Page 3 of Ivory Oath

“I’ll worry about Agostino. The only thing I need you to worry about is getting yourself wedding ready.” He looks me over and his nose wrinkles. “You’ve really let yourself go.”

“I’m sorry that being held captive doesn’t agree with me,” I growl.

He waves me away. “The blood in your veins is the only thing that matters to me now. Finally, after six fucking years, I’m going to marry a Giordano.”

I hold up my left hand, flashing the rainbow-colored disco ball on my ring finger. “Didn’t you hear the news? I’m already married.”

His dark eyes narrow. They are nothing like looking into the deep blue of Mikhail’s eyes. Trofim’s are flat and emotionless. It’s like looking into a shallow, evil puddle.

“I heard. I also heard you showed up with a five-year-old. I don’t need to do the math on that to figure out when you spread your legs for my brother,” he hisses. There’s murder in his eyes for a second before he backs away with a shrug. “It’ll be easy enough to explain away. Mikhail raped you, you escaped, and then he tracked you down and forced you into marriage. Now, I’m back to claim my rightful title and my rightful bride. It’ll make a nice comeback story.”

“I don’t belong to you,” I snap. The chains rattling at the end of the bed don’t do much to prove my point.

“Oh, but you do,” he insists. “Whether you like it or not, you and I are getting married, Viviana. But if you make it difficult for me, your little boy will have to go.”

My heart jolts. “He’s a child.”

“He’s a liability,” he corrects, stalking closer to me. “He’s an embarrassment that you created by fucking my brother like a dirty whore.”

“And I’d do it again,” I spit.

Trofim’s hand cracks across my face before I even see it coming. My cheek burns hot. I can feel the imprint of each of his fingers on my skin.

Six years may have passed, but nothing has changed.

He stands up with a sigh. “I don’t know why you make me do this. I want things to work between us, Viviana. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“All you’ve ever wanted is a slave with your last name.”

He considers that for a second. “Call it whatever you want, but as long as you’re a good girl and do as you’re told, your bastard will stay alive.”

Dante isn’t a bastard. Mikhail and I are married. Our relationship is more legitimate than anything I’ve ever had with Trofim.

But I keep that to myself as Trofim brushes my hair away from my forehead. “It’s a good offer, Viviana. It’s more than you’ll get from anyone else now that you’ve let my brother ruin you.” He stops in the door, a wicked smile tugging the corners of his mouth. “Think it over.”

The door to my cell slams shut.

2

MIKHAIL

“I’d ask where you’ve been all afternoon, but the smell tells me all I need to know.”

I flip my brother off and grab my water bottle from the counter. “I only came back for this.”

I would’ve stayed in the gym until I knew everyone in the house was asleep, but I finished the last of the water bottles in the gym fridge a few hours ago. I’ve sweat so much that I’ll turn to leather if I don’t rehydrate.

“You’ve been in the gym for” —Anatoly checks the clock above the stove. “—six hours today. Feels like enough, wouldn’t you say, Raoul?”

Raoul shrugs, ducking his head behind the refrigerator door he has open. “It’s a lot.”

It is a lot. I can tell because my limbs are shaking and my muscles burn with every step. But the fact I’m still standing means I haven’t gone hard enough.

“You’re just jealous because you wish you were back in the gym, Nat.”

My brother narrows his eyes at me. “I think my surgeon would rather I not undo all of his nice stitch work on my chest.”

The fact Anatoly is home from the hospital less than a week after being shot in the chest is amazing to me. It’s one of the few good things to come from the last week.

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