Page 13 of The Bratva King's Twins

Making my way down the hall until I reached the spare bedroom, I pushed the door open to find Vivian standing there with a vase in her hand, looking at me in surprise. Her screaming stopped.

The anger slowly dissolved from her face, turning into slight sheepishness as I took her in, and her cheeks filled with color.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I demanded of her, approaching with tense shoulders.

Vivian heaved in a big breath as if scrounging up her courage, and she held my gaze despite my initial impressions of her. “You can’t keep me here!”

“I can and I will,” I muttered.

She wound her arm back with the vase still in her grasp, flashing a look of defiance at me, to my surprise.

“Don’t you dare,” I snapped, cutting the space between us. Before she could throw it to the ground, I snatched it from her hand, forcing her to let go. “No matter how loud you are or how many things you break in this room, nobody is going to hear you.”

Vivian blinked back at me in astonishment, startled by the proximity. “This isn’t fair, and you know it.”

If she hadn’t been so defiant and arrogant, I would’ve been interested in how close we were then as I towered over her, noticing just how small she was in comparison. But I was at my wit's end, and I wanted her to be quiet.

“You’re wasting your breath,” I added, gritting my teeth. “It’s already done, and you might as well get comfortable. Like it or not, this is your home now, and it would do you some good to respect your surroundings.”

Vivian’s brows furrowed at the statement, letting those words sink in. She studied me closely before taking a step back to put more space between our bodies. Shaking her head absently, there was no mistaking the anger and disbelief on her features.

“You’re a monster,” she muttered, holding back tears and the rage she previously had shown for me. “You’re sick, and I hate you.”

Not that I would say it to her, but I was ashamed to admit those words had enough bite in them to sting.

I knew I shouldn’t care about what she thought or said, especially not so soon after bringing her home, but of all people, I'd never wanted my future wife to think that of me.

I was big and imposing, and I could certainly make any man cower, but that wasn’t all there was to me. Of course, she couldn’t see that—not yet, anyway.

Still, it didn’t numb just how venomously she said it, or how much she meant it.

Forcing myself to keep it in, I straightened my back and looked her square in the face.

“Call me whatever you’d like, but the sooner you accept this new arrangement, the sooner you’ll get to roam the house,” I told her with a slight edge of warning in my tone. “Get used to it, wife. You’ll be here for a while.”

As fury gathered in her once again, I chose to ignore it, and I made my way back toward the door.

Closing it again behind me, I paused just outside. At once, she started at it again, screaming and cussing at me to let her go.

With a sigh, I knew it was no use, and I just had to wait until she inevitably tired herself out.

Hopefully, it wouldn’t take too many more glasses of whiskey to make my brain cancel out the sound of her tantrum.

As irritating as it was, I didn’t want Vivian to think I was a complete brute. But at the same time, I knew I couldn’t sway her opinion from nothing.

Chapter 6 - Vivian

Every hour that passed was more torturous than the last. I felt like I was hallucinating and making up the entire thing.

Part of me wished that was true, but my nightmare was far too real to question.

I couldn’t wrap my head around how it happened, or why I was locked away in Aristarkh’s house. I didn’t know how I ended up being his wife, or why he chose me in the first place.

Nothing about it made any sense, and I was struggling to see how it could get any better.

I felt like a caged bird in my family’s home, waiting to be sold off to the highest bidder in exchange for an alliance or something else Dad could use to his advantage, and it had seemed like the worst treatment possible once.

But now, here, I felt just the same, only with my name on a marriage license and stuck with a man I didn’t know or care about.

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