Page 44 of Trapping His Angel

I stabbed my fork into my food, looking toward my brothers to help. Each avoided my eyes, as I searched down the table for a friendly face.

“Why can’t it be when I’m ready?” I grumbled, like the child I was.

“Therefore, we are sending her to The Academy. He’ll be furious if she speaks like this when he is ready to claim her,” my mother whispered loudly. She’d been drinking throughout dinner and was sloppy drunk now.

“Let’s get her out of the house now, before she becomes a bigger burden,” my father agreed.

A flash behind my eyes, and a new scene took hold. I was only seventeen.

Headmaster Mikhail summoned me to his office again, and I walked in on shaky legs. I hated it when he called me down here. I’d been avoiding him for hours, but his appetites never wavered.

“Ah, Isadora,” he said like an old friend. “Come in and shut the door.”

I didn’t want to, but if I left it open, I would be punished for everyone to see. I would rather my humiliation not be witnessed.

“Kneel.”

I kept standing.

“You have not learned your lesson, I see,” he said sadly.

I held back a scoff. Headmaster Mikhail didn’t give a damn. He took great joy in my defiance. He made my indifference painful. If I didn’t react, one or more of the girls could get hurt.

We were so afraid, now that Valentina wasn’t protecting us.Headmaster Mikhail was unhinged. He didn’t care about the girls he was selecting. It was almost like he had a death wish.

He’d brought many of the younger girls into his office with me, his tastes running younger and younger.

He dragged me by my hair down to the crypt, and locked me inside. I didn’t scream this time. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. I slammed my hands against the lid, as if it would do me any good.

My body froze when I heard the haunting scurrying sounds of the rats.

Another painful flash, as memory after memory of my life flashed behind my eyes. I was a Cartel bastard. A princess in her own right. I’d been sold into marriage at a young age. My fiancé was an awful Cartel leader, who wanted to expand the new drug my family was pushing out.

I couldn’t believe this.

The Bratva would kill me if they knew who I was, but they’d gotten files of some of us girls from The Academy. What if one of them was mine, and they already knew who I was? Could that be possible?

I stayed on the tiled floor until my head stopped throbbing as much. As I slowly sat up, I realized I felt better than I had since I was rescued. My mind was clear. There were no voices and no flashes of anything.

I wondered if all of my memories were in place, but I wasn’t willing to poke more. The information I’d learned had been more than enough. I wasn’t certain if my life was in danger or not.

Benedikt didn’t seem like he wanted to kill me. He acted as if he needed to get me pregnant as fast as possible. Maybe that was the solution; become the mother of his child and I was safe.

That was absurd.

Babies didn’t protect anyone. They just complicated matters. I was certain of that. There had to be another way to stop the Venezuelans from hunting me down. I could plead my case tomy newfound Russian family. But if the Venezuelans were doing what I think they were doing, Benedikt may snap my neck in retribution.

I stood underneath the shower spray with a clear head, and a churning in my belly. I was supposed to be married to one of the worst capitáns in our history. He slaughtered anyone who looked at him sideways.

Women were property to him, and he owned slaves.

I didn’t want that to be my life, and I was vocal about it, so my parents sent me to The Academy. According to them, all I was good for was being a broodmare. I went there trying to escape one nightmare, and fell into another.

Headmaster Mikhail broke my spirit.

Of everyone in The Academy, I don’t understand why he set his sights on me. Why he forced me to do things I could never speak about again, his proclivities breaking my soul, one day at a time.

I headed out of the shower and dried myself off. I padded into the room and got myself dressed. I didn’t know where I was heading. I couldn’t run. I was already married to Benedikt.