But this is different.
Knowing you are monitored in public spaces is one thing. Having it confirmed so plainly, so intimately, that you are being watched in the one place meant to be private is another entirely. My bedroom was the only space I believed, perhaps stupidly and naively, might be mine. The one place where I could unravel without an audience. Where I could sit on the edge of the bedand fight the tears from falling while looking at my mother’s photograph before letting myself fall apart without consequence.
Or so I thought.
I lift my head slowly and finally meet his gaze.
“You watch me in my room? You spy on me like some kind of sick voyeur?” I ask, my voice low, trembling despite every effort to steady it.
The accusation hangs between us, sharp and ugly.
He doesn’t bristle or snap or rush to defend himself the way I half expect him to. If anything, his expression grows colder, more distant, as if he is withdrawing behind some internal barrier I can’t breach. His eyes remain fixed on mine, dark and unyielding.
“It’s for your safety,” he says calmly.
The words are infuriating in their composure, in the way he delivers them as though they are self-evident and beyond argument. I laugh, a short, bitter sound that surprises even me.
“Mysafety?” I repeat. “How, exactly? By watching me change? By monitoring how often I sleep? By making sure I don’t step out of line even when I’m alone?” My voice rises despite myself, anger bleeding through the cracks. “What kind of sick game is that? You’re not doing this to protect me. You’re doing it because you want power over me. Men like you always do.”
The accusation is reckless. I know that even as I say it. But the dam has already broken.
For a fleeting moment, I think he might deny it. That he’ll dress it up in careful language, cloak it in strategy and all the otherpolished lies men like him are so adept at telling. That he’ll claim it’s protocol, or procedure, or something necessary for my own good because of his bargain with my father.
But he doesn’t.
Instead, he tilts his head slightly, a faint, infuriating smirk touching the corner of his mouth. The expression is subtle, almost lazy, and it sends a chill down my spine.
“If I wanted control, Alina, I would strip you of everything entirely,” he says evenly.
My stomach twists.
He continues, his tone measured, almost bored. “I’ve been gracious in only taking your technology so far. However, you are starting to make me regret that decision.” His gaze sharpens, cutting into me with surgical precision. “If I were you, I would stop complaining while you still have some of your more valuable items. Especially that picture of your mother.”
Something inside me snaps.
Anger that is jagged and violent, the culmination of every fear, every humiliation, every swallowed scream since the night of the bombing explodes inside me. The heat that has been coiling inside me since I was brought here has finally erupted into a white-hot and uncontrollable burn, withering away whatever restraint I had left.
I stand abruptly.
The chair screeches against the marble floor, the sound loud and jarring, echoing through the room like a warning shot. My heart is hammering now, my pulse roaring in my ears. I don’t think. I don’t plan. I just act.
My hand closes around my wine glass by my plate before I’ve fully decided what I’m doing.
It leaves my fingers and arcs through the air in a perfect, terrible curve when I throw it. Time seems to slow, the moment stretching impossibly thin as I watch it fly. Then it shatters against the wall just behind his head with a violent crack.
Crystal explodes outward, fragments scattering across the floor. Red wine splatters across the pale plaster in dark, dripping streaks that look horrifyingly like blood.
For a heartbeat, no one moves.
The chandelier’s light catches on falling shards, turning them into brief, glittering sparks before they hit the floor. The smell of wine fills the air, sharp and metallic. My breathing is loud in my ears, ragged and uneven, my chest heaving as the weight of what I’ve just done crashes down on me all at once.
Shit…
Then Sasha rises.
He doesn’t even glance at the ruined wall behind him. His gaze stays locked on mine, and what I find there makes my stomach drop.
It isn’t rage.
