Strategically, it’s disaster. Admitting I was manipulated exposes weakness. Invites challenges from families who already question my judgment. Opens investigations into how deeply the Petrovs infiltrated my intelligence networks.
Telling her the truth protects no one. Not her. Not me. Not the organization.
So I stay silent, but the guilt doesn’t fade.
Protection becomes more than strategy. It becomes atonement.
I triple her security detail. Assign my best men—ones who would die before letting her be harmed. I review every threat assessment personally, every potential vulnerability, every scenario where she could be targeted.
The medical appointments continue, but now I tell myself they’re about her health, not breeding timelines. About ensuring she’s safe, not monitoring fertility.
The lie helps. Barely.
When she skips meals, I have her favorites prepared and left where she’ll find them. When she looks tired, I adjust the household schedule to give her more privacy, more space. WhenI hear her crying in the bathroom late at night—sounds she thinks I can’t hear—I stand outside the door and hate myself for every tear.
I don’t touch her. Don’t crowd her space. Don’t exercise the rights that marriage technically gives me.
What right do I have? What claim can I make when everything between us is built on manipulation and lies?
She thinks I married her for heirs. For bloodlines and legacy and Sharov succession.
The truth is more complicated.
I married her because letting her go was impossible. Because from the moment she challenged me at that auction, she stopped being a problem to solve and became something I couldn’t classify.
Keeping her alive mattered more than eliminating a threat, and I didn’t examine why too closely.
The heir conversation was real—I won’t lie about that. In my world, children matter. Legacy matters. Succession determines whether empires survive or fragment.
But it was never the primary reason. Was never about reducing her to a function.
It was about claiming what refused to bow. About possessing the woman who walked into my territory with fire in her eyes and refused to break.
About keeping her permanently within reach because the alternative—her existing somewhere beyond my control—was unacceptable.
That’s not better. Might be worse. Possession isn’t love. Obsession isn’t care.
It’s honest in a way the breeding excuse wasn’t.
And now I can’t tell her any of it.
Can’t tell her the truth about her family because it exposes my failure.
Can’t tell her the truth about why I married her because it reveals too much about weaknesses I shouldn’t have.
So I protect her from the shadows. Fix problems before she knows they exist. Eliminate threats before they materialize. Watch her move through the house with haunted eyes and know I put that look there based on lies I never questioned.
Desire, once sharp and straightforward, tangles with regret until I can’t separate them.
I want her. Still. Desperately. Every time she’s near, every glimpse of her moving through my house, every reminder of what we did in my office makes need claw through my chest.
Wanting her feels wrong now. Feels selfish. Like I’m taking more when I’ve already taken everything based on false pretenses.
So I stay away.
***
Two weeks after the revelation, Viktor corners me in my office.
