Page 16 of The Brutal Arrangement (The Ivanov Syndicate #2)

LUCY

I woke up to the slowly increasing light that crept into the room. Feeling the warmth of the morning roused me, but as I blinked and took inventory of where I was, the replay of my wedding night failed to stun me.

It had happened.

It wasn’t a dream. A nightmare.

The soreness between my legs was a vivid sign that I’d lost my virginity. The dryness of my chapped lips indicated that yes, I really had been gagged by my new husband mere minutes after I’d signed my name to a paper.

Disbelief would be a waste of time at this point.

As I opened my eyes fully and braced for the monster to realize I was no longer sleeping, I failed to feel any shock or surprise.

My reaction time was tightening with this latest traumatic experience.

Too soon, I’d be a regular at receiving all the curveballs life wanted to throw my way.

What was one more hit?

What was another scary scenario, anyway?

Ever since my father’s death, then my mother’s gradual decline into dementia and Alzheimer’s, I’d gotten stuck in nonstop survival mode. I was perpetually left waiting for the other shoe to drop, and in technicolor horror, it sure had last night.

I sat up slowly when I realized I was alone in this big bed. Dark browns and blacks made up the décor of this monster’s room, but all that I focused on was that he wasn’t here. I was blissfully left to myself in here.

I shouldn’t have believed Katerina so easily. When she told me that I wouldn’t have to sleep with my husband, that this marriage would be so short that nothing would happen to me, I’d so dumbly taken her word for it.

Damon proved otherwise last night.

But before I could wallow in the depression and fury that he’d taken me the way he had, I struggled to deny that I’d liked it in the end.

He’d made me come when I shouldn’t have been aroused at all.

He’d pushed me to let go and surrender, to just feel for a change, when I shouldn’t have lowered my guard at all.

In the light of this new day, it almost sickened me how much I had ended up benefitting from what he’d done.

I felt guilty, so ashamed that when I thought back to how I came for him, it was a rare moment of complete bliss.

He’d overpowered me so fearlessly, taking charge and commanding me to reach such a height of unexpected pleasure, that it forced me to realize that I’d never been able to let go like that.

Left with nothing but how he’d felt deep inside me, he’d shocked me. He’d stripped me from that instant panic of losing my virginity like that, he’d removed all the ever-present worries about my mom, and he’d obliterated all the questions and uneasiness that surrounded this arrangement.

I heaved out a deep sigh, looking at the slightly red marks on my wrists.

When did he untie me?

Rubbing my thumb over my wrist, I tried to think back to what had happened after I came. I hadn’t blacked out. Vaguely, in a hazy blur, I recalled him roaring as he jerked inside me, flooding me with his cum.

I moved my hand up to my face, confused about when my gag had been undone.

The veil and his dark-blue tie lay on the bed. I was still naked. Sticky and stiff from our cum drying on me, I felt used up and dirty.

Yet as I wondered where he was now and what would happen to me next, I hated the curiosity that filled me about if and when I’d ever feel that total surrender and submission again.

Now what?

Katerina hadn’t prepared me for much. She hadn’t gone to any lengths to explain what I could expect here. She’d only shared that this wedding wouldn’t last long and that I wouldn’t have to stay married to Damon—only long enough for her to find whatever she was looking for at home.

Even if she had given me more pointers, I doubted I’d be able to believe a single word out of her mouth. She’d set me up with the false assumption that these Ivanovs could be “decent” criminals, an oxymoron if I’d ever heard one.

Shaking my head as the questions and dread snuck back into my mind, I swung my legs off the bed and got up. I had no guess where my husband was and if or when he’d come back to me, but that was no excuse to sit here sticky and sore.

I got up and explored the bedroom, just to ground myself with my surroundings. I didn’t venture out of the bedroom, partly afraid that if I opened the door, Damon would be there.

This privacy was… nice. I needed this solitude to recalibrate. To ready myself for whatever other surprises would come.

After finding the bathroom, I noticed the signs of someone else having used it and I imagined that Damon had come in here after he’d fucked me last night.

That’s probably why that towel was on the bed. He probably dropped it there before leaving.

