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I look up. Mikhail is watching me with a pout. He looks like a child staring down at the ruined tangle of their Slinkie. He’s destroyed my hope and I’ve destroyed his sadistic fun. The two offenses don’t seem anywhere close to equal, as far as I’m concerned.
“Ah, well. Onward and upward.”
He walks around my chair and fiddles with the chains on my wrist. When he sees my cuts, he winces and pokes at the raw, oozing skin. It takes everything in me not to cry out in pain again.
“That’s gross. You should really clean that up before it gets infected. I have a lot of big plans for you.” Suddenly, his breath is hot against my ear. “Many of which involve your hands.”
The thought of whatever else Mikhail has planned is enough to make me hurl. “If you don’t get me something to eat soon, there won’t be anything left of me, big plans or not.”
The chain around my wrist clatters to the ground. As soon as I’m free, I clutch my hands to my chest. I don’t need to look at the damage to know it’s there. The cool air hisses against the exposed flesh like rubbing alcohol. If I look down, I might pass out. And I don’t dare to be that vulnerable with Mikhail.
“Patience,” he croons, walking around my chair to face me again. “I’m taking you home.”
Home?For one solitary second, I think he means my home. Ivan’s home. Then that fairytale fractures into a thousand, razor-sharp pieces.
“Do you mean… Do you have a house? I thought the Sokolov estate was where all of you lived together.”
Maybe that would be for the best. Mikhail’s rotten apple did not fall far from his daddy’s fucked-up tree, but if we are surrounded by Mikhail’s younger sisters and the household staff, maybe that’ll at least keep him from going completelyand totally apeshit. If nothing else, it’ll be nicer accommodations than this foul, cobwebby dungeon.
Without warning, Mikhail grabs me by the elbow and hauls me onto shaky legs. He doesn’t grab me by my wrists, which is the only mercy he has shown me in… well,ever.
“As fun as it would be to take you home with me, I’m a man of tradition.”
I frown up at him, waiting for understanding to click into place.
“I’m not taking you to my home,” he explains. “I’m taking you toyours. I need your father’s permission, after all.”
There it is. Understanding. It clicks into place like the cocking of a gun.
“Alexander?” I rasp. “My… my parents? You’re taking me to my parents.”
Francia admitted she sold me out to my stepfather. I was just so distracted with everything else that I forgot.
Mikhail slides closer to me. Instinctively, I jerk back from him. But he holds me still with a strength that his thin arms shouldn’t be capable of.
“Your mother and stepfather will besohappy to hear our big news,” he drawls through clenched teeth. “They always loved me.”
“They loved yourmoney.”
He shrugs. “Close enough.”
“Don’t you care about… about anything? They only want to work with you because you’re rich. They don’t even know you. Wouldn’t you rather marry someone who actually loves you?”
I feel like a cornered gazelle pleading with a lion for my life. Even as I know it won’t do any good. The same way I was raised to be prey—to stay quiet and obey—Mikhail was raised to be a predator. He is doing what he was taught.
“I’d rather marry someone who can give me what I want.”
“Which is what, exactly?” I ask that as if I have anything at all I could give him.
He smiles and strokes a callused finger down my jaw. I turn away, but he forces my face back to his. “I want everything Ivan Pushkin has.”
Any ember of hope that might have survived snuffs out.
I turn towards the door behind me. The place where Francia dragged Jorden. If she was still back there, we could have tried to fight Mikhail together. We could’ve tried to escape and—
It doesn’t matter. It’s impossible. Then and now.
Jorden is gone and I don’t need to try anything to know that Mikhail isn’t going to let me escape this time. More than that, my stepfather won’t, either. I’ve fooled them all before. They won’t sit back and let it happen again.
