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“By whom? You?” I step closer, my hands clenched into fists. “You don't get to decide my life anymore.”

“I am your father. I have spent twenty-eight years protecting you, providing for you, ensuring your future. This is that future.”

“Protection?” The word tastes like poison. “You call locking me in this room protection? You call selling me to Anton Petrov protection?”

“I call it survival.” His voice drops to that quiet, dangerous tone I remember from childhood. The one that meant the conversation was over, whether I liked it or not. “The alliancewith the Petrovs secures our position. Your marriage to Anton ensures our family's continued prosperity.”

“And what if I refuse? What if I simply won't say the vows?”

Something flickers in his eyes—not anger, but something far worse. Pity. “You think this is a negotiation, little girl. It isn't. The contracts are signed. The arrangements are made. Ivan’s family has already transferred the agreed-upon assets.”

My stomach drops. “Assets?”

“Territory. Business interests. Mutual protection agreements.” He straightens his cufflinks with practiced indifference. “You are already purchased, Katarina. The wedding is merely a formality.”

“You sold me.” The words come out as a whisper, but they echo in the room like a scream. “You actually sold me.”

“I secured your future. Anton is a good man from a strong family. You will want for nothing.”

“Except freedom. Except choice. Except love.”

He moves toward the door, our conversation apparently over in his mind. “One hour, Katarina. Shower. Dress appropriately. Anton will expect to see the woman he's marrying, not this sullen child.”

“And if I don't?”

He pauses at the threshold without turning around. “Then I will have the staff dress you myself. Either way, you will meet your fiancé today looking like a Lebedev should.”

“This isn't over, Papa.”

“It has been over since the moment Anton’s father called me three weeks ago.” He opens the door. “One hour.”

The lock clicks back into place, trapping me with the suffocating weight of my new reality.

One hour. I stare at the door, my father's ultimatum echoing in my mind. The shower runs hot against my skin, but I can'twash away the reality of what's happening. As I towel off, a bitter realization settles over me like ice water.

I was freer in Erik's compound than I am in my own home.

The thought hits me with startling clarity. Even as his captive, even knowing he was my enemy, I had more autonomy in those rooms than I've ever had under my father's roof. Erik asked what I wanted. He listened when I spoke. He gave me space to move, to think, to choose—even if those choices were limited.

Here, I have no choices at all.

I pull on a simple black dress, my movements mechanical. The irony is so sharp it cuts. I spent weeks in that compound planning my escape, desperate to return to what I thought was my life. But this isn't my life—it never was. Every decision, every opportunity, every moment of supposed freedom was an illusion my father allowed me to maintain.

At least Erik was honest about what I was to him.

My hands shake as I apply makeup, trying to cover the exhaustion and despair that have hollowed out my face over the past three days. In that compound, I felt alive. Dangerous, yes. Terrified, sometimes. But alive in a way I've never experienced before or since.

Erik saw me. Not the Lebedev name, not the useful alliance I represented, not the chess piece I could become. He saw me—my intelligence, my stubbornness, my desires. He challenged me, pushed me, and demanded that I be present, real, and honest.

When did I last feel that here? When did my father last look at me and see Katarina instead of seeing an asset to be managed?

The answer comes swiftly and brutally: never.

I was born into this cage, raised within its bars, trained to believe the pretty golden prison was protection rather than captivity. Only now, facing a life sentence as Anton Petrov's wife,do I understand the difference between the cage I was born in and the compound where I truly lived.

For the first time in twenty-eight years, I tasted what freedom could feel like. And it wasn't in my corner office, my luxury apartment, or my successful company.

It was in Erik Ivanov's arms, in his bed, in the space between his commands and my defiance.