Page 37 of His Disobedient Bride

Then we are back in the car and somehow I end up sitting between the Pakhan and Cerise. That must have been her doing, because that’s clearly the safest place for me right now.

And finally the door shuts, our driver takes off, and the gates are opening. I feel the communal exhale of breath as we go onto the main road again.

For a few tense moments nobody says anything.

“Goddamn close call,” Dmitri grunts, his eyes flicking between Cerise and the Pakhan.

The Pakhan only grunts in response, suddenly looking tired.

Cerise rubs her head with her hands. A few of her dark thick curls have escaped her updo.

“Why?” I ask, trembling.

She glances over at me.

“All it would have taken,” Cerise says, “is for Vadim to have kept hold of that knife for one more second. One more second. One second to have it in his hand and facing me. And we would’ve been in deep shit. Can’t make an alliance and can’t get that name when they’re all dead.”

I follow where she’s looking and it’s at Andrei. His face is expressionless, but I know now she means that that Andrei would’ve killed Vadim for making even the slightest move toward Cerise. She saved the alliance by neutralizing Vadim before he could threaten her.

“I’m sorry for hitting you,” Cerise says.

“Why did you?” I ask irritably. I didn’t mean to do it, after all.

“She hit you,” Frederik says, his voice clipped and angry, “to prevent anyone else from punishing you. Her hitting you meant that she claimed the right to punish you for what you did, and that anyone else punishing you would be an insult to her. That was,” he concluded, with awful finality, “a very expensive item, and I did tell you not to touch anything.”

“So sorry,” Cerise said. “It had to look realistic because I was afraid they would horsewhip you. However,” she continued, her eyes still on Andrei, “I have other matters to attend to. My husband may have things for me to do when we get home. I am afraid I will have to delegate your punishment to Frederik now.”

28

FREDERIK

“Get in the room,” I tell Mary sharply, and she walks nervously in front of me to our bedroom.

I’m furious at her. Her disobedience created a very dangerous situation, and, worst of all, might easily have killed her. If Cerise hadn’t been so fast to claim punishing Mary for herself, Pytor or someone in his Bratva might have.

The blood runs cold in my veins and I realize something. I can’t live without Mary.

I have been trying to stay away from her for so long, only fucking her when the need grows irresistible in my belly. But I’m tired of doing that.

Amazed at my own savagery, I push her down on her belly and tie her roughly to the bedposts, her arms stretched out in front of her, her legs tied to the bottom bed posts.

I jerk off my own jacket angrily, and my knife falls out of my coat pocket. I pick it up, surprised at how easily it comes to my hands. I put it back in my pants pocket. I remember back before I started graduate school, back before I met my first wife. Back when it was my mother, Grigoriy, and me, scrabbling for food in a run-down street of a grimy neighborhood in a tiny brutal Siberian town. I remember how one day a thief stole my mother’s grocery bags. I remember her wail of misery, knowing that we didn’t have any more money for food until the next week. I gave chase, in the snow, after the man. I was only a boy and he was much bigger and stronger than I was. He turned around and clouted me in the head, knocking me away and against the wall. But I got up, my head ringing, and brought out my knife. It was small and poorly made, but I chose my spot wisely, and I stabbed him without remorse. As he went down, I grabbed the bag of groceries and I ran. There was a spot of blood on the snow as I ran away but I didn’t look back. I don’t know if the man lived or died. And I don’t give a shit.

That’s where I come from. That’s the savage I am, even though I’ve tried to hide it under years of graduate work, decades of being a professor, and luxury cars and sweaters.

My second kill is what really haunts me, though. I had a book I had scavenged from one of the burn piles in our neighborhood. I didn’t know how to read very well, even though I was almost a teenager, but I loved the way the words looked on the page. One day I was feeling the pages on my front step, when a bigger boy, a teenager, came by and ripped it from my hands. I gave chase again, and this time it was almost eerily easy to kill him. I paced myself and waited until he had tired himself out. Then I came up to him and stabbed him again, in the place I knew, and grabbed the book. I didn’t even look back this time, didn’t notice if there was blood on the snow or not.

I guess it is time to admit my own inner savagery, my own barbarism that I’ve tried to keep hidden. I want Mary, even though I’m a bad man. And I’m going to take her, even though she’s good and pure. I’m going to sully her and I don’t care.

I pull out my belt and I hear her yelp.

“You have to obey me,” I say roughly. “There is no room for error with our family business.”

I let the belt go, but I am in control of myself, so I just let the tiniest tip of it flick her ass. Just enough to get her attention.

She wails and shrieks like I’m murdering her.

I do it again, on her other ass cheek.

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