VII (Seven) Read online

  And I’m breathless, gulping at the thinning air. It never ceases to amaze me just how beautiful he is—or what some might call him anyway. How rugged. He is scarred over and broken in so many places, I wonder if he remembers what the original flesh and bone look like. The marks of his brand gleam silver in the orange glow of a lamp. VII. They ripple with his every movement, proclaiming his place in the feud as he removes his pants one leg at a time and stands there only in a pair of gray boxers.

  He waits as if to torment me, stretching out the seconds, ensuring I’m riveted for every torturous one. Eventually, he cocks his head, finding my position. It’s unfair how quickly he moves, denying me the chance to gather my senses or play my part by cowering. He’s lying beside me before I even remember to cringe beyond his reach. One of his hands grasps mine, forcing it to his chest.

  At first, I think it’s a perverted mind game designed to test my reaction. But no. He wants me to feel. Ropey, jagged skin dips and curves beneath my fingertips. His wound from the day he delivered “Robert’s” ring.

  “Your husband fought for you, Little Rose,” he tells me, his voice thicker than I’ve heard it. “He fought like hell for you. Enough to dirty his pretty little hands.” He grips mine roughly, unfolding every digit for his inspection. “Shall I tell you all of it? He offered to trade you for Briar—to give me better leverage with his father, you see. I didn’t think he was serious, but she was there…” He laughs brokenly, shaking his head. “But I refused. And he tried to kill me. We’ve met before, you know. I’ve baited him before. Taunted him before…” He trails off, lost in a thought I can’t stomach to consider.

  Regardless, his words fester and stew within me. Robert fight for me? Never.

  “He did,” Mischa challenges as if reading my mind. “That fucker was willing to die for his precious little wife. But I won, didn’t I, Little Rose? Even if I left his fucking life intact. I have you…”

  My heart clenches before I even feel a telltale brush of warmth against my throat: his mouth, murmuring words there in a dangerous whisper. “I have you, don’t I? All of you. Even if you don’t want it.” He shifts, sliding one of his hands beneath my blankets, aiming for my inner thighs.

  Weighed down by my cast, I can’t even move. I just stiffen as he finds me beneath my nightgown, inching higher with every strained breath I take.

  “Even if you can’t admit it. I have you. I can keep you. Or I can kill you.”

  Air wheezes from my lungs as he slides the ridge of his finger against me. Inside me. My heart churns uselessly as my chest tightens. The sensation of his touch works like an invisible vise, tightening. Smothering. Suffocating.

  I pant. “M-Mischa—”

  “He killed his father for you. Do you know that?”

  My thoughts swim. My head feels heavy. Air becomes a scarcer commodity. Frantic, my fingers scrape at the blankets beside me. “Please—”

  “The bastard never dared to stand against the old man before.” His voice is my only anchor as his touch grows bolder and my vision narrows. A gray haze shrouds everything but his face, half obscured against my breast, laughing at the dark irony. “I told him I strangled you,” he admits, sounding miles away.

  Everything is white. Then gray. Then quiet…

  Finally, air! I gulp noisily for every breath as his hand withdraws.

  “He hasn’t come for me yet,” Mischa grumbles, more to himself than me. “But he will.”

  He watches me collapse against the pillows as I strain my lungs as much as my sore chest allows. Finally, he moves, but not to retreat. Oh, no. He tilts my head toward him as he settles further on the mattress beside me.

  “Shall I tell you a story, Little Rose?” he murmurs, only to force my head to nod in agreement. “Fine, then. You ask me how I can care for you so well? I was number seven, but there was an eight... Her name was Aljona and she was better than you in every way. Sweeter. Kinder. She deserved mercy where your precious Winthorps deserve none.” He waits, allowing every word to sink in. Every insinuation. He lets my mind race to put the pieces together: the real woman who haunts him. Not Anna. Not even his mother.

  “She was my half,” he rasps brokenly as heat springs beneath my eyes. “We shared a womb. A soul. Your Winthorps left her for dead when they forced the car my mother was driving into a ditch. They left her twisted and broken in the wreckage when they took my mother and me, but she survived, Little Rose. She clung to life…until it became too fucking much.”

