Total pages in book: 31
Estimated words: 28975 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 145(@200wpm)___ 116(@250wpm)___ 97(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 28975 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 145(@200wpm)___ 116(@250wpm)___ 97(@300wpm)
She growled. “You’re so frustrating. Of course I was going to do as I was told. I know who you are and what you’re capable of.”
“And yet, you’re yelling at me right now. Would that make you a foolish person?” he asked.
“Probably.” She sighed. “I don’t even know why I am yelling.”
“You have learned some truths about your family, and it is scary.”
She shook her head. “It shouldn’t be scary. Family shouldn’t be that way. It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to you,” he said.
“But I can’t change it. I can’t change the way my father is. I don’t know how my mom put up with it. All this time, I thought it was because she was in love with him, but that was all lies. She hated him. I don’t know how my grandparents allowed this to happen. How it all happened.”
Anastasia climbed off the bed and began to pace. He watched her move back and forth.
“Marriages are like this,” Bogdan said. “They always have been. It is a business contract, however, in your parents’ case, it looks like they allowed most of the wealth to remain in your mother’s name. That is rare.”
“Could he have given her cancer?” she asked.
Bogdan looked at her. “No. He didn’t give her cancer.”
“He killed everyone else. Why not kill my mother?”
This had gone on long enough. Bogdan stepped into her path, grabbed her arms, and forced her to look at him. “He probably had every intention of killing your mother. We know he is willing to go to extreme lengths to kill you.”
“I hate him.”
“Good. Allow that to feed you, to drive you.”
She nodded her head.
He didn’t let her go. At this time, he didn’t think he could. It felt important to keep a hold of her.
“Will you kill me?” she asked.
“No.”
He watched tears fill her eyes.
“How can you be so sure?”
“You’re not going to do anything that will warrant me killing you.”
“What if Galkin asks you to do it?” Anastasia asked.
“He won’t.”
She tried to pull out of his arms, but he knew she wasn’t ready to be let go.
“Let me go.”
“No. I won’t let you go. Galkin is a lot of things, but he wanted this marriage, and unless you—not your father, not anyone else, you—do something that changes it, you’re going to remain my wife until we die.”
Anastasia stared at him, and he looked right back.
“Don’t you have a problem with that?” she asked, her voice just an octave above a whisper.
“No, I don’t.”
He saw the frown on her face. There was so much he wanted to say in that moment, but he let her go.
“Dinner is outside,” he said. With that, he left her alone.
Galkin was not going to force him to kill her. For one, for some odd reason, it amused Galkin to keep her alive. The other reason, he was owed a favor, and seeing as his reputation was accurate, he and Galkin knew that killing her would cause an all-out war.
He was loyal to the Galkin Bratva. It was in his blood, but it was because he earned his place. At the ripe age of thirteen, he made his first kill. His own father had been training him long before then. From what he remembered, like his father, it was claimed they both came from the Devil. Fighting and death was in their blood. Without a mother, from the age of five, he’d been training.
No one could best him, as there simply wasn’t anyone else in the world quite like him. He could kill entire mafia families within a matter of hours. There was no number to his death kill, because he simply didn’t know it. He’d killed that many people in a short space of time. There was no time to count.
He sat at the head of his table.
Anastasia belonged to him, and to keep the monster at bay, Galkin would make sure he could keep her.
At first, when Galkin suggested marriage, he didn’t want it. From looking at her picture, he’d known Anastasia was going to be a problem. He just couldn’t quite grasp why she would be a problem, and now he didn’t need to take the time to grasp it. She was a problem inside his head. He couldn’t get her out of it.
He wanted to fix everything around her, and that wasn’t good. On their wedding night, tearing into her virginity, she didn’t know this, but he had made a vow to protect her. No one had ever given him anything so precious. Even if she hadn’t been a virgin, he had no intention of killing her. No one but Galkin told him who to kill.
Anastasia walked into the dining room. He’d ordered from his favorite restaurant, cheeseburger with cheese fries. A rare treat he allowed himself. He pointed toward the chair beside him, and Anastasia sat down in it and sighed.