"Why?" She shoved at my chest, and this time I let her push me back a step. "Why do you care? You've done worse to me. You've terrorized me for days. You've used me, fucked me, degraded me, and strapped a bomb around my throat. But he hit me once, and you want to kill him? Make it make sense, Darius!"
She was shouting now, her voice climbing higher with each word.
"You don't get to be angry on my behalf. You don't get to play the protective—what, boyfriend? Owner? Captor? You don't get to pretend you care about me when you're the one who's been torturing me this whole time!"
"I do care." The words came out harsh, guttural. Wrong. "I shouldn't, but I?—"
I stopped. Bit down on the rest of that sentence before it could escape.
What the fuck was happening to me?
This was another reminder of how I was losing my iron grip on controlling the world around me.
I could not, I would not allow my world to descend into chaos and anarchy.
And yet here I was, kneeling in front of this woman, my hands still gentle on her battered face, feeling things I had no business feeling.
Madness would not dominate my life; only I would. And if that meant dominating this woman, stripping her of the madness that was making her unable to listen to reason, then so be it.
I stood abruptly, needing distance. Needing to think. But the apartment?—
The order I had put this place in only yesterday was already fracturing. There were dishes in the sink. The throw pillows I had arranged were now on the floor, the quilt that I had folded was spread out over the couch, and the practically spotless coffee table now had a dozen uncapped pens and a few journals lying about with scribbles all over their pages.
My eye twitched as I looked at the apartment, at the things that I had put away and how easily, in less than a day, she demolished the order I had instilled. The chaos felt personal. Felt like an attack on everything I was trying to maintain.
"You want to know why I care?" I turned back to her, and she was standing now, backing away from me. "Because you're mine. That bomb around your neck? That's not just a threat,maya soloveyka. That's a brand. A claim. And no one—no one—touches what belongs to me."
"I don't belong to you."
"Don't you?" I took a step toward her.
She took one back.
"Your body responds to me. Your cunt gets wet when I command you. You come apart on my fingers, on my cock, screaming my name. You can hate me all you want, but your body knows exactly who owns it."
"That's not—" Her breath hitched. "That's just biology. That's not?—"
"Submission?" I took another step. "Because that's what I felt when you bent over for me. When you took your punishment. When you let me fuck you until you forgot your own name."
She flinched like I'd struck her.
"And now you're hurt, and you're scared, and you're lashing out because you don't know what else to do. So let me make this simple for you."
Another step. She backed into the wall. "I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to make that piece of shit who touched you regret the day he was born. And then I'm going to remind you exactly who you belong to."
"No." She shook her head, but the word came out weak. Uncertain.
"Yes." I was close now, close enough to see the pulse hammering in her throat, just above the necklace. "Because despite what you think, despite what I think, I can't fucking let you go. Not now. Maybe not ever. And that—" I slammed my fist into the wall beside her head, making her jump. "That pisses me off more than anything else."
I shouldn't care. Shouldn't want to protect her. Shouldn't feel this rage burning in my chest every time I looked at her injuries.
But I did.
And that meant I'd lost control.
The one thing I couldn't afford to lose.
Control was everything to me. It was my identity. It ensured the survival of my family, and it was the very foundation of our family's dominance. My nephews had forgotten that. I was here to remind them.
