It isn’t disgust.
It is cold indifference.
“That,” he says quietly, his voice cutting through the room, “is your first and only warning. Do not ever do that again.”
The words settle over me like a verdict.
My hands are shaking uncontrollably now, the aftermath of adrenaline crashing through my system in violent waves. I can feel it in my fingers, in my knees, in the hollow ache blooming behind my ribs. I want to respond—to scream, or argue, or laugh hysterically in his face—but my throat locks around every sound.
He doesn’t wait for an answer.
He moves around the table with unhurried confidence. When he brushes past me, his arm grazes mine. It’s a brief, almost incidental touch as though he hasn’t even registered the contact, but it feels like frost against my skin. The cold sinks in instantly, sharp enough to burn, and I shudder despite myself.
I don’t turn to watch him leave.
I can’t bring myself to.
The sound of his footsteps fades, and then the door closes behind him with a heavy, resonant finality. The echo ripples through the dining room, bouncing off the high ceilings and polished stone, lingering long after he’s gone.
Strangely, the room feels impossibly empty.
I stand there alone, my heart hammering painfully against my ribs, every beat loud in the suffocating quiet.
For the first time since I arrived here, since I told myself I could endure whatever came next, I feel something colder than anger and sharper than fear take hold in my chest.
I am truly afraid.
Not of him hurting me in a fit of rage, but of what comes next now that I’ve proven I am willing to defy him and of how littleit seems to have cost him to remind me exactly who holds the power here.
7
SASHA
The sound of the wine glass shattering against the wall follows me long after I leave the dining room.
It echoes in my head like a gunshot muffled by distance.
Even when the doors close behind me, I can still hear it. The brittle crack of crystal meeting stone, the wet splatter that followed. I picture the shards skittering across the marble, catching the light, the deep red streaks sliding slowly downward to the floor. The smell of it lingers too, metallic and sour, clinging to the air like a memory that refuses to fade.
The color had been too close to blood. Too close to everything I have built my life on. And for reasons I do not wish to examine too closely, it stirs something ugly and restless inside me.
I have never had a woman defy me so openly before.
Not in my own house. Not at my table. Not after giving her protection and safety at the cost of a favor. Even my sister, reckless and sharp-tongued and immune to fear in ways that border on pathological, knows where the line is.
She pushes me, yes. Challenges me, absolutely. But she is not foolish enough to pull something like that in my presence like a child who believes indignation is armor.
Alina does not know the difference yet, and that is part of what makes her dangerous.
She believes this place is a prison, a gilded cage meant to break her spirit and strip her autonomy, reduce her to something more manageable. And while that may be true on some level, that belief frustrates me more than her anger ever could because it is wrong in the most fundamental way.
This estate is not a retreat, no. I do not delude myself into believing that. There are cameras that monitor everything, yes. Guards who won’t hesitate to enforce rules through physical means, sure. Locked doors and places barred from entry, absolutely, and rules that bend only when I allow them to. But this place is not the kind of prison she imagines, either.
It is not a punishment. It is not cruelty for the sake of it.
It is containment.
Alina has been caged before by her father and his paranoia. By his need to control the one thing in his life he believed could still be shaped to make his life and career more palatable for his own gains.
