dangling on a string and keeping quiet while being seen but not heard. I’m tired of it, Dimki. I’m not going back there.”
“Oh yes, you are.”
“You…assholesthink you have power over me, but you’re wrong. Nobody owns my mind. My heart. My body.”
“No one but Marco Medici,” he replies. “And for the record, it’s my job. This is what I do.
I’m not here to battle with you about your life choices, I’m here to protect you. And now you’ve put Maxim and me in a complicated situation. The other soldiers who lost you on the way to the airport are dead, Kat. What do you think that means for us?”
His words ring in my ears. “My uncle won’t do that to you.”
He scoffs. “You clearly know nothing about how this family works. That’s a shame, I always thought you had more grit than that.”
I frown. “I do…I do have grit. I’m a Petrov,” I say, sounding less brave than I feel. “I know what it means to be able to survive in a world of violence and corruption, of mayhem and fucking madness. I know what it’s like to live with a father who wishes I was never born and a stepmother who never speaks to me and a birth mother I don’t even know. My uncle is the only one who ever pays me any attention or even acts like he cares. So I have learned to be audacious, Dimki, because it’s either that or disappear altogether.”
I’m not asking for sympathy, but if he thinks he knows me and that I’m just some poor, little rich girl, then he can suck it.
“These are things you must discuss with Aleksi, not with me.”
“I won’t marry a man I don’t love or respect.”
“Kat, don’t make this harder than it already is. It’s. My. Job.”
“That’s what you’re going to do to me,” I go on as if he hasn’t spoken. “If you take me back there. I’d rather be dead than spend my life with that soul-sucking monster Vlad.”
He senses the tension in my voice, and he asks, “Did he hurt you?”
I take a long time to answer, considering if I tell him any more truth bombs tonight. “If I said that he did, would that make a difference?”
“If it’s true, then yes.”
“Isn’t that how all Russian men are?” I fire back. “Knock the little woman around behind closed doors, keep them in line. That’s how it works in the Russian Bratva, isn’t it, Dimki?”
“Not all men,” he mutters. “Some of us do not act that way, and if he did, that has consequences.”
I turn to look back out of the window. “None of it matters,” I say, my mind spinning back to Marco and the look on his face when Dimitri dragged me away. “None of it matters without him.”
An hour later, I’m waiting for my uncle in his study.
I know that it isn’t just the air around me that feels off, it’s this whole situation. And I’m the cause of it.
I’ve put everyone in danger, all for my own selfish need for Marco.
When I got in the car with Dimitri, he took my phone.
Asshole.
I have no way of communicating with Marco; I know he’ll be frantic.
I don’t even know what I’m going to say. I suppose I could start with the truth. Not that he’ll want to hear that. My uncle may love me, but one thing he isn’t is a man who you should cross.
I’m not worried for myself, but I do fear for Marco.
My uncle hates the Medicis with a vengeance, and I know that Angelo and Marco, being the ones to rescue me, has played heavily on his grudge. It won’t sit well with him, and while he’s also a man with honor, I don’t know how far his gratitude will stretch. Definitely not all the way to Marco’s bed.
It’s times like this I wish I drank. I could do with a shot of Stoli or two, just to settle my nerves.
He keeps me waiting for half an hour.
