Page 135 of His Forced Bride

"Until we're ready to move. A few days, maybe a week." I pour vodka from a bottle I keep in the kitchen, two glasses that I carry back to where she sits.

"Long enough to coordinate everything properly."

She accepts the drink but doesn't immediately consume it, cradling the glass between her palms.

"It's strange being away from the compound. I'd gotten used to the routine there, though I still miss my friends and the employees I have that are loyal."

"How do you feel?" I ask her, and I settle next to her.

Her gray-green eyes meet mine, and I see uncertainty there.

"I don't know anymore. Everything I thought I understood about my life, my family, myself—it's all been rewritten."

I scoot closer to her on the couch, close enough that our knees touch.

"You're exactly who you've always been, Inessa. The only thing that's changed is your understanding of the people around you."

"But that changes everything, doesn't it? If I was wrong about my mother, if I was wrong about my father's business partners, if I was wrong about my own employees… how do I trust my judgment about anything?"

She takes a long drink of the vodka, and I watch her throat work as she swallows.

The alcohol brings color to her pale cheeks, but it doesn't erase the lost expression in her eyes.

"You weren't wrong about them," I tell her.

"You were betrayed by people who were very good at deception. There's a difference."

"Is there? Or am I just naive, some sheltered little girl who built a fashion empire without understanding the real world she was operating in?"

The pain in her voice cuts through my chest.

She's questioning everything about herself, doubting capabilities that I've seen her demonstrate repeatedly.

She fought me harder than grown men who had nothing to lose.

That sort of grit doesn't come easily, and now she seems to have lost some of the fire that made me want her.

"You want to know what I see when I look at you?" I ask.

She nods, and her vulnerable expression moves me in a way that makes my protective instincts surge.

"I see someone who built something beautiful from nothing, despite having no support system and no family backing. I see someone who survived repeated attacks on her business and her life without breaking. I see someone who looked at evidence of the worst betrayal imaginable and immediately began planning strategic revenge."

Her laugh is hollow.

"Strategic revenge. Is that what we're calling it?"

"We're calling it justice. Your mother tried to destroy everything you are, everything you've built, everything you care about. Fighting back isn't weakness. It's survival."

She drains her glass and sets it aside, then curls into the corner of the couch with her legs tucked beneath her.

The position makes her look younger, more fragile than the composed woman who stood beside me in the war room earlier.

I remember that to some men my age, she would seem like a child.

She was, after all, Semyon Mirov's daughter, the same age as my son when he died.

But I see so much more.