"You can't force me to say vows."
"I can say them for you." His voice was soft, almost gentle. "I'd rather not. I'd rather have you willing, or at least accepting. But make no mistake, Gabrielle—by the end of this week, you will be my wife. How that happens is up to you."
I was shaking. With rage, with fear, with a helplessness so profound it threatened to swallow me whole.
"I'll never forgive you for this."
"I know." Something flickered in his expression—regret, perhaps, or its shadow. "But you'll be alive. And one day, you might understand why that matters more to me than your forgiveness."
He walked past me toward the house, pausing at my shoulder. I felt his breath against my ear, felt the heat of him seeping into my skin.
"Sleep well, little dove. Tomorrow, we'll discuss the details."
Then he was gone, and I was alone on the terrace with the crashing waves and the wheeling stars and the shattered remains of my life.
***
I didn't sleep.
I paced my beautiful prison until my legs ached, then sank onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. Every option I considered led to the same dead end. Escape was impossible. Fighting was futile. I had no allies, no weapons, no leverage of any kind.
By the end of the week, I would be married to a man I feared and hated and—
I couldn't finish the thought. Couldn't acknowledge the traitorous heat that still lingered where he'd touched me, the dark curiosity that whispered underneath my terror.
I buried my face in the pillow and cried until there was nothing left. And when the tears finally stopped, I lay in the darkness and tried to imagine what my life would look like as Mrs. Vasily Chernov.
I couldn't.
But it was coming anyway—a future I hadn't chosen, bearing down on me like a train I couldn't stop.
All I could do was brace for impact.
Chapter 8 - Vasily
The suit was Italian. Hand-tailored, charcoal gray, cut to fit me like a second skin. I'd worn it to business negotiations, to funerals, to meetings where men's fates were decided over vodka and silence. It was armor, of a kind—the uniform of a man who controlled everything in his orbit.
Today, it felt like a costume for a crime.
I stood before the mirror in my dressing room, adjusting cufflinks I'd already adjusted three times. The face that looked back at me was calm, composed, revealing nothing of the war being waged beneath the surface. I'd learned that mask from my father, had worn it through violence and betrayal and loss. It had never failed me.
It was failing me now.
In three hours, I would marry Gabrielle Blanchard. I would bind her to me legally, irrevocably, in a ceremony she hadn't chosen and would never forgive. I would take her voice if she refused to give it, speak vows on her behalf, slide my ring onto her finger while she trembled with rage and fear.
And some part of me—the part that still remembered what it meant to be human—knew exactly what that made me.
A knock at the door scattered my thoughts. Semyon entered without waiting for permission, his expression carefully neutral.
"The officiant has arrived," he said. "Judge Antonov. He's being settled in the library."
Judge Antonov. A man who owed us significant favors, whose gambling debts we'd quietly erased in exchange for his... flexibility on legal matters. He would perform the ceremonywithout question, file the paperwork without scrutiny. By sunset, the marriage would be real in every way that mattered.
"And Gabrielle?"
Semyon's neutrality cracked, just slightly. "Yelena says she's refused to leave her room. Won't dress, won't eat. She's been crying most of the morning."
The words landed like stones in my chest. I turned back to the mirror, unable to meet my brother's eyes.
