For me to see.
We were always just friends—never meant to be more, no matter how badly I wanted it.
And now I’m married to my estranged best friend. Now she’s married to the son of the man who wants her father dead. Now we are sold to one another, our lives chained together, our futures inescapably tangled.
Now, for better or for worse, she is mine—and I am hers.
2
Zane
The anger radiating off of him is palpable. He was never this angry as a kid. Me and Maya could harass and tease and abuse him all day long, and he’d never do anything but laugh. When was the last time I saw Nik laugh? I can’t even remember.
But he’s not just angry. He’s a different man entirely. A stranger to me.
And he’s prettier too. As a boy his face was round, his eyes a little shy. The man beside me now, the man who stood blank-faced as a soldier as my father’s life and my life were threatened at gun and knifepoint, is as cold and beautiful as marble.
He’s towering and muscular, arms and chest corded and hard beneath a black long-sleeved tee. His black curls are loose and a little long, hanging in front of emerald-shard eyes. Every line of his face is sharp enough to cut: his jaw, his cheekbones, his nose, his brow. If I saw him on the street, he’d make my breath catch.
As things are now, my heartbeat won’t slow. It’s been pounding nonstop since I stepped out of the shower. The hot water seemed to cut away the foggy terror of the last few days—my unceremonious kidnapping from the gallery in Philly, my abuse at the hands of Anton and Artur Sokolov’s men, my desperate standoff to protect my father.
I can still see him in my mind’s eye, clear as if he were before me, beaten so as to be unrecognizable, his form emaciated, the light gone from his eyes.
Don’t engage, he’d say. And I tried. I tried to take the fists, the slaps, the verbal and emotional abuse. I tried to ignore Nik, who stood like a shadow in the corner as his father and his father’s men beat and threatened me into submission.Don’t engage.
But in the end, I had no choice. In the end, a knife against my throat and blood gliding in hot rivulets into my collar, I realized Anton meant what he said. He’d kill us both if I didn’t buy my father’s freedom.
After all my father has done for me, how could I not?
After all, the price could have been higher. He could have married me to his widowed brother, Maya’s father Artur. He could have sold me to one of my father’s enemies. In a way, I think Anton may have acted out of some perverse mercy—by marrying me to his son.
Like princes and princesses of the medieval age. Nothing ensures loyalty better than sharing blood or beds.
And that, not the threat of murder, is what haunts me now.Thatis why my heart won’t stop beating. Because when this night is over, when dark has fallen in full and the hours have slid by like moonlight on water—that’s where this terrifying journey will end.
The bed.
We’ll be expected to consummate tonight, won’t we? Isn’t that the point of all of this? To get a baby in my belly that Anton Sokolov can call his grandchild? To lock my father into servitude until his dying day?
And with this anger rippling off of Nik like heatwaves, I can’t expect love, or kindness, or affection. What does that leave? Obligation? Bitterness?
“You’re shaking.”
I look up, finding those piercing, shadowed green eyes on me. My breath hitches. He’s a stranger now, this boy who used to be my best friend. This boy who used to swear his heart and life for me. This boy I always thought I’d marry—but God, not like this.
Never like this.
But I know better than to let my fear show. If I remember one thing from this cruel world—it’s that. So I force myself to smile. “I’m OK.”
He watches me for an eternal moment, his beautiful marble face utterly inscrutable. Then he traces two fingers along my throat. I grimace, the edges of the days-old cut still sensitive. But the touch is astonishingly tender.
“We should get some sleep.”
With that, he heads in, leaving me to follow.
I look up to the first glittering stars, but I can’t think what to wish for.
* * *
