Page 8 of The Bratva's Innocent Sold Bride
“I hope you know how to cook and clean, little one, because I’m firing all my servants. You’ll be my one and only.”
Mat’s deep rumbling voice sent a shiver through me, and the way he looked at me was worse than the proprietary glance at the door. Now he really believed he owned me. I shook my head, unable to find words. He nodded, his lips curling into a grin.
“Oh, and we’re getting married.”
My father found his spine and leapt from the chair. “What?” he shouted. “Are you insane?”
“I don’t think I am, no. CJ will be my wife. You don’t think your daughter’s life is worth what you owe me? You’ve already sold her to save your own.”
Full body tremors started from my hands that gripped the edge of the couch. I could hardly feel my feet. I shook my head again, only to keep from passing out. Whatever my father agreed to before, he was as shocked at the pronouncement that I’d be marrying this guy as I was.
Dad kept begging him to reconsider. “I already promised you the controlling shares in Taurus,” he said.
I whipped around, almost more astonished at that than the fact he was using me as payment for a debt. When Mat sneered that the stocks were worthless since the company was about to fold, I was stunned. Was it true? It seemed so, like the rest of the nightmare unfolding around me.
“Dad, what’s happening?” I whispered.
He turned to me, eyes bloodshot, snot running from his nose. My heart felt like it was being burned to ash, seeing him like that. I turned to Mat and stuck out my chin, rising on my wobbly legs.
“You can’t do this,” I told him. He took two long steps so that he was right in front of me, the heat of his body emanatingfrom his immaculate suit jacket. No, not quite immaculate, there were spatters of my father’s blood on the lapel. I almost wilted, but I somehow stayed upright, staring straight into those eyes that meant to own me. “You can’t do this,” I said more forcefully.
He barked a laugh, cutting his glance to my father. “Tell her, Gordon.”
Dad put his face in his hands. “He can, CJ. He can do whatever he wants.”
“Very good.” He turned back to me, his eyes raking over my body, making me want to sink back into the couch and disappear. “And what I want is a pretty maid to answer to my every whim and to drive what’s left of your company into the ground.”
My father wouldn’t look up, wouldn’t say another word, only cried behind his hands. Mat wrapped his big hand around my arm and tugged me out of the library. I was frozen with terror and grabbed onto the door frame. His grip tightened.
“It’s you or your father’s life,” he said. The same way I would order an iced tea with no sugar.
This was really happening. At that moment, my father made me sick with anger, tinged with pity he didn’t deserve. I could barely pay attention as we drove toward the valley, though it seemed like I should know where he was taking me. We finally went through a gate, more like a ranch than a neighborhood. I knew people who lived up this way, and they all had large tracts of land with horses or home vineyards.
After about half a mile, we came to the mansion, wild and rambling behind a round driveway that veered off to what looked like a small plane landing strip behind rows of high shrubs. An arched portico wrapped around one half of the front, the cool beige stone columns blending with the tan stucco. Highwindows reached almost to the roof on the second story, and an oak tree waving in the slight breeze reflected in the glass.
No one greeted us, the place was as silent as a tomb inside, and almost as empty. Only a side table in the long entry hall, and the sound of his keys when he dropped them on it, sounded louder than it should have. Or maybe that was a side effect of heart-stopping terror.
I had to gather my strength, fight to the death if that’s what it took, but I didn’t want to die, just like my weak father didn’t want to die. I was in this man’s clutches, under his control, and it was difficult to breathe, let alone prepare to claw his eyes out at the first move he made on me.
He’d been silent the entire way to this place, my new home, and remained stony as he marched me upstairs. At the end of one hall, he opened a door to reveal a bedroom. A simple bed, albeit huge, side tables, an armchair, and two other doors, which I presumed led to a closet and a bathroom. Certainly not to freedom.
I balked at the door, but he shoved me in. This was it. Time to fight.
“You’ll sleep in here until after the wedding,” he said, voice ice cold. “I’ll give you your chore schedule in the morning.”
With that, he shut the door, and I heard him walking away. No need to fight. What was this? The beast who had taken me as payment was old-fashioned and traditional? I sank to the carpet, limp with relief that there would be a reprieve from whatever he had planned for me.
This meant I still had a chance. To do what, I had no idea, but I was so exhausted from the whole thing that I closed my eyes and fell asleep. Hopefully, I’d wake up in my own bed and this would all be a barely remembered nightmare.
Chapter 6 - Mat
I grumbled all the way to my own room, slamming myself in. I was too lenient with Gordon. All that time spent researching, coming up with the ultimate plan to take his daughter to make him suffer, and once I laid eyes on CJ, it all went out the window.
Oh, I was taking her all right, but not to do all the things I threatened. There’d be no selling CJ to the highest bidder, no sending her to Russia to never be seen again. She had to be mine.
There was just something I saw in the depths of her green eyes, more golden brown when she was pretending she wasn’t scared of me. I liked that, too. Shaking down to her shoes and still sticking her chin up at me. I wanted to wrap her up in my arms and assure her everything would be fine, but I still had to teach her father a lesson.
Don’t mess with Mat Fokin. And here I was tucking her in the only guest room I’d gotten around to furnishing instead of chaining her in the wine cellar and sending pictures to Gordon to prove she was suffering. There was something about that woman that wouldn’t let me do it.
