Page 92 of Untamed

“She’s not a fucking date, Rafail. This isn’t a teenage crush.” I have to tell them the truth. I have to bare my neck and admit to them what I haven’t even admitted to myself yet. “I love her. She’s my one.” My voice breaks. “I’d do anything for her.”

Rafail studies me. Silent. For once, his gaze actually softens.

“He doesn’t understand,” Semyon says quietly. I look from one to the other.

Matvei only shakes his head. “We haven’t shown him everything yet.”

I swallow, ice pricking my spine as Rafail opens his phone. “See this?” he says in a voice I know all too well, the same voice he used when I was in the principal’s office about to be expelled, or when I took his car and totaled it, or when I fell off the roof of the garage and broke my leg. The calm before the storm.

“The location of our enemies. This is the man you killed last week, yeah? You made an example of him. Well, there’s fallout, Rodion. They didn’t know who was behind it. Now that they’ve traced Ember’s account to LA, with the Kopolov name on that plane, theyknowyou were there.”

Fuck.

I thought I was so careful. I knew I was playing with fire.

If they brought me in here to get rid of her, if they fucking hurt one hair on her head?—

“What are you planning to do to her?”

I’m on my feet, but Semyon steps in front of me, his voice low and cold.

“Sit the fuck down, Rodion.”

He pulls up a tablet and shows me footage of Ember drinking tea with my sisters. “She’s fine.”

I sit back down, but I don’t relax.

“If you guys hurt her?—”

“We’re not going to fucking hurt her,” Rafail says. “Not if you do what we say. What have I told you every goddamn night you were in California? What did I tell you I needed you to get?”

I stare.

“A wife.”

A wife?

“Yeah, I said you need a wife,” Rafail repeats. “After the shit Semyon put up with.” He shakes his head. Arranged marriage to men like us is more complicated than it seems. Our reputations precede us.

Rafail goes on. “So these are your choices. You have two. Get rid of her, or wife her up.”

I stare. “She’s not one of us, Rafail. You can’t just?—”

“Notyet,she isn’t.”

Women in her world don’t just leap into marriage to save their lives.

Do they?

“You know I wouldn’t hurt her.” I shake my head.

My god. She’s gonna lose her shit.

“I do know. But you know what our family requires.” Rafail’s voice drops lower. “I would hate to order a hit on a woman you’re attached to. Or maybe even love.”

The coldness in his gaze makes me look away.

Jesus.

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