“You’re right. I’m sorry to have bothered you. Good night, Aurora.”
With that, I turned and left the room. Halfway down the staircase, my cell phone rang and I snatched it out of my pocket. Shaking my head in irritation now, I waited until I cleared the last step, then motioned at Conor and Liam to follow me into my rec room.
Several minutes had passed since Zarren left, and I was now torn between wanting to scratch his eyes out and wanting to rip my heart from my chest. It was his anyway. It would do me no good where I was going.
Oh God! I barely survived you, Zarren. I’ll never survive this Mikhail.
I had no idea who he was... What he looked like... What kind of man he was...
All I knew was that I wanted to rip his dick off and feed it to him for something as simple as agreeing to have me. Zarren said arranged marriages were common in and between mafia families, but it still sounded so archaic. And wrong. I believed in choices and being independent, which was why I’d never bothered to ask Drake to move in with me. I had wanted to get engaged, but it’d only been because I believed it was what I needed to do next.
I had the career. The only things missing were marriage and children. I had dodged a bullet with Drake, and I supposed his betrayal made it easier for me to move on physically with Zarren.He’d made the pain seem so insignificant. Granted, he’d done it by being his impossibly chaotic self, but he was successful nonetheless.
Now I’d allowed myself to fall, and for him. Chalk it up to my vulnerability or just idiocy, but I physically ached for him. When his lips had been so close to mine earlier, I’d wanted to do nothing more than fuse my mouth to his until he took control and gave us both what we wanted.
If it was only sex, I could see a day in the future where being away from him might not hurt so much. But it was more than that. I’d allowed him to become so integral to my being like the air I breathed. And soon, I’d be a continent away from him, suffocating without him near.
No, I will not marry Mikhail Bocharov. I’ll die before I allow that to happen.
My refusal should’ve been enough, but it wasn’t for Zarren or his uncles. As much as I’d liked Ekaterina and Reagan, the other men were the ones responsible for this mess I now found myself in, so naturally I hated them.
I returned my focus to my reflection and could see the slight tinge of pink that colored my cheeks. I could also feel his hand on the side of my face. Something had seemed different with him tonight, and I had no idea what the hell it was.
Maybe he sensed the expiration date on this was ending, too. He claimed that a damn song mattered to him, but not my opinions about my own life. Sure, he wanted to know my thoughts on a few lyrics, but not about his asinine plan to hand me off like a fucking possession.
“Fuck this!” I said as I left the bathroom.
I needed to make him see reason before I lost my opportunity. He wasn’t angry tonight, so maybe I could appeal to some small part of him. With that goal in mind, I exited mybedroom and made my way downstairs. Once on the lower level, I craned my neck in the direction of his voice.
And he wasn’t alone. I heard Conor, Liam, and two other voices that were muffled as if they were on speaker instead of being there in person. Creeping closer, I stopped and threw a hand over my mouth at what I heard.
“We’ll be there in a few hours’ time. The girl leaves tonight,” one I assumed was Kingston said to Zarren.
“The flight plans have been turned in already. It’ll be King, the girl, and me.”
“She has a goddamn name,” Zarren said through the phone.
“Aurora,” the man I assumed was Cillian said in correction. “Regardless of what you want to call her, Artem Bocharov will meet us in Moscow, where he’ll take possession of her for his son.”
A sob escaped my mouth, causing three men to turn in my direction. “Whatever,” Zarren said to them before ending the call and tossing his cell phone onto the nearby pool table. “You two need to leave,” he said to his men. “Return in two hours’ time.”
“Yes, Boss,” they both said in unison before they straightened to full height and walked by me without a single glance.
I turned and watched them leave through the door, then whirled around as soon as they did. Zarren was staring sullenly at me, and again, his entire demeanor was different. Earlier, he’d been something, but not resigned to my fate as he now seemed to be.
“I guess you heard that,” he said after a few long seconds.
“And that is it? They tell you to make me jump, and you don’t even ask them how high? You’ve just given up, and?—”
“There was nothing to give up,” he said to me, and my eyes narrowed.
“Everything that has happened between us was nothing to you? I’m nothing to you?” I questioned him.
I could feel the tears burn as my lashes desperately tried to hold them back. His face actually looked pained for a second or two before he wiped it clean like a blank slate. Now, those piercing gray eyes that had always reminded me of a storm cloud were completely hollow. His usually sharp features had changed, but I wouldn’t quite call them relaxed. It finally dawned on me what it was.
Surrender! You’re going to throw me to the wolf, then act like you’re the victim.
Anger quickly joined my despair, not replacing it, but combining with it until I physically shook. Tremble after tremble wracked me as he just stood there. He couldn’t even hold my gaze because he eventually dropped it to his feet.
