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Caterina
Viktor is unusually quiet, even for him, when he comes home from work.
I’ve spent most of the late afternoon getting ready for the performance tonight. This is the first time I’ve been out of the house for something like this since our wedding, and I’m cognizant not just of wanting to look good for myself, but because I know Viktor will expect it. He’ll want me to be one of the best-dressed women in the concert hall tonight, not for his personal pleasure, but because of how it will reflect on him. Hisbusiness, his standing with the other families.
It’s nothing new to me, and I don’t know why it grates on me so much with him. I was raised as a trophy for a man, an ornament in a pretty dress, to talk sweetly to others, organize the dinner parties and look pretty on the arm, to lie down and spread my legs later and never complain about any of it. I’d always known this was how it would be. I’d thought I was okay with it. I had been when I’d married Franco.
But it’s as if something broke loose inside of me during my first marriage, and it’s still rattling around inside of me, chipping away at those old ideas and ways of doing things. It’s as if that one moment of possible freedom after Franco’s death lodged inside of me, and now all I feel is restless and dissatisfied.
I wonder, if Luca had married me off to Viktor in the first place the way he’d tried to demand before Franco and I were wed, would I feel the way I do now? Or would I have settled into the role of wife to thepakhan, content to be ornamental and only moderately useful?
Or am I rebellious because I’ve been married to a Russian, the leader of the Bratva, and not to a ranking mafia man as I’d always believed?
I know there’s some mocking there when Viktor calls meprintcessa. It’s a reminder that I was, and am, a mafia princess that was given to him, someone all Italian mafia consider beneath them, for his pleasure. To bear his child, live in his house, take his cock.
There’s plenty of women who pity me, I’m sure. Women who will be in that concert hall tonight with their husbands, whispering about the poor Rossi girl who was sacrificed to the Bratva leader. Women who will laugh behind their hands at how far they think I’ve fallen. Who will saypoor Lucafor having to make that choice, andpoor Caterina, for everything that’s befallen me.
I don’t want their pity. So it’s for me, as much as for Viktor’s whims, that I’ve dressed tonight. Because I want them to be envious when they look at me, not pitying.
The dress I’m wearing tonight is new, one that I chose and had delivered when Sofia first told me about the performance. It’s a floor-length, crimson red Dior, with a stiff v-neckline that comes to a point at the base of my cleavage and curves over the top of each breast, into thin straps that cling to my shoulders and dive down into the impossibly low back, which stops at the base of my spine. I’m not sure what Viktor will think of it. It’s sexier than what I usually wear and accentuates how thin I am. However, I’ve gained a little much-needed weight eating Helen’s good cooking these past few weeks. I never want the girls to see me pick at my food, and so I force it all down whether I feel like eating or not.
I’ve paired it with my hair up in a perfect chignon. My makeup is light and understated, with crimson lips to match the dress and six-inch nude Louboutin stilettos. But the final touch is my jewelry, more of it that belonged to my mother, not gifts from any man.
The rubies I wore to my engagement party to Franco, blood-red against my skin, from the heavy necklace to the drop earrings to the huge cocktail ring on my right hand. I expect Viktor to say something when he walks in, whether it’s to be angry over the sexiness of the dress or the expensive jewelry or to look at me with appreciation in his eyes.
But he does neither of those things. He simply pushes past me, headed straight for the bathroom without saying a word, the door closing sharply behind him after he grabs his own tux off of the garment rack.
I stare at the closed door, shocked and a little unsure as to what to do.
We don’t have long before we’re supposed to leave. I wind up pacing for a moment, checking my clutch purse to make sure everything I need is inside of it, and finally going downstairs without Viktor to wait for him. The last thing I want is for him to come out of the bathroom and see me hanging around like a puppy waiting for its master.
I want to feel powerful tonight. I want to feel like myself again, like I did once, before Franco. Happy, carefree, sure of my place in the world. It’s going to be difficult, with Viktor at my side, a constant reminder that I’m none of those things now. But for one night, I want to feel something like happiness. I want toenjoymyself again.
His gaze lights on me for just a moment when he comes down the stairs. Olga walks into the room just then with Anika and Yelena to have them tell their father goodnight before we leave, and Anika ignores me entirely.Like father, like daughter,I think. But then Yelena squeals, pulling away from Olga and running towards me, and I feel my heart melt in my chest.
She skids to a stop a few inches away, looking up at me with those wide blue eyes that seem to take up most of her face. “You look like a princess,” she whispers, her expression awed. “Like—like—” she screws up her face, clearly trying to think of a princess to compare me to. “You lookbeautiful.”
I reach down without thinking, scooping her up into a hug. “You’re the real princess,” I whisper. “The little princess of this house. You and your sister.”
Anika makes an unpleasant noise. “She’s not as beautiful asourmother was.”
I hear Viktor reprimand her, but I’m too busy letting myself enjoy this moment, Yelena clinging to my neck, her warm little body in my arms. At that moment, I feel a rush of love that makes me want to be a mother to these girls and to have a child of my own.
Before long, I might have exactly that. The next appointment at the clinic isn’t that far off.
“We need to go,” Viktor says, cutting through my thoughts as Olga gently pries Yelena away from me. “Goodnight, girls. Be good for Olga. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He opens the door then, and we walk out into the warmth of the evening together, the car waiting in the driveway for us.
“Yelena seems to have taken a liking to you,” he says, sliding in first as the driver holds open the car door, and I follow. “It’s good that one of them has, at least.”
“Anika will come around,” I say quietly. “It’s harder for her.”
“Because of her age, yes.” Viktor frowns. “She needs to learn to accept it, though. This is how things are, now.”
Something about the way he says it makes me think he’s not only talking about his daughter, and I glance sideways at him. “And how is it that thingsareexactly?”
“You’re my wife,” he says simply. “We are married and will remain so. You’re the only mother these girls will have now, besides how Olga cares for them. And soon, God willing, they’ll have a brother. Another child to liven up the household.”
