“You keep forgetting something, kiska: I know you. Better than fucking Maxim does.”
She opens her mouth to say something else, but then her eyes flit over my shoulder. I glance around and realize that my mother is standing right there.
Watching the heated exchange.
How fucking wonderful.
“Go back to your room, Mama,” I tell her harshly.
“Stop it!” Camila yells before Mama can say a word. “Stop ordering her around like she’s your employee! Stop controlling me as though I’m your property! What gives you the right to decide what’s best for everyone?”
“I am the fucking don,” I growl, my voice rising for the first time.
She takes a step forward. “You’re not my don.”
“Wanna bet?” I ask cruelly.
Then I hoist her over my shoulder like a ragdoll.
I hear her panicked gasp before she catches her breath. “No! Isaak. Isaak! Put me the hell down! No.”
“I am sick of being questioned. I’ve put up with it long enough. You are in my house and you will do as I say.”
She starts beating her hands against my back, but I ignore it. She starts kicking her legs around wildly, but my grip on her is strong. She isn’t going anywhere until I decide to put her down.
“Son…”
I glance towards my mother, but my expression is a warning. She shuts her mouth immediately.
I stride back into the house and up to Camila’s room. Edith is in there cleaning when I walk in. Camila is still struggling hard, but her words have long since stopped making sense.
Edith looks positively terrified to see us both there in this state. She straightens up like a meerkat and looks at me with wide, shocked eyes.
“Leave us,” I tell her firmly.
That’s all the encouragement she needs. She snaps the door closed behind her and I move into the adjoining bathroom.
It’s clear that Edith has just finished cleaning in here because everything gleams. I dump Camila in her spotless white marble tub and turn on the water.
I make sure that it’s ice cold as it splashes down on her.
“Isaak!” she shrieks. “You bastard!
She struggles to get out of the tub, but I press one palm into her hip so she has no choice but to thrash around in the cold water. After a minute, she realizes that fighting only makes things worse.
So she stops. Her legs and arms go limp and she stares at me with her big green eyes.
The moment she stops fighting, I turn the knob. Hot water replaces the cold. She shudders as the water washes over her, and I can see the relief on her face.
I straighten up slowly, and look down at her. She holds her position in the tub, watching me warily.
I haven’t completely quelled the dissent in her eyes. It’s still there, beneath the quiet. And that deserves respect. She’s not the type of woman who can be broken in. To be honest, I’m not sure I’d respect her if she were.
Still, some things need to be said.
“You are not Bratva,” I intone. “You don’t understand our ways.”
Her jaw clenches, but I don’t know if it’s anger I’m seeing, or realization. Then the expression in her eyes seem to slip further away, and for a moment, I know my words have pushed her to thoughts of something else.
Or someone else.
“I will not be disobeyed. I call the shots here. That’s how it’s always been and that’s how it’ll always be. When I decide you should know things, I’ll tell you. When I decide you can do things, I’ll let you do them. Until then, stay in your room and stay out of my way.”
I’m almost out the door when she stops me with a soft question. “Is that what you expect from your wife?”
I pause without turning around. “As you keep reminding me, you’re not really my wife.”
“Then what am I?” she asks. “Am I your prisoner? Your plaything? Your fuck toy?”
“You can take your pick.”
She winces but doesn’t shy away from the conversation. “I know you want me to believe that,” she whispers. “I know you say deliberately hurtful things to push me away, and I think I’m starting to understand why.”
“Enlighten me,” I drawl.
“You care about me. More than you’re willing to admit. And somehow, you think that that makes you weak. That it makes you vulnerable. So you overcompensate by turning into a scary monster. Well, you know what, Isaak? You are a monster. But I’m not scared of you. So you can threaten me and humiliate me. You can throw me over your shoulder again and punish me in front of your entire household. But I’ll never stop questioning you. I’ll never stop fighting you. And I’ll never stop calling you out when I think you’re wrong. You married me. That was your mistake.”
It’s a fucking impressive speech, and it has me reeling for a second. Not that I let any of it show. Because I inherited my poker face from my father and he broke me down until I built myself up in his image.
I pivot slowly in place to face her. My face is impassive. She chews at her bottom lip.
“I don’t make mistakes, Camila,” I tell her.
She sits a little straighter in the tub, pulls her legs up, and wraps her arms around them. Her hair and clothes are completely drenched and translucent.
She still manages to look like a fucking mermaid. Her green eyes bore into mine without blinking or backing down.
And I have to wonder: where has all this confidence come from?
I’ve seen glimmers of it before. When we’ve fought. When we’ve fucked. But nothing as bold and as unabashed as this.
“There’s a first time for everything,” she tells me.
And almost impossibly, I find myself hoping that I’ve made the right mistake.
40
Camila
I stay in the tub.
Partly because the hot water feels so luxuriously comforting after that ice cold punishment Isaak had unleashed on me. And partly because I can’t bring myself to move.
So I stay here. Caught in between two forces I can’t explain, can’t resist, can’t decide between.
I’m still wearing my clothes. The fabric clings to my body in some places and floats around freely in others. I watch the patterns they make and try not to think.
I look up only when I hear a knock on the door. It’s definitely not Isaak. He’s not capable of knocking before he enters a room. It’s not Edith, either. The knock was too self-assured, too confident to belong to her.
“Can I come in?”
Bogdan?
I frown, but I’m incapable of feeling self-conscious right now. Then again, I’m incapable of feeling much of anything.
“You can come in,” I say, hating how small my voice sounds.
He steps into my bathroom and eyes me with a sympathetic expression. “Ah.”
“What are you doing here?”
“My mother told me what happened in the garden,” he says. “She wanted me to come up here and break up the fight.”
“Would you have done?” I ask curiously. “If Isaak had still been in here raging at me?”
“Depends,” he answers vaguely.
I roll my eyes. “Sorry I asked.”
Bogdan sighs and grabs the ornate chair that rests on the side of the bathroom. It’s meant to be purely decorative, but he ignores that, dumps off the carefully rolled towels that were resting on it, and sits down.