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The thud of my pulse in my chest batters me with anxiety at the thought of Indigo being in his crosshairs. I can cope with the venom he’ll spew my way, but if he goes anywhere near that girl, I’ll do what I should have done to him a long time ago.
As I stare at the screen, another comes through.
Your mother and I need to see you immediately.
The way you have disrespected Gabriella is unacceptable.
“Fuck you,” I mutter under my breath as the pallid thought of her is blasted away by an insubordinate blaze of magenta.
My body turns rigid as the ever-present threat of Gabriella floats over the face of the girl lying naked in my living room.
I've never disrespected her. I've told that woman from day one that I feel almost nothing for her, certainly not enough to sustain a marriage, and have asked her for assistance in convincing our parents that this union is unwanted by either of us on multiple occasions.
Only shedoesseem to want it.
I don’t fully know why.
Through sanitizing and dissimulating the fuck-ups of powerful people, my family is now wealthier than fifty percent of our clients. Whitewashing pays, apparently, though if you have a conscience the price you pay for said wealth is revulsion to the point that looking yourself in the mirror is a challenge some days.
I have attempted to get out of the business more than once, but as the eldest with two younger siblings, I have responsibilities to my family, as they’ve hammered into me my whole life. The hell they rained down on me when I tried to leave arrested my momentum.
While my family is amongst the richest in the DC area, our wealth pales in comparison to that of Gabriella’s family, and yet both her and her father, Vitaly, are dead-set on this marriage going ahead.
Maybe her father thinks what my father lacks in wealth, he makes up for in power, for if you know the darkest secrets, you yield the darkest power. You also face the most danger, a fact which forces you to push the boundaries of your conduct and principles further and further to protect yourself until the stakes become so high that the operation feels deadly.
A union with Gabriella’s family would concretize my family’s status as one of the most powerful and well-connected in the city.
The only obstacle to my father finally having the power he has craved his whole life is me. And to solve that problem, I have to sacrifice myself “forthe good of the family”. I’m not entirely sure what that word even means anymore.
This wedding is going forwards within the next six months.
We’re inviting Vitaly over to start the plans.
I want you here tonight. No more of your bullshit self-serving me me me excuses.
This is about family.
Honor your fucking responsibilities for once.
That’s all I've ever done, father.
Every day of my life, no matter the cost to me.
7pm tonight.
Your mother has arranged for some food to be served.
Don’t upset her.
My stomach twists as I contemplate my response, torn between attending, like I usually would, and telling him to go fuck himself, something I've wanted to do my whole life but not dared to since I was a child.
Since he learned that if he beats me, after a while, I will stop speaking.
Though those days are long behind me now.
He wouldn’t fucking well dare.
I can tell any human on the planet to go fuck themselves while eyeballing them in a way which will have them remembering my face for a long time to come, but for a reason I don’t understand, I can’t say it to the man who has damaged me the most and who most deserves to hear it.
