Page 45 of The Brutal Arrangement

I had nowhere else to go.

“Anton can have his fucking maid back,” the tall man who Damon called Maxim said. “And?—”

“No,” I protested, not to argue with him but to correct him. “Anton didn’t send me.”

They all quieted, facing me fully to glower and seethe.

When they asked who, specifically, had sent me in Katerina’s place, I clammed up. For a fleeting moment, I worried what would happen if I told them that this was all Katerina’s plan. That Anton had nothing to do with this swap of brides. I owed her no protection. She hadn’t earned any goodwill from me after putting this on me. But more than anything, I had feared, for a brief moment of stark trepidation, that if they went after her for setting up this, they’d kill her. And if she were dead, she couldn’t handle any of the promises she’d made with me about my mother’s care.

I hated to be that selfish, that self-centered, to prioritize my mother’s care over anything else, but this was all that mattered. Be used by others, or use them myself. This was a matter of survival, and I couldn’t afford to worry about a woman who sent me to marry a demon of a man.

“Katerina wanted me to swap,” I said, offering that detail and dreading that it could be a mistake to add that much. “She didn’t want to be forced into a marriage and she sent me in her place.”

They didn’t react, all of them watching me so closely, but I didn’t say anything else. While I hated that nothing would change their opinion of me and that I would still be a disposable nobody to them, I couldn’t deny that this was precisely who I was. I was just a maid, like their grandmother said with so much dismay. I was only the single child of a woman whose memory was slipping away with every passing day. I was… no one. Nobody that a powerful leader of a crime family would value.

Despite it all, in the back of my mind, I had to be smart about this. Iwasmarried to him. I had signed that paper last night and I had…

I lowered my gaze to the bed, remembering how much he’d scared me when he’d taken me so hard and dominated me like that.

I had taken him—all of him. Like Damon said, he had consummated the marriage and that wasn’t something that could be reversed. He’d taken my virginity, and there were absolutely no refunds on that.

I can do this.

I have to do this.

I couldn’t screw this up. If these Ivanovs sent me back to the Kozlovs, I’d be as good as dead. I bet Katerina and I would both be punished by her uncle for trying to pull a switcheroo like this. Besides the basic need to survive and avoiding death, I was doubly determined not to fuck this up. Not this soon. I had to stay here so Katerina would cover my mom’s care. I had to remain here and avoid this marriage being annulled too quickly so that she could come through with whatever she had to get done.

“Katerina set this up?” Damon asked.

I nodded, preferring a wordless gesture over trusting my voice to last.

Under his intense scrutiny, another wave of nervousness tripped me up. Butterflies weren’t fluttering in my stomach under some silly, whimsical idea of attraction. Yet, knowing he was seeing me—me, not thinking I was pretending to be someone else—I couldn’t help but wonder how he could still have such an effect on me.

With his dark brown eyes on me without pause, I wanted to squirm and resist his attention. He’d taken my V card. He knew what I felt like in the most intimate way possible. And while he’d gone about it so brutally, I feared that he wasn’t only seeing me but seeing through me.

Is he mad that he got stuck withmeversus Katerina?

Is he regretting that he took me at all?

Deeper in the back of my mind, I struggled with a more twisted thought I couldn’t escape.

Is he… thinking about doing that again?

Something was wrong with me to be so curious about a repeat of last night, yet I couldn’t forget how damned good it felt to surrender and just let go. He’d forced me to submit so bluntly to him, and it should’ve been a crime for that to be so rewarding. Lowering my gaze, I tried to resist the wave of shame and confusing regret that just didn’t make sense. He’d practically raped me. He’d taken me so cruelly and there was no way in hell that I could be a logical, rational woman to think it was all right. That because he’d made me come and feel so good that his brutish actions and greed were forgivable.

“Why?”

I whipped my head up to face them all again. Damon hadn’t budged, staring me down, but his question taunted me.

Lying would secure a death sentence for me. I knew that. These weren’t just ordinary jerks or assholes trying to get their way. These were criminals, Mafia men who had the power and means to kill.

“Why did Katerina set this up?” Maxim asked, only now putting his gun away.

I shook my head. “I really don’t know. She was adamant that she couldn’t marry yet. That she had other things to look into.”

None of them reacted with conviction, watching me as if the suspense of being under pressure and under the spotlight of their attention would unravel me and make me snap.

“She didn’t confide in me.” That was still the truth. “I was just a maid. Not a friend.”

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