Page 19 of The Brutal Arrangement (The Ivanov Syndicate #2)

DAMON

I t wasn’t easy watching my father like this. He was a shell of the strong, confident, and smart man he once was. Being poisoned had altered him severely, and no matter what the doctors and specialists said, I had significant doubts that he’d ever return to something like he once was.

The confusion. The anger. The irrational assumptions. Some of the things he mumbled and muttered sounded like incoherent nonsense, and it pained me to see him reduced to this weak of a mental status.

Helping Maxim usher Father out of my apartment was a sobering process.

Witnessing him like this was frustrating, but it further wounded me when I saw how bothered Grandmother was.

Every frown that pulled on her face stressed me out.

While I bet a lot of her anxiety about Father’s recovery was because she feared the family losing its leader, that wasn’t all of it.

She loved her son, just as she loved us brothers, and she didn’t want any of us to be harmed or suffering.

“He’ll get better,” Maxim said in the elevator as we rode up with him.

Grandmother didn’t reply, furrowing her brow as she watched the guard with us support Father. He slumped, leaning down more against the assistance, as if wandering that long with just a cane and not his walker was too strenuous of an exercise to handle.

“I have my doubts,” she said quietly after we rode toward his floor. The sincerity of her remark tugged at my heartstrings.

“I do too, but I am confident he’ll get better,” my brother said resolutely.

“Because you’d rather not lead the family?” she asked, putting him on the spot.

He soured, but he didn’t lash out. “I am leading the family. Don’t be harsh with me if I would like more time with my fiancée during her pregnancy.”

She sighed, looking away as the doors slid open. “I know. I know that, Maxim, but?—”

“I can take him,” the guard said.

As he escorted him off the elevator, we three watched until the doors slid shut again.

“I know you have a growing family of your own to embrace,” Grandmother said. “And that’s why this timing is inconvenient.”

“Inconvenient or not, he’ll get better.” Maxim smoothed his hand over his suit.

“And if he doesn’t recover to the point that he could be in charge anymore, then so be it.

” Giving her a wry look, he sighed. “You act as though I only now realized I’m the eldest brother and would be in charge one day.

I’ve had my entire life to get used to it, Grandmother. ”

I grunted a weak laugh, amused that he’d act like this. Saul, Nik, and I had a bet going when he’d ask one of us to take over because he wanted to be a husband and father before a boss.

But that wouldn’t be happening anytime soon. He’d do his duty. Just like I would mine.

“We will cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said, glancing at me as we rode back down to my floor. “Right now, we need to annul your marriage with the maid.”

I shook my head. “What the fuck would that do?”

He furrowed his brow.

“Damon.” Grandmother shook her head. “Be serious. This is a trick. A setup. Some kind of manipulation, and it won’t serve us well to let it go and keep that woman here.”

“But what the fuck would we accomplish by annulling the marriage?” When they didn’t reply right away, I raised my brows. “It’s not like I’ve got a long line of other women who’d marry me. It’s not as though any other family would allow some prestigious daughter to end up with me.”

My reputation as an enforcer preceded me.

The tales of my torture had reached many in our circles, and I knew other family bosses and leaders wouldn’t want their women to end up with me.

Maybe their ugliest, least valuable, and undesirable women could be sent to me as a punishment.

The only women I got were whores who closed their eyes so they wouldn’t see me, and that suited me just fine.

Unattached, emotionless fucks never hurt me any.

“What’s done is done,” I summed up with a shrug. “If you want me to have a wife and get heirs out of her…” I stared down my grandmother. “Then this is how it’ll happen.” No other woman would willingly be with me.

“But it’s a setup of some kind,” Maxim argued.

“I know that.”

“What can Anton be trying, though?” Grandmother wondered.

I shrugged again, not really caring. “This maid can’t know anything. And under my supervision, she won’t contact anyone at all. She won’t be able to spy and report to anyone in the Kozlov family while she’s here and locked in as my wife.”

Maxim slowly nodded, but he seemed unsure about forgetting this annulment.

He had to have noticed how she’d hesitated. She clammed up. Of course, she was scared. That was plain to see, but I had to wonder what was in it for her.

“She seems certain that Katerina arranged to swap, not Anton,” Grandmother said.

“That doesn’t shock me,” I replied curtly. Katerina knew what I was like, who I was, and the dark and gruesome violence I was capable of. She, like any other Mafia woman, would run away from the idea of getting married to me.