  He’s on his feet, halfway across the room before I can even register the vicious steps that take him there.

  “When she died, I died, Little Rose.” His back is to me, his posture rigid. “So don’t for a second make the mistake of believing that anything I’ve done is for you. You’re merely meant to serve a fucking point: Even now, I’m not like them. I won’t let you compare me to him.” He laughs and braces a hand against the wall. For balance, I realize. He’s shaking, trembling from head to toe.

  It’s terrifying. Like witnessing the worst dredges of a storm unfold with no hope of shelter within reach. Emotion from him is a drug: a terrifying injection of toxins and hallucinogens. I see things I shouldn’t. Experience sensations that aren’t real.

  Mischa…moaning in pain isn’t real.

  I blink and he’s upright, his bloodshot eyes finding me from over his shoulder.

  “You want to stay a shell? I’ll make you a fucking proxy. You can die here for all I care.”

  And he means it. Every word rings true as he dresses himself and leaves.

  He didn’t save my life out of any ounce of human pity.

  He did it as a test.

  And he failed.

  Chapter 15

  Vanya greets me in the morning, and he’s the one who helps me bathe with as much dignity as I can muster. There’s a notable difference though.

  Vanya is clinical.

  Mischa was…methodical. Damn near obsessive, even—like my body was a tool he’d studied every inch of. A collector, polishing his favorite toy.

  I’m sweating beneath the sheets. The air in this room has little circulation, and a part of me longs for the warmth of bathwater. A change of scenery.

  Anything.

  Vanya does his best to linger, entertaining me with small talk, but he can’t stay long.

  And I’m alone again.

  It’s the loneliness that feels so different from my time with Robert. I used to crave it. Cherish it. Only in silence could I gather up the broken pieces of my soul and try to reassemble them. I was Ellen, always Ellen. Sweet, dutiful, doormat Ellen.

  It’s only hours after Vanya delivered my second meal for the day that I sense someone else there, lingering on the outskirts of my room, recognizable only by smell.

  He waits like any predator, anticipating the moment I tense with awareness of him. Maybe he can hear my pulse surging in a pathetic patter of noise. When the symphony of heartbeats reaches a crescendo, he steps forward.

  From my position, I can only make out his profile. Long and unkempt, his hair shrouds most of his face, leaving the rest of it cast in shadow. The stubble has returned already to coat his chin, which flexes as he prepares to issue a command or another insult.

  Hoarse and weak, my pathetic tone beats him to the punch. “I can’t live like this.”

  He jerks in place as if he’d been about to lunge. Pounce. Attack. Now? He stands there, his head cocked.

  “I can’t,” I admit, hating the fear so plainly evident in my voice. Leaving any part of myself bare to him disturbs me like nothing else. But it’s better than the alternative: this fucking endless silence. “I refuse to live like this—”

  He turns for the door and I can’t stop myself from leaning forward, clutching fistfuls of the sheets for balance.

  “Please…”

  He stops and I break.

  “Please don’t let me live like this. I’m sorry if I hurt you—if I insulted you,” I add when he flinches. “But I’m so damn t
ired of begging you for mercy.”

  He stays just long enough to give me hope that my words managed to reach him before he slips over the threshold and escapes the room.

  For the rest of the day, I’m left here, alone, trapped in bed, forced to listen to the ongoings of the manor seeping through the walls. Murmured snippets of conversation provide no context. No reprieve.

  Eventually, I tune the noise out altogether and turn my focus toward gingerly stretching and flexing each limb, desperate to move. A funny thought makes me snicker as the daylight grows dimmer and Vanya appears with my evening meal.

  Of all the various forms of torture Robert employed to break me, this might do the trick.

  Sheer, utter boredom.

  I’m startled awake by the sound of footsteps nearing my bed. Heavy and slow, they aren’t Vanya’s. Neither is the hand that snatches my blankets from me, leaving me shivering in the pale glow of dawn. The rest of the house can’t be up this early.

