A snort sounded from the front of the vehicle. Kirill punched the control for the divider harder than necessary. The screen went up, sealing me in with my husband.
I exhaled a deep breath and glanced at him and wondered why I even cared to look at him when he had one expression whenever I saw him. Frosty eyes, a bland and stoic face like it was carved from granite. What else was new?
Fifty weeks to go.
I needed to change tactics.
“Your sister needed company. What’s wrong with that?”
“You’re using my family against me.”
“You don’t like your family. What do you care about their opinion? It doesn’t mean I can’t spend time with them.”
“Bored? What happened to your job?”
“Well, it’s hard to find a client when you’re married to the head of the bratva. They don’t trust that you wouldn’t use me to blackmail them.”
A muscle pulsed in his jaw. “Seems I need to give you something to do.”
“I don’t need you to give me anything to do. And I didn’t say I was bored. I’m resourceful.”
“Regardless of what my family thinks of me, I won’t have you conspiring with them against me.”
“What? Ivan? He’s happily retired. He’s even cooking breakfast.”
“Should I stop by a drive-thru for coffee?” Sato’s voice came over the intercom.
I punched the talk button before Kirill could. “Yes, please, that would probably go a long way in preventing spousal homicide.”
I huffed and angled farther away from Kirill and looked out the window while I spoke, “Look. I don’t know what you expect from me. Being your wife didn’t exactly come with an instruction manual.”
“You’re making it sound like you married a cyborg.”
I wasn’t rising to his bait. I wanted him to forget my existence, but telling him that might backfire. I was doing so well. It only affected Kirill if it made it to public opinion. It was my humiliation, not his.
We were saved from further conversation when Sato pulled into a coffee drive-thru. He even got me a breakfast burrito. Good man.
“Thank you, Sato, I was starving.”
Kirill didn’t eat anything. He was sipping his coffee while scrolling through his phone. We made it to the house without further arguing.
When the vehicle pulled in front of the house, I expected Kirill to follow me, but he got out and walked toward his Porsche.
He picked me up only to drop me on the front steps and abandon me again?
But I held my tongue as our eyes clashed across the driveway.
“Check your calendar,” he said. “It’s time for you to behave like my wife.”
I fished out my phone, and it took all of my control not to drop my jaw. At least two events were booked a week for at least six weeks.
What the hell? I glanced up to see Kirill’s arrogant smirk. I shot him a glare that would have fried him if it were laser beams.
Staying out of his way had ended.
It had beenthree weeks of accompanying Kirill to events, but it was turning out he brought me along not for my company, but to up the ante of my humiliation. We never arrived together or left together, always having Sato as my driver. No. He would meet me at the fundraiser or the gala, spend a maximum of ten minutes beside me and then abandon me to chat with his associates and other women who seemed to get the message that Kirill didn’t find his wife interesting at all.
So now my humiliation wasn’t simply on paper or spoken behind my back, it was among a crowd of people and announced to his peers.