“But Katerina couldn’t have known it’d be you that she would marry,” Maxim said. “The correspondence we had with the Kozlovs was just that it would be one of us brothers.”

I rubbed my face, aggravated and noticing again how tense I’d been lately, clenching my jaw. “She couldn’t have thought it was you, since it’s out there now that you’re engaged to Sloane.”

“And if she knows that Nik is taken,” he said, “she would’ve known he wouldn’t be her groom either.”

I crossed my arms and leaned back against the wall. “I can keep at Lucy about why she agreed to this marriage. She had to have gone along with it for a reason. Either someone there forced her and scared her into this, threatening her, or she was bribed. I’ll get her to tell me which.”

Maxim nodded. “Maybe that will help shed some light on what Anton’s up to.”

I doubted it, but it hardly mattered now.

I was stuck with my wife.

Lucy.

She was mine because she’d come here for whatever reason she had. She’d signed that contract. She’d let me inside her to mark her as mine.

I wasn’t fond of having to settle, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew this would be the only way I’d have a wife, if one was forced to be with me. Even though I’d sort of assumed I’d be a bachelor for the majority of my life, I could adjust and tolerate this arrangement too.

“You’re sure?” Maxim asked as the elevator opened to my floor again. “You don’t want to annul this marriage?”

“I still think you should,” Grandmother added with a frown. “I don’t think this will end well, and you deserve better.”

I laughed once, bitterly and darkly.

I deserved better?

Yeah, right.

I was a scarred freak. Too hard for any woman to desire. It was my fate, and I’d live with it.

“Yes. I’m sure. What’s done is done, and I’ll tolerate this the best I can,” I repeated.

Like hell I will. Telling my brother that I’d put up with this felt like a lie.

No matter how many times I tried to remind myself that my wife was only here for the purpose of being questioned and treated as a way of keeping the enemy close, I couldn’t forget about how damn good she’d felt.

How triumphant she made me feel when she came, knowing that I had been able to give her pleasure without having to sacrifice how rough I’d wanted it to be.

If I could look forward to that again, this marriage wasn’t some bother that I’d have to put up with.

Fucking my wife like that could become my addiction.

“Besides,” I said after I stepped out of the elevator, suddenly eager to see Lucy again, “if Katerina is going against Anton’s wishes enough to swap her maid for her in this arrangement…

” I smirked. “Then fine. I’d love to see him pissed off about someone thwarting his plans.

I won’t complain about Anton being outsmarted, even by his own niece. ”

Maybe in this regard, Katerina was doing us a favor. More thought was needed to figure out why Katerina would’ve done this, but I wasn’t in the right headspace to dwell on it now. I had a wife to speak with.

Maxim almost smiled too. “If not outsmarting him, then reminding him that he can’t get away with everything.”

“What if this maid is trying to outsmart us, though?” Grandmother asked, still too skeptical of the idea of Lucy staying here.

I shook my head. “I won’t let her. I dare this woman to lie to me or trick me.” Turning from them as the elevator doors slid shut again, I strode right back toward my bedroom.

Dipping my chin in acknowledgment to the guard at that door, I gave him permission to leave.

I didn’t need that much help showing one scared maid who the boss was here.

I entered without a knock, finding her seated on the very edge of the bed. I couldn’t help but notice that she had chosen the opposite side from where I’d fucked her last night. As though she were timid and embarrassed to be in that spot again.

Upon my arrival, she shot to her feet. Holding her hands together in front of her, she wrung her pale fingers together nervously.

Her blue gaze captured me, snaring me and tempting me to stare at her for as long as it took until she had to look away.

To my surprise, she didn’t. That proved how terrified she was, perhaps needing to see the danger that could reach her and ruin her.

“You are my wife,” I stated at last, shoving my hands into my pockets.

She nodded weakly.

“And you will stay my wife for as long as I see fit.”

She didn’t move. No nod came this time as she watched me warily.

Hmm. She wouldn’t agree with me about that, yet she wasn’t arguing, either.

“I am not seeking an annulment.”

Now she nodded again.

“However, if you plan to lie to or deceive me or my family in any way, you will pay with your life.”

Her slender throat flexed with her swallow. Then, as timid and cautious as ever, she nodded once more. “I won’t,” she promised.

We’ll see about that, Wife.

I won this round of a stare-down. She lowered her head and broke eye contact, nervous and submissive again.

Without another word, my mind too muddled with questions from this morning, I turned and closed the door to my room, leaving her there alone. Right where I could find her the next time I intended to get information out of her, whatever information she had.