Page 73 of Poisoned Vows

His fingers are bloody. “Was that what you were doing?” I choke out. “Torturing someone?”

“How do you think I know what’s going on?” His thumb presses harder against the nail. Even that is uncomfortable. I don’t want to think about the kind of pain he’s describing. “I am a master of getting information, little rabbit. I don’t shy away from blood, and screams don’t touch me. Yours won’t, either.”

I try to find some measure of courage. Somewhere, there has to be something. I can’t crumble in front of him. My tears won’t help. “You can do whatever you want,” I manage, forcing each word out even as my entire body starts to shake. “It won’t matter, because there’snothing to fucking tell, Nikolai! My father has never told me anything! All I know is what I was meant to do—be a plaything and a bedmate for your father or whoever he chose to give me to. That’sall. I swear—I don’t even know who he was trying to replace. All he ever taught me, all he ever told me was what he thought would make me a better mistress. I swear—Nikolai,please. You wanted to hear me beg. Fine. Please believe me. I don’t know what thefuckis going on…and you’re going to tear me apart for nothing.”

The words come out in a rush, tumbling over each other, and I feel him go very still. His face is still a mask, still full of cold anger as he looks down at me, but I feel the hand in my hair loosen ever so slightly.

And then he lets go of me—so fast that I slide down the glass as my knees give out onto the hard wooden floor. I land on my ass, looking up at him as he stares down at me with a mixture of rage and contempt—a look I’ve never seen him give me before.

“Get up, Lilliana,” he says, his voice low and dangerous. “I’ll give you one chance to explain yourself. That’s it. So make it quick.”

Lilliana

For a moment, I don’t think I’m going to be able to. I don’t think I can make my legs hold me. But slowly, I push myself up to my feet, swallowing hard as I face my husband—a man I don’t even recognize right now.

He’s never shown me this side of himself before. I don’t even know if he’s going to listen to me. If he’s going to hear anything I’m saying.

“I don’t know anything about what’s going on,” I tell him in a hushed voice. “If you say this is my father—I believe you. My father is a terrible, awful man. But I don’t know what he was planning. I never imagined—”

“Don’t fucking start crying,” Nikolai hisses. “I swear to god, Lilliana—” His fists clench at his sides. “What I’ve lost today—”

“Is Marika dead?” I press a hand to my mouth, fighting back tears. I feel sure that if I start crying, it will tip him over the edge, and I won’t have a chance to even try to explain before he starts taking pieces off of me. I can feel how close that thread is to fraying. “Nikolai—”

“Right now, she isn’t.” His voice is tight and hard. “But I don’t know where she’s being kept. I’m going to fucking find out. But I need to know what you know first. What you and your father—”

“Nothing!” I burst out. “I keep saying it—what do I have to tell you for you to believe me? I don’t know what the hell he was thinking—”

“Then tell me what youdoknow,” he growls. “Tell me why a girl barely in her twenties doesn’t have a hobby outside of gym sessions and hair appointments. Tell me why you can name every city in every country on every continent, but you can’t hold a conversation that isn’t just parroting facts. Tell me why you were supposed to be a virgin—youwerea virgin—who claims she never even touched herself, but you suck a cock like you know what I’m supposed to like.” His hands, clenched into fists, flex and tremble. “Tell me, Lilliana, or I will make you tell me everything anyway.”

I know he will. The hardest part is getting the words to come past my lips.

“My fucking father groomed me as a way to get deeper into the Bratva,” I hiss, the venom in my words apparent from the moment I start speaking. I can’t hold it back. I’ve been stifling the pain of all those years in his house, all the things he did, all the ways he made me feel, for as many years as I’ve lived there. I’ve hated him for just about as long. And I want Nikolai to understand that there’s no love lost there. That I want no part of my father or his dealings—and that he only ever wanted me for one thing.

“I was only ever meant to be a distraction,” I tell him. “Not a bride. He neverdreamedthat whoever I was given to—your father or whoever your father chose—wouldmarryme.” I swallow hard, trying to breathe. “I was taught everything he thought I needed to know to hang off of apakhan’sarm for as long as I was wanted. I was taught how to eat at a fancy dinner, how to carry on a conversation about any number of topics, when to be silent and when to speak, how to dress, and how to do my makeup and hair. And I was taught what men like in bed.”

Nikolai’s face darkens. “So you lied to me?” He takes a threatening step forward, and I shrink back, letting out a small cry when I feel the glass press against my back, a reminder that there is such a fragile layer between me and the long drop to the street below. “You weren’t a fucking virgin?”

“No!” I hold up my hands, trying to ward him off, trying to force back the burn of tears in my eyes. “I was! I swear, I was. I told the truth. I hadn’t even touched myself, just like I said. Ihatedthe idea of sex. Nothing about it turned me on. I didn’t want anything to do with it.”

“Why?” Nikolai’s jaw tightens. “What do you mean, then, you weretaught? Did your father—did he touch you?”

I swallow hard. “No.” I shake my head. “Not—himself. No one touched me. He was very clear on that point. But he would pay—people. Escorts. Men and women. He would have them come to the apartment, because he refused to take me out to any of those places and have them perform all kinds of—things.”

“What kinds of things?” Nikolai asks, the words dark and slow. “Be a little clearer, Lilliana. You don’t want any misunderstandings with me tonight.”

“Sexual acts,” I whisper. “How to give a man a handjob. A blowjob. How to fuck. All the different positions, all of it in excruciating close-up detail. The kinks a man might have, the things he might say, and how to respond. And I was quizzed on all of it. Made to watch over and over and then asked questions. My father would say the things he thought thepakhanmight say to me, and…punish me if I didn’t respond the way he thought would be…arousing enough.”

The last sentence I have to force out. It’s disgusting, horrible, the things he made me do and feel without ever even having to touch me. “So you can see why I didn’t lay in bed at night and touch myself to imagined fantasies of the man who was going to eventually rape me with my father’s encouragement.” The words drip with bitterness, with cold anger to match Nikolai’s, and I feel some of the tension drain out of me as I look at him. I’m not even sure I care any longer if he believes me. I feel suddenly exhausted from recalling all of it, from remembering just how terrible it all was.

Nikolai’s face is set in hard, angry lines. “And he thought that would accomplish what he needed?” His voice is so careful, so taut, that I feel like he’s a ticking bomb waiting to explode. Anything I say could set him off. But I have a strange feeling that it might not be me that he’s angry with any longer.

“He wanted me to be good enough to please thepakhan. He assumed if I pleased him, then he would get what he wanted. It was just another part of myeducation.” I spit out the last word as if I can’t get it out of my mouth fast enough. “He was ambitious, and he used me for his ambitions. That’s all I know. He controlled everything about my life. What I ate, what I wore, how I did my hair, the routines I did at the gym. Everything was perfectly thought out to turn me into the idealspecimento be the fucktoy for your father. He abused me, and I had no choice but to let him.”

I suck in a harsh breath, staring Nikolai down, feeling tears well up in my eyes despite myself. “Even when I left the house was controlled. So when you ask me about hobbies or make small talk when I’ve never even had a friend—” I shake my head. “Fuck this. I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. But I need you to understand that I don’t know a goddamn thing about what my father was thinking or doing except that he had ambitions, and he used me to get them. I was promised my freedom, and instead, I got marched into a different prison.”

I shake my head, swallowing back a threatening sob. “I have no idea what he’s capable of,” I tell Nikolai. “But I imagine it’s plenty.”

And then I press my hand over my mouth, stifling the whimper that slips out, because I can’t speak any longer. It’s taking everything in me not to burst into tears.

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