And while I know this is how he sees me. How they all see me. After all, they negotiated a fucking contract where my uterus is the center, it makes my blood boil.
"Fuck you," I snap.
His eyes flash. "That's the point."
"I'm not going to have sex with you. I'm not giving you a child." My voice comes out steadier than I feel.
I’m Saint’s wife, but he’s treating me like a whore with a golden womb.
Not that he cares.
He takes a long swallow of whiskey, studying me over the rim. "I'm pretending to be polite about this but make no mistake—you don't have a fucking choice." He downs his whiskey, pouring another. "If it makes it easier onyou, I don't either. Contracts were negotiated. Things were signed...blah...blah...blah."
"At least you got to negotiate," I remind him. "I was simply told."
He laughs, but the sound is cold, hollow. "I love that you think that I had that much power.”
I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the warm May air filtering through the open balcony doors. This is my life now. This is what Adrian has sold me into. An alliance with the Marinis, sealed with my body.
For the family,Bianca, my mother, would have said.We sacrifice for the family.
Bianca is dead. She put this whole thing into motion and then got herself blown up. And yet, here I am, still sacrificing.
For the good of the family.
Saint sets down his glass and crosses the room toward me. I fight the urge to step back, to run. There's nowhere to go. This is happening whether I want it or not. All I can do is endure and pray I get pregnant quick.
I nearly spill the contents of my stomach, champagne only, all over the expensive wood floors. But I hold it in.
He stops in front of me, close enough that I can smell the whiskey on his breath. His hand comes up to cup my jaw, thumb brushing my cheek with a gentleness that feels like mockery.
"You're very beautiful," he says, almost clinically, turning my head side to side as he studies me. "I'll give your brother that. At least he traded me something pretty to look at."
Something.Not someone.Something.
"Didn't you tell me I was fat?" I snap, remembering the first time we'd had dinner.
Saint chuckles but doesn't correct me.
Dickhead.
I know I'm not fat, that his words were meant to hurt me, and yet I had only eaten salad for a week after that encounter.
I stare at the hollow of his throat, at the edge of a tattoo that disappears beneath his collar and try to find that spark of rage that has carried me through the past few months.
The fury at Adrian for forcing this. The hatred for Saint and his casual cruelty. The desperate need to fight back, to prove I'm not just a pawn to be moved around the board.
But I can't find it. There's just...emptiness. I'm tired. I want to get this over with and go to sleep.
Who cares if Saint thinks I'm fat or skinny? He's going to fuck me either way. Like he said, he doesn’t have a choice.
And maybe I should be glad for the clinical way he’s going about this. I’ve heard the rumors of what he’s like in bed. I swallow back my fear.
He doesn’t get that.
"Are you going to fight me?" he asks, sounding almost curious.
"Would it matter if I did?"
