This room—the new room I’ll share with Timofey—doesn’t feel like a beginning. It feels like a waiting room for something terrible.
The package made sure of that.
Marriage was supposed to buy me time. Protection. Position.
Instead, Anton answered with a severed thumb.
He knows where I am.
He knows who I married.
And he’s still coming.
I sit by the window, my knees drawn slightly inward, my fingers resting loosely against the fabric of the silk pajamas Matteo sent over. It’s one of many. He’s completely changed my wardrobe, down to lingerie. I should be glad. Matteo knows how to style me well, and I feel like a princess in these pajamas, but I can’t think clearly.
My reflection stares back faintly against the glass—pale, distant, hollow in a way I refuse to fully acknowledge.
Outside, the grounds stretch into darkness, heavily guarded, secure, untouchable.
At least, that’s what it’s supposed to be.
My thoughts spiral anyway.
Because I know Anton.
Security doesn’t scare him.
Power doesn’t scare him.
Nothing does.
I close my eyes briefly, but the memory comes anyway.
It’s only been a week.
Just one week since I walked into my father’s office and found him slumped in his chair.
Blood everywhere.
Too much blood.
And Anton standing over him like it meant nothing.
Like my father—one of the most powerful men I had ever known—was nothing more than a problem he had already solved.
The sound of the gunshots still echoes in my head sometimes.
Even when it’s quiet like this.
Especially when it’s quiet like this.
My fingers curl slightly against my lap.
The thumb in the box….
It wasn’t random.
Anton doesn’t do random.
