He’d saved me from a bloody fate and forced me into one of violent servitude.
There was more hate than love between us, but I was ever the pliant and amenable wife for him. Sometimes though,god sometimes, I wondered if death might not have been easier.
He was all about control. I was arm candy, sex, the woman who must give him an heir. And I felt those burdens with every inch of my tortured soul and bruised body.
“I said that I do not feel well, Ivan.” I studied my face in the mirror, still refusing to look back at him. “I have not felt well all week. You know this.”
I was searching for sympathy to escape this awful night, but I should have already known that it was futile.
“What I know,” he moved behind me, and moments later his hands clamped around my shoulders, “is that you have moped and avoided your duties this entire week. You will be the wife I need you to be, tonight of all nights.”
My duties… I had avoided his advances in the bedroom. I’d avoided the business meeting a few nights ago at our house when I should have played my part pouring drinks and running the kitchen staff. I’d avoided being mentally undressed by his corporate partners, discreetly touched by them as I moved around the living and dining room like a good hostess.
I’d complained about it before to Ivan, that the men would touch me, and he’d said it was part of my role, that none of his business associates would dare to actually fuck me. I was to laugh at their jokes, act shy as their fingers grazed my skin, and cower against his side to show that I was already a claimed, timid thing, and that I belonged to him.
They were all pigs.
Animals.
Thinly veiled sexual references whispered at my back, followed by thick male laughter.
These weren’t Bratva men, but Ivan’s men. Men with no pride and no rules. He held so many of these small private meetings and parties at our home… only a few times had he taken me out to larger Bratva gatherings, thankfully. They suffocated me; I feared them.
“Ivan, please. I cannot face it. The crowded room, the politics, the thinly-veiled business talk and wives doing lines in the bathrooms.” I lowered my head, coppery-red curls swishing across the pale cream robe I wore.
“You will come,” Ivan repeated, his tone hard as rock, “and that’s final.”
Now I did look at him, my dark eyes meeting the steel grey of his and I cowered under the severity of it. His gaze did not waver; there was no winning this fight.
For years, I had played the preening, complacent damsel. Only lately had I felt the facade slipping, and Ivan’s patience was wearing thin with the changes.
But, god, my patience was wearing thin as well. Like tissue paper, easily ripped and ruined, I found myself growing increasingly unstable. I was sick to my stomach of merely surviving and not actually living. I once had wishes and dreams, but now all I had was the hope that I could evade his advances for another day or escape his beatings if I failed him in some way. My life had become nothing but a black hole and all I wanted to do was let the blackness bury me.
Before Ivan, before my parents’ transgressions, I was strong. I knew what I wanted out of life, and I was on the road to achieving my dreams. I was in college, majoring in social services. I wanted to help the world, do my tiny part to make up for the type of family I came from. Little did I know that my mother and father were also trying to change things, trying to grasp at a free life away from crime.
Now, they were free.
They’d accomplished their goal.
And left me behind to suffer the fallout.
Ivan’s hands were still vices, fingers digging into my skin.
“I cannot wear your favorite dress if I have bruises,” I whispered desperately. A little reminder, a tiny defiance. “I’ll have to wear something that covers my body.” Which he wouldn’t like, not in the least. He wanted the other men to want me, wanted them to see what he had, and they didn’t.
His fingers left my body and my own hands moved to caress the sore spots subtly.
“Get dressed,” he ordered, his tone dark as he gave me one last stern look before turning to quickly stride from our bedroom.
“I hate you,” I murmured to his retreating form, eyes welling with angry tears.When did I become so weak? How could I rewind time?
Ivan had never hit me with full force—hard fists slamming into my delicate frame, but he was a violent man all the same. His touches were always just a little too harsh. His words always clipped and his tone a thunderstorm. He took what he wanted if I didn’t give it freely and it was always so much more painful that way. He frightened me, not so much because of what he had already done to me, but what I foresaw him doing in the future. Because I knew sooner or later the cord of his patience would snap and then who knew what my fate would be.
I finished my makeup, swiping pale peach blush across my freckles, and crowing the soft but alluring look with a plum lip stain. Ivan’s favorite dress was hunter green, or ‘hunger’ green as he called it. I knew, inevitably, that donning the silk old Hollywood-style gown would lead to sex later. We would leave the party, only one of his hands would be on the steering wheel of the Bugatti, and his other hand would touch me anywhere he could reach.
And whether I liked it or not, his body would enter mine, planting his seed… his seed that I would never let flower. Thanks to the pills I keep well-hidden.
Another defiance.
