And I have no idea what to expect from here on out.
21
VIKTOR
The rest of the drive back to the house is in suffocating silence. Leah sits beside me, rigid, staring out the window, the diamond on her finger glinting under the passing streetlights. Her anger and her resentment are palpable, radiating from her like heat from a furnace.
I had expected joy from her, maybe tears. Most women would be thrilled to be proposed to in such a way, for the world to know of their change in status and circumstance.
But Leah? She’s seething.
I only said yes so you wouldn’t be humiliated.The words she’d spat at me when I had expected words of thanks, excitement.I don’t want to be a princess in a tower. I deserve no less than a relationship in which I am an equal, where I am treasured and respected for who I am and what I bring to the relationship.
All I’d been able to feel in that moment was my fury, my rage that she had the temerity to not only be angry with me for proposing, but the gall to follow it up with such insolence.Wasn’t I giving her what she wanted? Exactly what she had asked for?
She didn’t understand. Not yet. In my world, this is how it’s done. This is how I protect what is mine. And sheismine. She carries my child. She belongs with me. I don’t need another Clarissa in my life, always grasping, never grateful, finding fault with everything, no matter what I gave her. I thought so much better of Leah.
And then had come her declaration:I’m not Clarissa, Viktor. I don’t want jewels and couture and to parade my wealth. I want a partner who respects and loves me. I deserve that and I won’t settle for anythingbutthat.
The words stung, but they also pulled me up short, a flicker of something settling in the back of my mind that continues to grow, becoming so significant, I almost don’t notice when we reach my home.
I nearly order Iliya to take Leah in and my driver to take me to the residence where I’ve been staying for the week, the penthouse closer to the place where I meet my men every year for our conference, the one I’ve been using to stay away from Leah, to punish her for turning her back to me and walking out that night.
It was there I realized that I wanted a ring, that she wanted a permanent place at my side. I’d been so sure that was what she’d meant during our argument. The ring on her finger now is the one that has made her so angry, the ring my artisans worked double overtime to finish by tonight.
The ring I thought would make her so happy.
Instead,I’d only made her furious. I get out when Iliya opens the door for us. Iliya, my most loyalvor, the man whom I trust with my life and my secrets. The man whom I had seen grow coldly furious during my proposal, who remained protective of Leah as our conversation grew heated. The man who may have understood far more than I this entire time.
It’s dark and silent as Iliya follows us so closely to shield us with his body. I
do the same with Leah, though she pulls away as I try to put my arm around her shoulders.
I follow her as we trudge up the stairs, then another flight, and another to reach the bedroom floor. I wait as she peers into Eliza’s room and remains watching her daughter for a long moment. She crosses my path again without a word, save for a muttered and angry “good night.” And she flinches when I reach out and take her wrist in my hand.
“Talk to me,” I murmur, my voice low so I don’t wake Eliza.
I don’t try to hold on when Leah rips her arm from my grasp and turns on me, her eyes wild.
“So you can tell me more about your world and how somehow that makes it okay to treat me like a possession?” she hisses. “So you can tell me again to know my place and that you make all the decisions?”
Her defiance, her anger, has thepakhanin me snapping for a response to remind her no one talks to me like that. Clarissa was mean and spiteful when we were married, but even she never dared. I stifle the urge because I know if I want to drive the final nail into the coffin of our relationship, this is the moment.
As furious as her defiance makes me, there’s a flicker of something else. Her resilience, her ability to stand up to me, her sheer stubbornness inspire admiration. Most women would crumble, would submit. Leah fights. She pushes back. It’s infuriating, yes, but it’s also captivating.
She isn’t like the other women in my life. They were brought up in this world or accustomed to a particular lifestyle and so saw me as only a means to an end, a path to a position. In the past, I hadn’t cared because I’d done the same with them. But I genuinely care about Leah in a way I haven’t cared about anyone before. She’s not easily bought, not easily controlled, and that makes her captivating in a way no one else has been before.
I only wish it hadn’t taken me so long to realize it. What I have with Leah is raw and real, so real and so entirely new to me that I realize I’ve retreated deeply into the monster that is the other half of me, thepakhan,who rules a criminal empire that stretches continents.
For once, I don’t know how to do this.
“Leah, please.”
That is the magic word—literally and figuratively. Leah stops, and though she doesn’t turn around, she doesn’t move, either.
“Leah, will you please talk to me?”
She looks over her shoulder; her features are still set, her eyes narrowed.
