Page 15 of Guarded Rebellion

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Nerds,” Bryce teased lightly.

I shrugged, preferring that label to the others I’d suffered. Mafia princess. Frigid bitch.Nerdsounded nice. It sounded normal, even if I felt disillusioned to ever think I could be any shade of normal.

As soon as class was dismissed, Kelly hurried to her next one, which I wasn’t in. And sure enough, Lev was there.

“I didn’t give that punk permission to touch you,” he growled as he fell into step next to me on the walk to the parking lot.

I sighed, not making eye contact. “It was his arm on my shoulders. Nothing more.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t matter, that’s right.”And he moved it off me anyway.

“You don’t have the privilege to let any man here assume possession of you.”

“Look around, Lev,” I snapped. “This is a college campus. No one of importance is watching what I do.”

As soon as the words left my lips, though, Irina Petrov walked by with a few friends. I’d noticed her, the only other person here who moved in the same circles as I did when I was forced to be social for my uncle, but we had yet to cross paths and speak.

“Someone is always watching.”

“I don’t care.” I hoisted my bag’s strap higher on my shoulder. “I’ve got other things to worry about.”

He scoffed.

“I’ve got a test next week and I need to study for my chem lab.”

“Why bother?”

I clamped my lips shut and bottled in a scream.

“Why bother to study anything or be here?”

I hate you.He’d never understand. He’d never care to understand or respect that I could want independence from the life he’d always coveted. Lev had come into the Baranov organization as an orphan. He hadn’t been born into it like me.

“You’ll just be married off and bred soon enough,” he reminded me dryly.

“I’m aware,” I bit out.

“Then why try to escape fate? Why do you insist on wasting your uncle’s time and men to be here?”

The judgment in his tone irked me to no end. “Because,” I growled. That was all the answer he’d get out of me. Reaching the car door before he could, I wrenched the handle and yanked the door open.

Sliding into the car and slamming the door shut was the only means of venting my anger. As soon as he rounded the vehicle, he got in and glared at me in the mirror.

This is why they left. This is why Mother got Sonya out.Tears threatened behind my lids, but I breathed through the anger. I wouldnotgive Lev the satisfaction of witnessing me crying.

My mother and sister had escaped this very fate, to always be told what to do. To lack any real future to count on other than being forced to fuck a husband and spread my legs to produce an heir.

I hated them for leaving me behind. I hated my uncle for expecting me to stay in the family. I hated them all. But as I felt the burn of Lev’s glare on me through the reflection in the mirror, I decided to dish out my fury onhim.

Slipping away from him wouldn’t be easy. He never let me out of his sight, always within reach.

But I would find a way. The deep satisfaction of seeing him seething at Bryce’s arm around my shoulders was an ember of a fire I wanted to bask in the heat of again.

I'd dreamed of going to college as an avenue of escape, but as I was driven off campus to the apartment I shared with my overlord, I realized I hadn’t begun to try at all.

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