Oh, my God!
“I heardyousay that you were pregnant.”
I rubbed my face, scrambling to understand. I’d only just found out this morning. I got up and retrieved the bag. Then Oleg saw me and acted weird. I came back here and?—
No, wait.The flowers stunk. I took them out to pitch them and when I lifted the lid, I smelled the other bouquet I’d thrown out yesterday.
He’d had a listening device in there.He’d bugged the flowers. He had to have because I remembered talking to myself out there about how surprised I was to be pregnant.
Oh, fuck.
He’d been listening in on me. On me and Andre. On him and Oleg. Everything since that particular bouquet had arrived. With that hidden mic, he must have heard Andre and Oleg talking about that Rossi meeting.
He did set them up to be ambushed!
It’s all his fault.
And he could’ve gotten Andre killed!
“Nothing to say now, eh?” He grunted. “You’re nothing but a slut who turned traitor. Sleeping with the fucking enemy. With an Orlov. You should be ashamed of yourself!”
I shook my head, crying at how twisted this was all getting. How everything was crashing down and spiraling out of control.
“You are a traitor,” he accused.
On that note, I had to agree with him. I was a traitor. I wasn’t loyal to him. But it wasn’t because I dared to go for something good, to live for myself and accept this desire that linked me with Andre. I was a traitor tohim, to the good man who’d treated me so well. Not my uncle who I wished dead.
“And for your sin,” he continued in a deep, threatening growl, “you will repent by poisoning him.”
My jaw dropped. I stared unseeing at the wall across from me and choked on my next inhale.
“You heard me. If you want to get back in my good graces. If you want to have a home to return to. If you don’t want me to make your cousin suffer any further than necessary. Youwillpoison him, you damn slut.”
Shaking my head wasn’t loud enough. He couldn’t hear it at all, but the atrocity of what he proposed was so ridiculous, so out there, and so terrible to process that I lagged to speak again.
“Do you hear me? You will poison him. He deserves nothing more. I expect you to poison him with whatever you can find. Once you pass that test and I hear about him being poisoned, you will have begun to prove your loyalty to me.”
“Fuckyou.” I bit it out with all the hot rage I could muster out of my mouth. “Fuck you. How about that instead?”
“Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?” he roared. “You treat me with respect. You will do as I say!”
“I will tell you to rot in hell,” I seethed. I’d had it. I couldn’t bottle in this anger any longer. I just couldn’t take it.
“I will not prove any loyalty to you because you’ve never earned it. You never deserved it. You’ve never treated me well and I amsickof the idea that you can be living on this earth and breathing the same air as me. Fuck you, and fuck your loyalty. I’ve stopped doing ‘as you say’ for a while now, and it’s been the best decision I’ve ever made!”
My voice was shrill. I wasn’t being careful and quiet. I couldn’t. This anger seeped through me, oozing out with every word I spewed at him.
“I will not do anything to hurt him. I will not even try to harm a single one of them who has treated me better than you ever have.”
Only the sound of his heavy, furious exhales came over the line. Hot, rapid pants. Like he was working up a storm to bellow at me again.
“Do you understand what you are saying?” he growled.
“Yes.” I tipped my chin up. Determined to stand by what I said, to do what I felt was just, I hated how my lower lip trembled. How I wasn’t only defying him with what I said. I was ensuring that he’d kill my cousin or mistreat her, too.
Scalding tears streamed down my cheeks, but I refused to sniffle or let him hear how this was destroying me from the inside out.
“Do you?” he screamed. “Do you understand what you are doing? You are calling forwar, you little bitch.”
