Page 88 of Deceptive Vows

He grabs a towel and wraps it around his bottom half before stepping out of the shower.

He walks toward me then reaches over my head to the cabinet and takes out a first-aid box.

He doesn’t give it to me, though. He ignores me and walks back into the office, where he opens the box and starts trying to dress the wound himself.

I ignore him and look into the box myself. It holds more than the normal stuff you’d find in a first-aid box. There’s a bit of everything, and I find just what I need to close the wound until he can get himself to a hospital.

He sits down and starts fumbling with a bandage pack, but there’s a tremor in his hand either from the wound or the alcohol. It’s stopping him from getting a good enough grip to open it.

I take it from him. He glares at me, but as soon as I open it and get down to business cleaning his wound, he allows me to take care of him.

All he does is watch, and while I know what he must be thinking, the part of me that wants to be me keeps going.

I find something I can use as a makeshift suture then bandage both wounds.

When I touch his face to look at the cut on his cheek, he catches my wrist.

“Leave that one,” he orders, but he doesn’t let me go. I shudder. I know he sees my fear. There’s a spark of something sinister in his eyes that heightens my senses. “Are you afraid of me, princess?”

“What do you want me to say to you?”

“We’re getting married in a few weeks. Maybe we should start with the truth.”

He holds my gaze, and a different type of fear coils through me, reminding me I’m a lie. He’s going to marry me and find out he married the wrong woman.

We will never start with the truth.

“One more time, are you afraid of me, princess?”

“Yes,” I breathe.

“I don’t think you’re as afraid of me as you should be, or you wouldn’t nurse the guy who killed your father, no matter how cruel he was to you. You’d still view me as the monster. The question is, why aren’t you?”

I press my lips together and think of my answer.

I view him as the monster, but when I think of how he slayed Raul, I view him as my savior.

I can’t tell him that. Ever. And I’m only safe in those moments in my headspace when I think of how he defeated Raul. That’s it. I can never voice those thoughts to anyone.

“Do you want me to think of you as a monster, Mikhail?” I ask. “Is that what you want me to think of you?”

He looks me over before answering, and his face softens somewhat.

“No, I don’t.”

He releases my hand and continues to stare at me.

“Where did you learn to do this?” He glances at his shoulder.

“It was something I was taught in case of trouble.” It’s the wisest answer I can think of, and it seems to work.

He stands and holds out his hand to me. “Baby, come and lie next to me.”

I take his hand, and he leads me out to the little bed. He gets on it first, and I climb in next to him.

He turns the lights off and slips an arm around me.

The moonlight is the only light we have so we can see each other.