Page 49 of The Brutal Arrangement

Upon my arrival, she shot to her feet. Holding her hands together in front of her, she wrung her pale fingers together nervously. Her blue gaze captured me, snaring me and tempting me to stare at her for as long as it took until she had to look away. To my surprise, she didn’t. That proved how terrified she was, perhaps needing to see the danger that could reach her and ruin her.

“You are my wife,” I stated at last, shoving my hands into my pockets.

She nodded weakly.

“And you will stay my wife for as long as I see fit.”

She didn’t move. No nod came this time as she watched me warily.

Hmm.She wouldn’t agree with me about that, yet she wasn’t arguing, either.

“I am not seeking an annulment.”

Now she nodded again.

“However, if you plan to lie to or deceive me or my family in any way, you will pay with your life.”

Her slender throat flexed with her swallow. Then, as timid and cautious as ever, she nodded once more. “I won’t,” she promised.

We’ll see about that, Wife.

I won this round of a stare-down. She lowered her head and broke eye contact, nervous and submissive again.

Without another word, my mind too muddled with questions from this morning, I turned and closed the door to my room, leaving her there alone. Right where I could find her the next time I intended to get information out of her, whatever information she had.

19

LUCY

I’d never received a death threat before.

I wouldn’t have ever counted on getting one from the man who was supposed to be my husband.

But that title was something altogether so foreign to me that I couldn’t begin to make sense of what was now my reality.

Damon left me in his room. And that was that.

For three days, I didn’t see my spouse at all.

I had to stop thinking of this only as a contract arrangement since he’d taken me that first night. Isolated in his room and left alone, though, I had no clue what this was supposed to be.

“I’m not a prisoner,” I mused to myself in a whisper as I strolled in his apartment. While I didn’t see my husband, his brother, his father, or his grandmother, I was getting familiar with the suited appearance of the guards and soldiers who came and went. Similar to the men at the Kozlov mansion, these Ivanov employees were identically muscular and gruff-looking.

They were the ones who gave me a hard look if I tried to explore too far. Like the maids and other house staff members, they did their jobs and ensured I stayed wherever Damon wanted me to be.

I had free rein of his apartment that he didn’t come back to.

I could walk through the rooms on the main floor, where the kitchen was when I asked one maid who delivered me lunch. And I was able to peer out some windows at an ornamental garden in the back.

Without permission to leave this building, I had to convince myself that I was partially imprisoned here. I just wasn’t stuck in a cell or dungeon, with locks and chains trapping me in place.

“I’m not a whore,” I whispered to myself.

Despite the violent way Damon took me on our wedding night, he didn’t make a single attempt or move to be near me again.

Instead, I was left to my own devices, clothed in new garments that a maid or housekeeper must have purchased for me. Boredom hadn’t kicked in yet, but without anything to do, I felt like I’d go stir-crazy.

“What’s the point?” I wondered aloud, also in a whisper because I was paranoid about this entire building being bugged. I didn’t want anyone to overhear my private thoughts. That was the one thing I couldn’t make sense of.Why?Why not annul the marriage if he’d just dismiss me? Why keep me around if he would never even see me?

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