Page 21 of Sold to the Russian
Maeve’s throat bobbed when he uttered those two words again. She barely let him leave the room completely before slamming the door so hard it trembled against its hinges. The moment the bang echoed around her, the tears fell from her eyes. Hot, acidic tears burned her skin with every rush down hercheeks. Her back slid down the door as she hiccuped, sobbing quietly into the palms of her hands. Her head throbbed with a headache of the century as her brain recapped everything that had happened to her in the last three days.
What the hell was she going to do now? How could she possibly get out of this thing she was tied to with this Nikolai monster?
Even as intimidating as he was when he was Jonathan Riley, she had been determined to do anything possible to get out of this marriage. But now he was Fedya Nikolai. He was a devilishly beautiful, twisted son of a bitch. He looked at her like he could read her thoughts, like he knew what she was capable of even without doing it yet. He looked like the type of person to figure her out as easily as flipping over the page of a book.
It irked her how the reality of her nightmare of a life was starting to sink in, like tiny needles piercing holes all over her skin. But she couldn’t possibly give up, could she? She couldn’t just sit back and allow a strange man to dictate how she would live her own life.
She hated her father for doing this to her. Hated Fedya for the monster he was. But most of all, she hated herself for being such an unlucky person, constantly stuck in situations that were out of her control. Constantly tossed about like a ragdoll.
With a shaky sigh, she roughly dragged her hands across her face, wiping the stupid tears away.
For fuck’s sake, she needed to stop feeling sorry for herself. She needed to find a way out of this, no matter what, whether or not she was married to the Devil’s incarnate. An insane man whom she could have successfully killed moments ago if she had been lucky enough. A man who placed a gun insidehis own mouth, knowing fully well that one of those bullets could shatter his brain.
A chill ran down her spine at the memory, but she shook it away.
She couldn’t be scared of him. Now that her father had left her for dead in the hands of his enemies, fear was the last thing she needed if she wanted to walk out of this alive. If she wanted her freedom. A freedom she’d never tasted in all the twenty-four years of her life.
Maeve wasn’t sure how long she sat down in front of that door for, staring blankly at nothing, her mind working overtime with solutions and loopholes. She finally stood up when her butt grew numb and trudged to the bathroom.
It was a small place with white, pristine tiles on the wall and floor. A small bathtub, a glass shower cubicle stood at the corner, a toilet, a sink, and a mirror above it. She glared at the reflection of the weak woman glaring back at her—red faced, a swollen bottom lip from how hard she’d been biting it to withhold the sound of her cries, the streaks of mascara and that stupid streak of lipstick coating her cheek, red hair all over her face, wet eyelashes, thin streaks of red in the whites of her eyes from crying too hard and too long.
She flipped the tap open, placed her hands under the shrill gush of the ice-cold water for a minute before splashing it onto her face. She splashed and splashed until the only evidence of her pain was her flushed cheeks.
She ran a hand through her hair, straightened her posture, and stared defiantly at the mirror. She was going to get out of this marriage, even if it cost her life.
Flipping the tap shut, she turned on her heel and left the bathroom. She headed out of the room and was immediatelyattacked by the pleasant aroma of roasted chicken, vegetables, and freshly baked bread. Her stomach grumbled at once, and she placed a hand on it, like it could stop the hungry worms feeding on the walls of her empty stomach.
After her father announced her marriage to Jonathan—Fedya, she had barely had the appetite to stomach proper food into her system. She could barely even manage a sip of water earlier this morning before her father drove her to her doom.
And now, the temptingly delicious smell of what Fedya had cooked teased her senses and scrambled her brain.
Maeve turned the corner and found him untying an apron from his waist. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to his elbows, revealing an intricate spiral of black ink on his right forearm, disappearing beneath the rest of his sleeve.
His inky hair fell over his face as he folded the apron into a neat square. “You came out right on time,” he said, meticulously arranging cutlery next to the two plates that sat across from each other on the table, surrounded by food—roasted herb-crusted chicken thighs, roasted vegetables, creamy mashed potatoes, bread, and green salad. There was something domestic about the way he set the table, about the fact that he’d cooked everything himself. Maeve didn’t want to find anything he did fascinating. “Dinner’s ready.”
Her throat was parched, and her eyes zeroed in on the chilled bottle of water on the table staring back at her. “I’m not hungry.”
It was like he didn’t hear her. “Come here,” he said, beckoning her forward with a flick of his wrist.
“I said I’m not hungry.”
His eyes flickered to her. “But you are.”
Maeve ground her teeth. “I don’t trust you. I’ve heard about you, ruthless Nikolais. For all I know, you could poison me to get rid of me easily.”
“If that’s the case, we’ll die together, Maeve. That’s a rather romantic way to go.”
Maeve’s stomach grumbled to the point of pain. Embarrassment flushed her cheeks red, especially when Fedya raised a knowing brow.
She neared the table. “I don’t trust you.”
“It’d be foolish for you to since we’ve just met,” he said, pulling the chair back for her before she could resist. “But if I wanted to harm you, I wouldn’t use roasted chicken and mashed potatoes. I’d use a bullet or my hands or a knife or my feet. So manymanyoptions,zhena.”
“Well, it’s not like I asked you to cook.” Maeve snapped.
“It’s the duty of a man to take care of his wife,” he said, tossing that infuriating word around her again. “Sit.”
They sat at the table in silence, the tension as thick as the chicken gravy. She stared at the devastatingly appealing food in front of her, pushed away the violent image of her foaming to her death at the table due to being poisoned, and tried focusing on eating the food instead. It tasted annoyingly good, and she hated that she didn’t hate it, that her hands didn’t tremble as she fed herself, that her body didn’t reject the food, that her brain was starting to settle.
