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I hear his footsteps pounding down the stairs, his voice getting louder by the second. I glance through blurry eyes to see him yanking boys back and tossing them toward the stairs with harsh reprimands. They retreat;cuntandbitchspew out of their mouths from the top of the stairs.
There’s one last, “Lucky bitch. Better watch your back.”
And then there’s the blessed sound of silence.
Sprawled on the floor, I shake as fear and unspent adrenaline ricochets through my body.
My teeth chatter as I spit out blood and swear aloud, “I fucking hate you, Marku Popescu. You better pretend you don’t know me because from this day forward, you don’t. Don’t talk to me. Don’t look at me. Don’t breathe in my direction because you’re dead to me. Dead.”
I sniffle and spit on the floor one more time to make my oath official.
If he hadn’t wanted to work with me throughout the summer, if he hadn’t wanted me to try out, if he didn’t think I was good enough, then he should’ve told me instead of luring me here to humiliate me in front of everyone. It’s like he’d planned it on purpose. Like he wanted to kill the love between us. Like he knew just how to do it.
We’d had spats before and gotten over them, but never anything like this. He’d never abandoned me to a pack of wolves before. And between Coach stopping by my house to talk to my mother and Marku talking to Aunt Natalia—another nail in the coffin, as far as I was concerned—I was grounded for months.
Every soccer item was tossed out of the house and left on the curb. I watched morosely from my bedroom window as random strangers picked through the high-end soccer equipment and jerseys one by one. Tucking them under their arms, they jauntily walked away with my stuff. At four in the morning, I was woken up by the sound of garbage trucks. I dragged myself out of bed and watched as sanitation workers flung the last remnants of my love for soccer into the back of their truck.
And that was the end of it. My dream was crushed under my feet, skittering away like so many errant dust bunnies.
I never kicked another soccer ball again. Between what Marku started and my mother finished, it broke me. I’ve resented them for it ever since. It was during those lonely afternoons and weekends that I turned to writing my thoughts down on paper. First out of boredom. Then for sustenance.
Those words eventually turned into poetry.
I may have found my way out of that dark time, but I’ve never forgotten what Marku did to me. How could I forget, much less forgive, such a betrayal? Not only had he humiliated me in public, but he’d turned his back and abandoned me to those filthy boys. And then he’d colluded with my mother by telling Aunt Natalia what had happened. That was one line too many crossed. One too many betrayals to forgive.
I did what any self-respecting girl did. I held a grudge. Then, I built a wall so high that the bastard could never get close enough to hurt me again.
And that’s the stalemate we’ve been in ever since.
CHAPTER5
CRINA
Present Day
I storm away from Marku,my clit still tingling from the workout it got with his tongue.
Not counting the forced marriage situation, I know what he’s thinking, and no, I haven’t forgiven him for the past.
Besides our occasional tryst, I’ve successfully kept him at bay. It had been easy for the first three years. I’d see him at the occasional family holiday and avoided him like the plague. Things have gotten a tad more difficult since our clans stopped fighting each other. Since then, I’ve seen him at nearly every social event. It was that repeated exposure that led me to slip. That’s what you get for being an overly protected virgin in a highly restrictive society.
That one slip turned into another, and then another. Basically, whenever my mother drove me to the edge of sanity. Add in a horny virgin, stir in a hottie like Marku, who lives a few doors down, and I end up in a clusterfuck like the one I’ve just put myself in on the rooftop.
Not that I’ve tripped up that many times. I grimace. Half a dozen times, at most. Considering it’s been almost four years, that’s not too shabby.
Of course, that was before I was forced into marriage. I still have three months to go before graduation. Three months to figure out how to get the hell out of this. Three months to gather up enough money to run away. Fortunately, I’m a poet, not a soccer player. I don’t have a team to contend with. I fly solo and that’s how I like it. And I have Star and Gabby now. They’re nothing like Marku. They support me flying. They don’t knock me down like he did four years ago or try to tie me down like he has with this sham of a marriage.
I glance over my shoulder as I speed walk across the rooftop. He’s still lounging on the blanket, his olive skin mouthwatering in the morning sunshine. He licks his lips, garishly shiny with my slick, and I snap my head away with a shudder. That wasn’t a shiver of arousal. That was disgust.
I stiffen my spine and lift my chin. Yup, definitely disgust.
I unhook the bungee cord I’d wrapped around the outdoor knob of the door to keep me from getting shut out. I drop it on the pile of containers of wheat paste I have near the door and hustle back into my bedroom to get ready for school.
I usually meet up with Gabby and Star at the street corner and we walk to the subway together to Empire Academy in Manhattan. Since I’m running late after wasting so much time getting an early morning orgasm, I text them to go ahead without me. I’ll have to get to school on my own, but considering my foul mood, it’s for the best.
I reach the street entrance to the subway and step onto the covered stairway going up toward the platform of the elevated subway when a sleek, black car swerves onto the sidewalk, stopping with a screech just a few feet from me. I stumble back in fright.
Doors fly open. My pulse races as two burly men clad in black jump out. I scream as they grab me. It might be too late to run, but that doesn’t mean I’m going down without a fight. Screeching at the top of my lungs, I lunge forward and go for the eyes on one thug. He turns his head at the last moment and my long nails scratch down his cheek. He curses in Russian.