In the shower, I debated between lingering because the steam felt so good and the water pressure was heavenly on my tense muscles and getting out as quickly as possible. If anyone—Damon or any of these Mafia men—came in here when I was vulnerable in the shower, I’d be at a disadvantage.

Once I got out and dried myself on the plushest towel I’d ever had the pleasure of touching, nothing threadbare or musty like what I was used to, I snooped in the walk-in closet for something to wear.

No women’s garments were on offer, so I took a button-up shirt and hoped that it would trick my mind into thinking I was covered and somehow less vulnerable.

Katerina had implied that I’d be welcomed and just as quickly dismissed. She’d given me the impression that I’d be in the house and just shoved to the side while they waited to see what this arrangement meant.

Maybe I’ll just stay in here?

They’ll let me be now that the deed is done?

I was under no illusion that I’d been brought here for the sake of love or romance.

I was a thing. A transaction. So… was it now time for me to sit on a shelf like a possession?

Before I could wonder and worry, a soft knock sounded on the door. I didn’t know how, but I could just tell that it was a woman. It didn’t sound like the rough, demanding slam of a man’s fist on a door, but I was still wary of whoever was coming here.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, keeping the long shirt over my thighs and ensuring I was covered, I raised my brows as a woman entered.

She was dressed in a navy-blue dress and apron. The attire was similar to what I was used to. Finally, something familiar.

Only a maid or member of a housekeeping staff would wear something like that. With a funky pang of homesickness, I admitted that this was what I was supposed to look like. That was what I was intended to be and do.

To blend in as a staff member. To keep my head down and mind my own business.

In a bizarre polar opposite, I was now the one being waited on? Dressed in a monster’s shirt and stuck in his room without a clue of what else to expect in my supposedly contract-only marriage, I was not the maid.

For so long, I’d wanted to feel like I belonged somewhere.

With someone. All these years when I wasn’t in college or meeting and having friends like any other twentysomething, I’d deluded myself into thinking I belonged in the capacity of my job.

That I was always the maid, always the hard worker, one who “belonged” in the house of wherever I was currently employed.

At this moment, I had nothing. I was nothing and no one, just a thing for my new husband.

“Good morning,” the maid said as she entered. Perhaps a few years older than me, she was well-trained to avoid eye contact. Keeping her chin lowered, she brought me a pile of folded clothes, shoes too.

“I was asked to deliver these for you.” With a slight curtsy, she avoided making any direct contact. It unnerved me, convincing me that I would never get used to this idea that I wasn’t in her shoes, that I wasn’t doing what she was doing.

I wasn’t a maid here, but I didn’t feel like a wife , either.

God, I need some coffee to make my brain stop spinning. Food and coffee.

“Thank you,” I muttered, meaning it but feeling too out of it to reply any stronger.

She turned to leave.

As I dressed, my nerves grew again. I wanted to explore.

At the very least, I wanted to find a way to ask for food or coffee.

Brave enough to only pace in this bedroom, I found my phone dead on the floor.

Embarrassed at the shreds of my dress that Damon had ripped with his huge hands, I collected it.

After gathering it in a bundle and taking it to the bathroom in search of a laundry container, I frowned at my reflection in the massive mirrors of the gold-and-black theme of the bathroom that had to have been larger than any apartment I’d ever called home.

Seeing myself should’ve grounded me. A nod of acknowledgment that I was still Lucy, still me , despite losing my virginity the way I had last night. Staring into my eyes, all I observed was the anxiety. I looked like prey, caught and snared and with no hope to escape.

What now?

What can I do now?

How long will I need to be here and stay married?

I exhaled a shaky breath, almost as if facing myself was like owning up to how unwise and na?ve I had been to go along with Katerina’s idea to swap in this marriage.

Out in the other room, I heard the door open.

“Katerina?”

I’d only known my husband for less than a full day, but I knew his voice. He was that familiar already. His deep, raspy growls in my ears were what I learned him by. That and the angry statements and orders he’d given me.

And as I stared at myself in the mirror, I knew the moment I’d been dreading, the one I was truly terrified of, was upon me.

I wasn’t Katerina.

I was his wife.

But I wasn’t the woman he’d been expecting.

The darkness and the veil had prolonged that secret last night.

Now, my time was up.

He’d see that I wasn’t Katerina Kozlov, and I feared how furious he would be.