1
Gavriil
My sentimental brotheris so certain that he knows how this story ends.
Dominik thinks I’ll let him go free in a month once I teach him a lesson in loyalty. He honestly believes that the woman he says he loves will be waiting for him with open arms when I’m finished with her. That she’ll forgive him for killing her brother.
I’m going to enjoy proving him wrong.
“Is it what you imagined?” I ask Alina in English as two of my men lead her into my master bedroom. The open space, the silence—it’s all deliberate, curated the same way everything else in my life is. It’s meant to unsettle, to strip away illusions before the real work begins.
My brother’s downfall slows to a stop, her glassy eyes landing on my pride and joy.
The cage.
I know Dominik warned her about it and all the things those inside suffer through. Dominik has always been dramatic. I intend to make sure this little prisoner lives up to the legend.
I’ll find Alina’s breaking point soon enough and prove to my brother why allowing her to get close enough to cloud his judgment and loyalty was a bad idea.
Alina doesn’t say a word as she stares at the far-left corner of my bedroom where steel rods run from the floor to the ceiling. Her expression doesn’t change until she glances to the right. That’s when her jaw visibly clenches in anger.
“Do you not like it?” I ask, gesturing to the five-foot canvas dominating one of my walls.
It’s a picture of her tied up in a chair, wearing the lingerie I picked out.
Dominik would be furious if he saw the image, even though he was the photographer. She looks so innocent and vulnerable, exactly the way Dominik never wanted anyone else to see her.
Alina finally glances away from the revealing image of herself, her body stiff, mouth drawn in a straight line.
I expect fury. She gives me nothing because she’s most likely still in shock, and that’s no fun.
I slowly walk over to her. When she tilts her head back to gaze up at me, her green eyes collide with mine, and I consider brushing my fingertips along her cheek to feel how soft her flushed skin is. She would probably try to bite me.
Admittedly, that would turn me on.
I love a fiery spirit.
My gaze abruptly drops to the silver chain at her throat, the ruby teardrop resting against her skin.
Dominik’s half of our father’sPakhanstone.
Look at my brother, the romantic. Did he really think a piece of jewelry, this piece in particular, was going to stop anyone from taking what he thinks is his?
I resist the urge to touch my own ruby hidden underneath my shirt. Instead, I reach out to pinch the gleaming stone hanging around her neck between my fingertips. Alina exhales sharply, but she doesn’t flinch away from me.
“How sweet that he thought you were worthy of wearing the symbol of our family’s legacy.”
I still don’t know what my brother was thinking. Trying to run away, leaving without even saying goodbye for a woman he just fucking met after all I’ve sacrificed for him?
I wrap my fingers around the charm and yank it downward, tearing the necklace free.
Alina lets out a sharp gasp. She lifts her cuffed hands as if she’ll try to stop me from taking what should’ve always been my inheritance. She freezes when I lean closer to her, mere inches separating our faces.
“You are not his,” I remind her through my clenched teeth as I pocket the necklace.
Alina’s expression hardens, and I can only imagine how loud her mind is right now. What does she want? To run to Dominik? To stab me in the face?
What she wants no longer matters, though. She signed that away the moment she agreed to be mine for a month.
