Page 4 of Exacting Vengeance

“How did my life come to this?” she asked the pathetic creature looking back at her. This woman wasn’t her anymore. This woman was unsure of herself and completely unable to stand on her own two feet. Even her personality was different now. The real Viktoria was gone, buried somewhere, and she didn’t know where to find her or how to get her back.

She used to be bubbly, vibrant, full of humor and had a life brimming with good friends. Now, being herself and telling a joke would only get her an angry glare from Yuri. As the months had flown by, her friends had simply stopped calling.

“Things weren’t supposed to turn out this way,” she sniffled. What had happened to the independent college girl with big plans for a career? What about love, a happy marriage, and children?

She’d gotten the marriage, all right, but the love and happiness hadn’t lasted, and having children now seemed like a faraway dream. As was becoming a psychologist. She watched as fresh tears streamed unchecked, washing away the makeup she’d just painstakingly applied.

Dear Lord! Maybe everything wrong in my marriage really is my fault. Including the inability to have children.

Was this all life had to offer? In the depths of her heart, she feared it was so and also feared never having the guts to forge a new path to happiness.

Her mother didn’t know what she was going through, and Viktoria refused to burden her. She already had her undergrad Bachelor of Science in Psychology. She could fix this. She could repair whatever was wrong with her marriage.

A noise came from the doorway. She gasped at Yuri’s reflection in the mirror. “Forgive me,” he said, rather than asked, as he shoved an enormous bouquet of pink and red roses into her arms. Flowers had become an all-too-common gift. Sometimes, the living room reminded her of a funeral parlor. “I promise it will never happen again.” He kissed her neck and stroked her shoulders.

She feared his promise was empty, but his apologies always seemed so sincere, and she desperately needed for things to be peaceful again. Peace with Yuri had become the most important thing in her life these days. That, and not getting hit.

She blinked back more tears and forced a smile to her lips. When Yuri presented her with his cheek, she kissed him the way he expected her to.

“I’ve made an appointment for you at ten o’clock.” He handed her a business card for Doctor Lawrence A. Forster, OB-GYN. “He’ll find out why you’re not getting pregnant and take care of it.”

“Thank you.” The problem had to be hers. All the problems in her marriage were her fault, just as Yuri had said. But maybe the right doctor could help nature along a little bit. Surely a baby would bring her husband back to her.

As she watched Yuri leave the house, she sighed heavily. What if she couldn’t get pregnant? What if the problem wasn’t fixable?

Family was important to Yuri. He’d grown up without one, essentially abandoned by his own parents. The streets became his home, foraging behind restaurants in dumpsters for food. His story was so sad, she’d felt sorry for him. When she’d discovered both their parents had grown up in the gated Pokrovsky Hills section of Moscow, she’d felt a kinship with him. None of that seemed important to him now. If she couldn’t give him the son he so desperately wanted, needed, would he have a use for her anymore? What would happen to her?

The business card he’d given her was now crumpled in her fist. There had to be something the doctor could do. All she needed was a little faith.

A week later, Viktoria stood beneath the shower’s hot spray, enjoying a rare moment of peace and quiet before Yuri came home. Over the pounding water, she heard the house phone ringing in the bedroom. Whoever it was could wait. When it stopped after only two rings, she snapped open her eyes. Either the caller had hung up or…

Yuri had come home early.

Quietly, she nudged open the shower door, listening but hearing nothing over the pounding water. After a full minute, she let out the breath she’d been holding and closed the door. She sighed and tilted her head into the spray, allowing the soothing hot water to ease the tension in her muscles.

The shower door whipped open. She shrieked and stumbled backward, slipping and falling on her ass.

Yuri’s lip curled, his nostrils flaring. “That was Doctor Forster. You’re sterile and worthless.”

Huddled on the shower floor, she cringed, squeezing her eyes shut and waiting for the blow that would surely come. The shower door slammed, followed by a loud crack.

Viktoria didn’t know how long she sat there, huddled with her arms wrapped around her shoulders. When she opened her eyes, the glass door was cracked, spiderwebbing from a focal point where Yuri had smashed his fist into it.

The fear slicing through her gradually ebbed, replaced by another frightening reality.

If she couldn’t give Yuri the child he wanted, what good was she to him?

She stared at the tile, watching the water spiral down the drain and with it, all her dreams and hopes for the future. Her emotions were completely beaten down, and the truth was the bitterest of pills. Somehow, she’d become what she’d never expected to be…

A victim of domestic violence.

Chapter Three

Viktoria climbed the yacht’s teakwood stairs and stepped into the fresh early morning Florida air. The warm sun felt good on her bare skin, better than the bitter wintry winds they’d left behind in Chicago.

She sidestepped the discarded bottles of Beluga and empty caviar bowls strewn about the deck. Some of Yuri’s and Nikki’s “boys” lay snoring loudly on recliners, but Yuri was nowhere in sight. He hadn’t come back to their cabin after the outrageous party had wound down. He was probably sleeping with one of the exotic dancers he’d invited on board before they’d left port. Viktoria didn’t care. She hadn’t wanted to come on this trip and didn’t think Yuri wanted her there either, but Olga had convinced Nikki that she needed a shopping partner for her many forays into Miami. Viktoria couldn’t fathom the logic there, since sometimes she didn’t think Nikki’s wife even liked her.

Her reflection in one of the yacht’s many windows nearly made her gasp. Only a slight discoloration from her latest bruise lingered, but the dark circles under her eyes were just as bad. A gust of wind threatened to whip away the wrap she’d tied around her bathing suit. Without trying, she’d lost weight and her clothes now hung on her. Even her ribs were starting to show.