Page 2 of Vicious Temptation
The incident. The way someone might describe a flat tire, or an argument between friends. The kind of thing that causes a problem, but not an insurmountable one. Incident is such a small word to describe what happened to me. And somewhere in that twisting, sick feeling in my stomach, I feel a flare of anger, too. My father wants to dismiss what Pyotr did to me, but he can’t possibly imagine how it felt. He can’t possibly imagine how I still feel, and I don’t think he wants to.
“The first,” I say dully, staring at the picture. There’s nothing particularly significant or interesting about the man staring up at me. Dark hair with hints of grey at the temples, dark eyes, a flat expression, a not-objectionable face. “You make it sound like you’ve been looking for someone since I was brought back here.”
My father doesn’t respond at first, and that’s really all the answer I need. “There’s plenty of gossip about your—condition, Bella. You’re lucky that Tommas?—”
“My condition?” I look up at my father, feeling that tightness in my throat spread, turning into a hot burn of tears behind my eyes. “You mean the result of how I’ve been ever since I was brought back from the Bratva—who you convinced me I would be safe with?—”
“We don’t need to go over it again, Bella.” He cuts me off sharply, and I sink back into the chair, feeling like I’ve been struck. I know that my father thinks that I’m being dramatic, that the reactions I’m still having to the aftermath of what Pyotr and his men did to me should have stopped by now. But it hurts every time I’m faced with it.
There’s a reason I keep to myself most of the time now. Why I spend most of my time in my room and eat most of my meals alone. Why I don’t wake up until late, and feel tired all day.
“The deal that the Bratva offered was presented as genuine,” he continues, letting out a frustrated breath as he takes the papers and Tommas’ photo and pulls them back to his side of the desk. “I couldn’t have known it was a trap, Bella. Or what would happen to you. You can’t possibly think that I—or Salvatore, for that matter—believed that was what would happen. Otherwise, neither of us would ever have agreed to it.”
I know he’s right. Deep down, I really do. My father is a greedy man, and one who would do a lot for more power, but I don’t think he would have outright sold me to a monster if he knew what that monster had planned. He believed that the Bratva’s promise of my safety, and the additional security that Salvatore had arranged and paid for, would be enough.
It’s just that he was wrong, and now I have to bear the cost of it.
“I don’t want to get married again,” I whisper, feeling panic tangle in my throat and threaten to cut the words off entirely. “I can’t. Please—I really can’t do it. Even just more time would help?—”
But as I say it, I know it’s not true. More time isn’t going to fix it. I don’t want to marry anyone else. The idea of putting on a wedding dress again makes me feel as if my skin is too tight for my body, as if I can’t breathe. The idea of walking into a church and down an aisle towards another man that my father has told me to marry sends that queasy feeling spiraling through me, until it feels like I might throw up on the gleaming hardwood floor of my father’s office. Panic floods me at the thought of someone touching me, at the thought of all the things I would be expected to do with this future husband. I feel like a trapped animal, on the verge of gnawing my own limb off in a bid to be free.
He takes a deep, slow breath, as if he’s trying to be patient with me. “I understand that you’re struggling, Bella. I do. I will find someone who I’m certain won’t hurt you. Tommas, to my knowledge, is a good man, and I’ll do my due diligence to make sure that he will be a kind and understanding husband to you. If not him, then I will find someone else, but you need to marry soon, Bella. Our family needs?—”
“You don’t understand.” I press a hand to my ribs, trying to breathe, trying to make my father grasp what it is that I’m saying. “I don’t want to get married at all. I don’t want to marry Tommas, or anyone else.”
The look on my father’s face tells me that he’s close to losing his patience. “That’s ridiculous, Bella. What are you going to do if you don’t get married? All mafia daughters marry. That’s your duty in this world of ours. To make a good match, and elevate our family. To ensure that we rise higher, through the generations. If you marry well, then your children will rise further, and so on.”
His voice has taken on the note that it does when he’s about to lecture me—a lecture I’ve heard before, on legacies and the importance of building them, and my place in all of that. It doesn’t matter that, so far as I can tell, this world we live in is shrinking as the one outside of it moves further and further into the modern age, and ideas like my father’s will become obsolete.
“I could go to college,” I venture. I can feel the panic winding tighter and tighter, heat burning behind my eyelids, but I have to try. “You know how much I love photography. I could get a degree in it, try to have a career of my own?—”
“That’s a hobby, not a job. Don’t be ridiculous, Bella.” My father shakes his head, as if he can’t believe we’re having this conversation. “And you don’t need a job. You need a husband, so you can do what you were always meant to for this family. If you were a son, your responsibility would be to inherit after me. Your responsibilities are different, but no less important.”
“I can’t,” I whisper. Tears well up, stinging my eyes. I can’t do it. Tommas looks innocuous enough from his picture; probably not someone who would hurt me the way Pyotr and his men did, but I still can’t. I know down to the very depths of my bones that doing this is impossible.
I won’t survive it. But my father thinks I’m just being dramatic.
“You’ve done your duty before,” he says stiffly, shuffling the papers into a pile. “You can do it again, Bella.”
Somewhere in the midst of all the fear and hurt, that rare surge of anger jolts upwards, searing through me. “You should think about where that got me,” I snap, lashing out even as I realize, somewhere deep within myself, that there’s no escaping this. My father will marry me off to someone again, and I have no path out. The panic that makes me feel is almost unbearable. It brings back all the desperation that I felt the day and night of that first wedding, the hopelessness, and I feel like I want to claw my way out of my own skin. Like I have to find a way out, no matter what that might be.
My father stiffens, narrowing his eyes at me. He knows he should take a large portion of the blame for what happened, but he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to admit that he’s responsible for allowing such terrible things to have happened to his only child.
“I have another meeting,” my father says tightly. “Go upstairs, Bella. We’ll talk about this later.”
There’s a finality in his voice that brooks no argument. I don’t know if I even want to try to argue. I’m not going to get anywhere with him, and right now, all I want is to be alone so that I can have my burgeoning panic attack in peace.
I stand up abruptly, shoving the chair back as the tears start to spill over. I don’t want to cry in front of my father, not when he so clearly doesn’t understand how this feels, or why I’m not over it yet, or why I can’t stand the thought of being married again. Here, in this room with him, I feel more lonely than I do when I really am alone.
I bolt for the door, wanting to be out of the uncomfortable room, away from the photo, still staring up from my father’s desk, away from all the expectations that I know I can’t fulfill.
The warm air of the hallway hits me like a slap to the face as I rush out of the cold office. I swallow hard, the tears falling faster as I bolt towards the foyer and the stairs that will lead up to my room, all of my focus on getting behind the closed door of my personal sanctuary as quickly as I possibly can.
I’m so focused on that, that I don’t even see the man who walks into my path as I rush down the hall. Not until I run right into him, smacking against a hard, broad chest, as he comes to an abrupt halt right in front of me.
Strong hands grab my upper arms, keeping me from falling ungracefully to the floor. He holds me there for a moment, and the smell of spice and vanilla fills my senses.
I look up at the man who caught me, and directly into the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen.