“What if he is?”
“Then I’ll send him his sister in pieces and he’ll have no one but himself to blame,” I snarl. “But honestly, I don’t believe he’s going to risk her life. He loves her too much.”
“Love, huh?” Demyan muses. “It’s been the death of many a man’s ambitions.”
“Yeah,” I growl. “I’m counting on it.”
24
OLIVIA
Freedom never tasted so sweet.
It’s ridiculous that I’m even calling it that. But after three days trapped in one room, even stepping out into the hallway feels like my first day in heaven.
I’m walking towards the stairs when I see a shadow growing on the wall, coming from around the corner of the hallway. I freeze, wondering if whoever I run into is just going to drag me back into my room and lock me inside again.
Then a maid appears. She is cute, petite, in a demure gray dress with her hair pulled into a neat bun.
“Ma’am.” She sounds respectful. I’ve almost forgotten what that feels like to be talked to like a human being.
“I’m allowed to be out,” I blurt. “Aleks, he… That is, the man—” I stumble desperately, hating myself already, but unable to stop the words from flowing out. “He said I was allowed to go anywhere I wanted within the house. Compound! I meant compound. That includes the garden, right?”
The maid is looking at me as though I’ve gone completely nuts. I can’t really blame her. I’m wondering the same thing myself.
“Of course, ma’am,” she says slowly. “It includes the gardens.”
“Right. Good. So then I’m just… walking.”
She gives me a sympathetic smile. “Can I get you anything?”
“Like what?”
She raises her eyebrows. “Can I offer you something to eat or drink? The kitchen is always fully stocked. The cook went out a little while ago to get provisions for dinner, but there’s always food available if you’re hungry.”
“Oh. I’ll just help myself, thanks.”
“Shall I show you the way?”
“I can manage it myself,” I say. “Thanks for your help.”
I dance around her and reach the staircase. When I glance over my shoulder, I realize she’s watching me. She looks positively confounded.
Like she’s trying to figure out why a man like Aleks would choose to marry someone like me. It almost makes me want to regale her with the entire tale.
Oh, don’t worry, you sweet summer child—he wasn’t really interested in me. It was a power play between my brother and him. I’m just the useless pawn caught between two men with egos the size of Texas.
Instead of making me feel important—look at me, I’m the centerpiece of a clash of titans!— it makes me feel sad, depressed, inferior. As though I’ve been reduced down to a shiny bauble for powerful men to paw over. A scrap of meat for the alligators.
Shuddering, I turn away from the maid and go down the stairs.
I’m wandering aimlessly down endless halls when I accidentally happen upon the kitchen.
It’s as beautiful as the rest of the house. A tall wall of glass looks down onto an open-concept living area on the floor below. Next to an open pair of lovely French windows sits a wrought-iron table set for tea for two.
Just like the maid said, I don’t see a cook—or anyone else, for that matter. I hold my breath and listen to be sure.
As soon as I confirm I’m alone, I sprint to the massive double door fridge and pull it open.
“Oh, sweet baby Jesus,” I breathe, taking in the containers of food stuffed into the first three shelves. Has anything ever looked so beautiful?
I pluck out an armful of containers, line them up on the marble-topped island, and open them up one by one.
Lasagna.
Ceviche.
A bunch of little pastries like sugar-coated clouds from heaven.
It takes some looking to find the drawer with all the cutlery and another few minutes for me to locate the microwave. I scrounge up a fork, but when I finally stumble across the microwave, I realize that there isn’t a button in sight. It looks like it was stolen off the set of The Jetsons, all black glass and smooth titanium.
Hm. I’m too hungry to crack this code right now. So I abort the microwave mission, pop myself up on one of the barstools, grab a fork, and start shoveling cold lasagna into my mouth like a hungover Garfield.
“So freaking good,” I moan with my mouth stuffed.
I power through half the lasagna before I start craving something to drink. I swivel around on my stool, but like everything else in this kitchen, the glasses are probably hidden somewhere out of sight.
“If I were a glass, where would I be?” I muse out loud. My words come out muffled because there’s still so much food in my mouth.
“Top cabinet.”
I nearly choke on my lasagna as I turn to see the one person I was really, really trying not to see.
“Aleks,” I try to say, but that just makes the choking worse. It’s taking full effort not to spray chunks of cheese and tomato across the room.
Smirking with amusement, he glides into the kitchen and pulls out a glass from a cabinet so high up that I’d never have been able to reach it on my own. After filling it with water from a pitcher in the refrigerator, he slides it across the counter towards me. It’s a thoughtless, effortless flick, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it cruises to a dead stop right in front of me.
Everything always works out perfectly for Aleksandr Makarova.
Rolling my eyes, I reach for the glass—and promptly knock it over.
Jesus Christ, not this again. The man must think I don’t understand the concept of cups.
I pick up the glass hurriedly as I swallow the massive meteor of food in my mouth and dab up the spilled water with a nearby dish towel.
Aleks, meanwhile, is snorting with laughter at the far end of the island. “I forgot who I was dealing with.”
“Shut up,” I mumble. “It’s your fault. You can’t just sneak up on people like that.”
“I wasn’t sneaking up on anyone; I was walking into the kitchen in my own home,” he says, still amused. “You were just so deep throating your food that you failed to notice me.”
I flush with color. “Imprisonment makes a girl hungry, I guess.”
“That’s no one’s fault but your own.”
“Right, of course,” I snap, rolling my eyes. “You had absolutely nothing to do with it.”
“As I’ve told you before, Olivia, we all have choices. But don’t let me stop you. You and that lasagna seem to be getting along really well.”
I pick up the fork like a hatchet, even though I have no real interest in continuing to eat. But I also don’t want him to think that I’m so self-conscious that I’m going to stop eating just because he walked in here. It’s a Catch-22, as always with him.
“You have maids and a personal chef,” I say, mostly to fill the silence. “Spoiled much?”
His gaze is always so much more intense when it’s quiet. “You think I have the time to cook and clean?”
“You wouldn’t do it even if you did have the time.”