Page 4 of His Disobedient Bride

“Come on, brat,” he says. “Let’s go take a shower.”

* * *

I run my fingers over the blood on his shirt after he’s casually thrown it off.

The sight of blood on his shirts doesn’t faze me anymore.

Because I know it’s not his.

I wonder when I became someone who expects to see tiny splashes or wide smears of blood on her husband’s shirts. I had had a very unremarkable and quiet childhood, growing up diligent and studious, and earning a PhD in Russian iconography. I played it safe, was a good daughter while my parents were still alive, and I didn’t take risks.

The first big risk I had taken in my life was agreeing to come to Russia and marry wealthy businessman Andrei Petrovic.

I tried to console my weak conscience as I slipped my sundress off my head. My husband was already in the shower, and if I didn’t hurry he would call out impatiently for me.

Andrei would never have let me go and was going to marry me regardless of what I said, so of course I shouldn’t feel guilty.

But.

My husband was a twisted man who loved me. And there was something in me that was dark and twisted, too. I had seen it flash out before, but what I didn’t know was how deep my darkness went. How far would I go to get something I wanted? The question frightened me. I just had to make sure to do modestly-spaced good deeds, and that would relieve my guilt of feeling a flicker of pride that my husband was brutal and feared.

I was aware that this logic wasn’t exactly airtight, but then I heard Andrei’s voice.

“Get in here, wife,” he said.

Still I delayed, looking at my naked body in the ornate full-length mirror near our bed. I could already see little bruises forming where Andrei had gripped me tightly in his ravenous need for me. My mouth curved up in a smile, and I walked lightly over to the shower and hopped in.

He was wet and clean, and he immediately encircled me with two strong arms, trapping me in front of him in the shower.

“What should I fuck, Cerise?” he asked, his voice silky and smooth. “Your pussy or your tight asshole?”

His tongue flicked at the hollow at the curve of my neck and I was almost undone already, a low moan torn from my mouth. I heard his deep groan of satisfaction, and he flipped me around and spread my ass wide and I bit my lip as my husband took what he wanted and I let the pleasure rise in my body until I knew it would burst like an inferno.

3

FREDERIK

“Why don’t you get married?” Cerise asks me in her bold, forthright way one morning as I’m working in my office at the beach house.

I don’t answer right away, looking out the window at the grounds of the Petrovic summer home. It’s a spacious modern villa, located in the wealthiest and most luxurious seaside neighborhood in the resort town of Sochi, Russia. Our property sits right on the Black Sea, the pebbly beach not far from our back door, the beach blocked off from other tourists with gates and guards.

“What would I get out of a wife?” I ask Cerise.

When my first wife died of pneumonia many years ago, I was still a graduate student. She never lived to see me as a professor, the head of my department.

She also never lived to see me become a member of a brutal Russian Bratva, either. Even though I don’t build, design, or manufacture weapons of death like my brother, or enforce and kill for our business like my nephew and son, I’m just as guilty. I have just as much blood on my hands. I’m where I am today because my brother paid for my prestigious professorship with Bratva blood money.

She was so beautiful, so good. She would’ve hated what I’ve become.

So for 20 years I’ve had only a string of lovers and mistresses. I’m trying to live up to my late wife’s kindness and gentleness, but I also know that I’m miserably failing.

My big brother Grigoriy has never pushed. He is deeply loyal. He orders that a library and study be built in every one of the family properties so that I’m comfortable, and able to pretend I’m more moral than the rest of my family.

But it doesn’t work, it doesn’t take. I know it’s not true.

I’ve done things in my past that are just as dark as anything the Bratva does now. But I’m not that man anymore.

“You’d get a lot out of a wife,” Cerise says with finality, breaking into my reverie. She folds her arms stubbornly. “You need someone to get you out of the house more often. You’re starting to look like a goddamn ghost, Frederik.”

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