"Understood." A pause, weighted with concern that makes my chest tighten. "Be careful, Victoria. You're playing a dangerous game."
The call ends, and I'm left standing in my gilded prison, feeling more trapped than before I picked up the phone.
Four days.
Four days since the wedding, and I haven't left this house. Four days of being Mrs. Maksim Severyn. A title that sits wrong on my shoulders, like clothing tailored for someone else's body. Four days of performing chaos: rearranging furniture, asking inane questions, insulting Maksim's perfectly tailored suits just to see if I can crack that icy composure.
Four days of pretending to be the spoiled socialite they expect while my real life waits in the shadows, unreachable and urgent.
The strategy made sense when I conceived it. Be so obnoxious, so high-maintenance, so utterly insufferable that living with me becomes more trouble than it's worth. Make them want distance. Make them avoid me. Make them regret ever thinking this marriage served their interests.
But it's not working the way I planned.
Maksim gets that amused glint in his eyes when I provoke him, like he's starting to enjoy the sparring. Zakhar watches me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle with unwelcome awareness. And Alexei treats my insults like foreplay, grinning wider with each cutting remark, asking for more.
They're not breaking. I am.
Because that's not the only reason I'm restless, pacing my room like a caged animal testing the bars.
The truth I don't want to examine: I act differently around them. All three of them.
I'm used to weaponizing my beauty. Used to watching men's eyes glaze over with lust while I pull their strings like a puppeteer, making them dance to whatever tune serves my purposes. It's a skill I honed deliberately, a defense mechanism born from trauma and necessity.
Flirt. Tease. Watch them become stupid with want, then use that stupidity to get what I need.
It's worked for years.
But with Maksim, Zakhar, and Alexei, that weapon misfires.
The self-preservation instinct that usually makes me recoil doesn't trigger. The disgust that coats my skin when men touch me, the visceral rejection that rises sharp and immediate, none of it materializes. Instead, there's this pull. This dangerous,unwelcome attraction that makes my pulse race and my thoughts scatter.
Safe. Protected. Desired.
All the things I can't afford to feel.
I press my forehead against the cool glass, watch the river move beneath gray morning sky. The water never stops. Never hesitates. It just flows, indifferent to obstacles, wearing down resistance through constant motion.
I need to be like that. Relentless. Patient. Wearing them down until they break first.
But patience requires stillness, and I'm vibrating out of my skin with restless energy that has nowhere to go, no outlet, no release.
I need to get out of my head. Need to move, to sweat, to exhaust this feeling before it consumes me entirely.
Katarina and I usually train together. Hard sessions that leave me bruised and gasping, where she pushes me past limits I didn't know I had. She's ex-military, sixty pounds of muscle heavier than me, and she doesn't believe in going easy just because I sign her paychecks.
But I'm stuck here playing house with three men who are dismantling my carefully constructed defenses without even trying.
Fine. I'll train alone.
I pull on workout clothes: black leggings, sports bra, tank top. Tie my hair back in a high ponytail. The rituals of preparation help center me, give me something to control when everything else feels like it's slipping through my fingers.
The gym is on the ground floor. I take the stairs instead of the elevator, letting my muscles warm with each step, focusing on breath and motion instead of the thoughts spinning circles in my head. My footsteps are silent on concrete, and the building around me hums with that particular early-morning stillness. Alive but not yet awake.
I reach the gym door. Pause with my hand on the handle.
The faint sound bleeding through the door, rhythmic, purposeful, unmistakably the sound of bodies in motion, stops me.
I should turn around. Come back later when the space is empty.
