Page 12 of Cruel Juliet

I sink down on the edge of the bed. My mind drifts, unbidden, to my mother. I see her as she was, reduced to a shell of herself under my father’s heavy hands and heavier words. His endless criticisms. The parade of mistresses, each one a reminder that she had never been enough and never would be.

I remember the blank look in her eyes. She moved through the house like a ghost, existing but not living. I swore I’d never end up like her.

I also swore I’d never get married. Not after watching what marriage did to Mom, or finding out what it meant in our world.

My father, like Petyr, saw wives and daughters as tools to be traded. The day he sold Lara off to one of his associates, the look on her face branded itself into my memory. She was already dead inside before she’d even walked down the aisle. I told myself I’d never let that happen to me.

So I ran. At twelve years old, I packed what little I had and left.

Somehow, I survived. I carved out a life for myself. I built walls around myself and swore I’d never let a man own me the way Papa owned Mama.

And yet here I am. Married. Locked in a room like a child being punished. Married to the kind of man I’d been running from all along.

Worse still, there was a time I let myself believe it could be different. That Petyr could be different. That we could be happy together.

Idiot.

Idiot.

Idiot.

Mom’s fate, Lara’s—it’s exactly what’s waiting for me if I stay. I’ll slowly lose who I am, grow paper-thin under the pressures of Petyr’s household, and disappear.

But I can’t afford that. I won’t leave my daughter alone to face this kind of world. I refuse to abandon her while I let my mind recede further and further away from my body.

I’ll never do that to her. Not when it hurt so much when Mom did it to me.

“It’s okay, baby.” I sit on the edge of the bed, arms wrapped tight around my belly, and whisper a promise into the quiet. “I swear, I’ll keep you safe.”

No matter what.

7

PETYR

I sit at my desk in my home office with a stack of overdue reports in front of me. But I barely see the words. Right now, I couldn’t give less of a shit about work.

In my absence—my laser-focused search for Sima—papers have piled up on my desk. Once, Lev would have taken care of that. But Lev isn’t an option anymore. He’s rotting somewhere at the bottom of the Hudson, and his legacy is rotting with him.

I haven’t replaced him yet. Mikhael has been filling in alright as my interim second-in-command, and Ivan keeps helping however he can, but neither one of them is suited to this kind of work.

So I’m left with one choice: deal with it myself. Whether I feel like it or not.

Just as I’m thinking that, my pen snaps between my fingers.

“Blyat’,” I curse under my breath. Ink spreads on the papers, and I toss the broken pen aside in a fit of frustration.

I should be focusing. Ineedto be focusing on this. But it’s pointless—all I can think about is her. I can’t fucking push her out of my mind.

Every time I remember she’s alive, relief floods me. She’s in my home, safe under my roof. Under lock and key. I have her now, and she’s not going anywhere.

But then fury follows close behind. Because the reason I had to lock her up in the first place is that she already escaped me once. She risked herself and the child she carries, all for the sake of her stupid fucking pride.

My jaw aches from all the clenching. I roll my shoulders back, then force myself to pick up another document and reread lines I’m sure I’ve already read a thousand times.

But nothing sticks. All I see is her pale face, the tears clinging to her lashes when I left her in her new quarters.

She didn’t beg. Never once gave me that. Only threw my own words back at me like I was the one in the wrong.