Page 68 of His Darkest Obsession

But I don’t, and she takes my silence as confession.

“Not only a whore, but a cheap one too,” she says. “You must be good, for him to choose you over his real fiancée."

His… what?

My eyes widen at that word, and those hateful gray eyes miss nothing. Triumph crosses Valentina's face, and she yanks my chin up so that I can’t look away.

"Oh.” A savage smile widens on her face. “Did my Tolya fail to tell you that, little whore?"

"No." the word tumbles out.

"And you didn't think to ask?"

Ask? It's not like I had a choice when he freakingkidnappedme! It's not like I had a choice when he marched me into a room and told me that I'm to marry him. I'm just as lost as you!

But none of those words come out. Not that they'll help me. Not that she’ll believe me.

"So I’ll ask again. Why did he marryyou, whore?" she hisses. "My Tolya doesn't do anything without calculation."

"I'm telling you the truth," I repeat myself, "Anatoly chose me. If you want to know why, you need to ask him directly."

Her gray eyes bore into mine with chilling clarity. But I’m determined to stand my ground no matter how much this woman scares me.

"If you have any sense of self-preservation, you’ll find a way to get the fuck out of my house." Her lips curl into a cruel smile. "Because right now, the consequence for your behavior is just atrip back to whatever hole you crawled out of. But the longer you stay, the worse things will get."

I know those words are supposed to scare me into revealing the truth to her. But I also know that the consequence for honesty is never just a trip home.

God knows I learned that lesson the hard way.

There's a steep cost to be paid for telling the truth, especially the truth about powerful people. And someone will always pay a price that they're not willing to pay.

I have no intention of doing it again.

"You're either very brave or very stupid." She looks at me, those gray eyes of hers searching my hazel ones for weakness and lies. "We'll see which one it is soon enough, little whore from the Bronx."

But just then, we both hear the sound of commotion outside of the door. The sounds of men yelling in Russian, and what sounds like the heavythudof a body hitting the floor.

Then, the door suddenly swings open, and I hear the sound of Anatoly’s voice, shaking with unmistakable anger.

“Get your hands off my wife!”

Valentina’s hand release me instantly at the sound of Anatoly’s voice, and she turns around to glare at him as I lift a trembling hand to my cheek. The indentation her nails left behind throb with a dull ache when I touch them, but when I pull my fingers away, there’s no blood.

This isn't the first time she did this to someone,I think.

I glance up and see that chaos has unfolded on the other side of the door while Valentina was interrogating me.

Vassily sits there beside a pool of blood, his face a mess of red. Roma crosses his arms and there’s a look of disapproval as he looks down at his younger brother. Several guards stand there, and they immediately avert their eyes when they see me.

And then I see Anatoly.

His face is twisted in fury and there’s blood on the knuckles of his right hand. Valentina looks at her three sons. Her mouth opens when she sees Vassily, and she turns to glare at Anatoly in anger.

But Anatoly crosses the threshold into the room, shoulders his way past her, and brings his jacket around my shoulders again.

His fingers—the ones unblemished with Vassily’s blood—brush the indentations his mother’s nails have left on my face, and I can feel the rage in his blood boiling just a little hotter. He hooks a gentle finger under my chin and tilt me up so that I might look at him.

“Did she do this to you?” he asks, doing his best to keep his even.