  Though I suspect that the figure before me hasn’t slept at all.

  He’s silent as he slides a hand beneath my legs and lifts me from the bed. I settle awkwardly in his arms, aware of just how stiff he is against me. Still angry. Still fuming.

  Still gentle.

  A part of me marvels at that. Robert didn’t have an ounce of the same control. Which made him easier to handle in a way. I could talk him down with a few groveling words at a time and all would be well—until the next time.

  But Mischa broods. In some ways, he reminds me of a child, preferring to stew in his temper—because the alternative requires swallowing his pride and assessing his own actions.

  So, instead, he ignores them stubbornly and I’m the one to suffer.

  I stiffen as he carries me down the hall and into yet another bathroom. The bench has been moved here, with all the supplies neatly placed within reach, but the tub is bigger. Deeper. Already half-filled with water, it triggers my alarm like nothing else.

  He could drown me.

  Ironically, Mischa seems oblivious to the dark scenarios my mind conjures. He sets me down and wets a rag. Silently, he tugs my nightgown off and laves my skin with quick, efficient strokes. Watching him, I notice every nuance in him that I otherwise wouldn’t. How tightly he grips the rag, for one—so hard that his knuckles whiten. How his shoulders ripple, distorted by bulging, tensing muscle.

  He doesn’t notice the moment I touch him, laying my fingers along his wrist. Not at first. He’s that intent on ignoring me. Beneath my fingertips, I feel him suddenly jerk and he wrenches the arm away. Flashing, his eyes cut up to mine as his lips spring apart.

  But I speak first. “How long until I can walk?”

  He frowns, but just as quickly, his mouth quirks into a disarming smirk. “Who says I’ll let you?”

  He’s joking. He has to be… The second I start to suspect the opposite, he lets the expression fall and returns his focus to the rag.

  “The doctor will be here to see you again in a week, Little Rose. Work your charms on him and I’m sure he’ll try to steal you away. You’ll have your freedom in no time—”

  “I don’t like when you mock me.” I’m surprised by how strongly my voice comes out.

  “Mocking?” He scoffs and observes me, his head tilted. “Oh no, Little Rose. I’m predicting. It seems that you have a knack for winning powerful men to your side.”

  There it is again. That prickling note of jealousy that seems so out of place in his gruff baritone.

  “I don’t want to play this game with you—”

  “Game?” Mischa laughs. “Oh no, this isn’t a game to you. This is life. Vanya pities you, but I know you. I know how you could survive a man like Robert Winthorp all these fucking years. You crawled inside his head like a parasite—”

  “Robert is who he is without me,” I counter. “I didn’t make him do a damn thing.”

  “Oh really? Then you don’t know the bastard as well as you claim to. And I’m starting to think he never knew you, either. His precious wife, a snake—”

  “And you’re a murderer.”

  “A murderer…” His eyes widen, and then he nods, chuckling. “Yes. Most recently for you. Isn’t that right?” He fingers a strand of my hair, twisting it around his finger. Leaning close, he murmurs near my ear, “I killed Nikolaus for you.”

  “And again, I ask: Is that supposed to impress me?”

  “It doesn’t,” he admits, his mouth tilted in amusement. “But you are used to grander displays of affection, aren’t you? Men who parade you before their fucking captives for sport.”

  “Stop!” My heart races as my throat resonates with the force of the shout. Mischa has the rag against my thigh and I shove his fingers away. “Don’t touch me.”

  “You really want to go through this again?” He drops the rag into the water and stands. “Be my fucking guest.”

  But he doesn’t leave. He’s there near the door, watching. To mock me. To gloat.

  “You want to know the real difference between you and Robert?” I croak, knowing he can hear me. Goading him is a dangerous, foolish act—but I can’t stop myself. My eyes burn as I shift my weight as much as I dare. My bandaged foot might be able to bear weight. Gingerly, I lower it to the floor, guiding my thigh between my hands. I tentatively bear down and the knee buckles. “He is selfish,” I say, gritting my teeth in frustration. My body is too weak to stand.

  So I’ll crawl.

