His gaze sharpens. “I’m not offering you the same. I am offering you security. A wife who is young, adaptable, and clearly devoted to her family. Respect, if you cultivate it. Maybe more, if you earn it.” Danyl and Liza didn’t know each other when they got married. They married the first time they met, also for legal reasons. But they were to protect Liza. Not to use her as a bargaining tool.
Respect.The word echoes in my mind.
I want respect from my wife, but I will also respect her. I will not rule my house with fists and fear, no matter how the papers are signed.
Not the way my father ruled his house.
“If she marries me,” I say slowly, “she will do so under pressure. She will not…like me.”
“She doesn’t have to like you,” he says. “She has to stand next to you in front of a judge and sign her name. She has to stay married long enough for your paperwork to go through.”
“If she is my wife,” I say in a low voice, “then she is under my protection. She eats my food, sleeps under my roof. In return, Iexpect respect. I will not be mocked in my house. But I will not…break her. I will not drag her to my bed like a dog drags meat.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “I didn’t think you would.”
“Some would,” I mutter.
“Then it is good she is not marrying ‘some,’” he says. “She is marrying you.”
There is a strange warmth in the statement, like a compliment I don’t want.
Liza returns, balancing a tray with a teapot and a plate of small golden squares, icing glistening on top. She sets it down on the corner of the desk, fussing with the placement.
“Here,” she says. “Eat before you turn into a skeleton.”
“You see?” Danyl says to me, taking a piece. “You find the right woman, you never go hungry.”
Liza laughs. “Don’t listen to him. He feeds himself just fine. And it’s rare that I’m ever in the kitchen. I never have the time.” She’s not exaggerating. Liza is a veterinarian technician, studying to become a full veterinarian, and she runs a busy dog rescue organization. “I’m going back to bed. Don’t stay up too late.” She leans over and presses a quick kiss to his mouth and rests her hand on his shoulder for a beat longer than necessary.
Something pulls tight in my chest again.Not envy, I tell myself. Not exactly.
She glances at me and shoots me another warm smile. “Goodnight, Alexei.”
“Goodnight,” I echo, returning her smile.
When the door closes behind her, the room feels colder.
“That,” Danyl says, licking a smudge of glaze from his thumb, “is what respect can turn into with the right woman.” He looks at me, a challenge in his eyes.
Liza might be the right woman, but it took her and Danyl a while to find their way to the relationship they have now. Correction, it took Danyl a while to get out of his own way. I decide not to call him how he’s rewritten their story in his mind. Instead, I look at the folder again.
An image of Rosie’s face rises in my mind. The stubborn tilt of her chin when she told me she’d “manage.”
She was so tired tonight and worried. That father of hers is squeezing her, and he doesn’t even realize that the men he should fear most are the ones giving him “one last chance.”
If she marries someone, let it be me. Not because I’m kind.
I am not.
But because I at least have a line I will not cross. When her father can no longer borrow money from the Bratva, who will he sell Rosie to?
I imagine her wearing my ring. Living in my house. Sleeping in my bed.
Mine.
The possessiveness is sharp, startling in its intensity. I don’t like it, but I can’t pretend it isn’t there.
“She will hate me,” I say.