  I don’t think about the pain or the potential consequences of injuring myself further. Clenching my jaw, I throw my weight to one side of the bench and brace myself with my hands. Sure enough, the bench topples beneath me and a monstrous crash echoes throughout the room. Pain sears along my side, but I can still move.

  “He is selfish,” I repeat, dragging myself forward with the friction caught beneath my fingertips. “But you? You are childish. I knew what Robert thought of me. What he felt. What he feared. He could admit it out loud.” Even in the form of a mindless, enraged rant. “But he didn’t lash out and brood like a child—”

  “Enough,” Mischa growls as I reach for the rim of the tub. “Stop this. You’ve made your point.”

  He advances and shuts the water off. Then he grabs my waist and positions me upright by the water’s edge.

  “I understand now. You have the bastard whipped.” He fishes the rag from the tub, but when he brings it to my skin, I slap his hand away. When he tries a second time, I swipe at his arm, knocking the rag from his grip. A low, ragged inhale is my warning of his annoyance.

  But pain is the only antidote to fear.

  “I said don’t touch me.”

  “Then wash your fucking self!” He snatches the rag and throws it at me.

  I flinch as it slaps against my hip, but then I grab it and dip it into the water myself.

  “While you’re at it, get yourself back into fucking bed as well.”

  “I will.” Crawling to my room seems impossible—at least until I look him in the eye. I’ll do it. Even if I have to use my fucking teeth for leverage. “I’d rather break every damn bone in my body than rely on you for anything.”

  His mouth quirks again and my stomach clenches in response. “Do it,” he goads. “I’ll even bring you a fucking hammer. Then you’ll just remain my captive forever.”

  “Captive?” A nasty, broken sound rips from me and I barely recognize it. A laugh? I try smothering it beneath my palm, but it’s too late. I force my trembling fingers to my side and meet his gaze head-on. “I thought you said I wasn’t? Or is liar a term I should add to the list of differences between you and Robert?”

  When he says nothing, I gamble my little bit of pride on two snarled words: “Get out!”

  He shouldn’t leave so easily. Not without putting up a fight or biting out one final insult. Regardless, the door slams behind him and I’m alone.

  Which would be a welcome fact in any other context but this. Mischa fits the dog comparison well; he only retreats in order to plan an even
more vicious assault.

  Still, I swallow hard and pick up the rag, washing myself as best as I can. He left clean bandages for my chest, which I don’t have a hope of tightening, as well as a fresh, plain cotton nightgown. After cleaning myself as much as possible, I pull the nightgown on.

  And now what?

  I eye the door and brace my trembling fingers over the marble flooring. I’ll crawl. I will. Determined, I start to shift my weight, pushing off with my palms, moving toward the door inch by inch.

  It flies open when I’ve barely made it a foot away from the tub.

  “Here.” Mischa shoves something into the room that clatters over the floor.

  I cringe as it comes close, only to blink as my brain struggles to register the bulky shape. It’s black and small, rolling with its own weight. A wheelchair?

  “So you say you don’t want to be a captive?” Mischa echoes. He grabs me by my waist and hauls me into the wheelchair. “Then come. And earn your fucking right to call yourself anything else.”

  My heart pounds as I watch him leave for the umpteenth time. I want to ignore him. Ram myself into him. Scream. Shout.

  Anything but follow. As a compromise, I delay the inevitable by sinking back into the chair. With both hands, I ease my casted foot into the closer leg rest and gingerly maneuver the other the same way. My fingers drift to the wheels on either side, testing them. With moderate effort, I maneuver myself from the bathroom and into the hall.

  Mischa’s there waiting. Without a glance in my direction, he starts down the hall. To his office. I recognize the wide study beyond the doorway.

  “You want to talk business, Robert’s wife?” He’s behind me in an instant and quickly wheeling me toward the desk.

  Alarmed, I throw my hands out to brace myself against the wood, but he pulls me to a stop at a safe distance.

  It feels so strange to be out of bed. Despite knowing that he has yet another game in store, I can’t smother a sigh of relief. His office is a new dungeon at least. A new battlefield.