"So, when shall I be granted an audience with my sister-in-law?" Jacob asks, a sly playfulness coating his tone. "And what happened to your forehead?"
Ishmael remains nonchalant as he turns another page of Samuel Group's acquisition proposal, reviewing the figures without the slightest hurry.
"Sir, the Moreno Foundation dinner is tomorrow evening," Mr. Caillet, his middle-aged
assistant, says. "They've confirmed your table."
"Cancel it." Ishmael draws a line beneath the projection,
writing two words in the margin: Too optimistic.
"I'll inform that you'll be represented." Mr. Caillet doesn't hesitate,
having already been instructed to reduce his public engagements to those that are strictly necessary.
"Ignoring me now, are you? And refusing to attend the gala you've never missed in all these years?" Jacob leans forward, his hands clasped between his thighs. "Can't bear to be away from my dear sister-in-law for long, can you?"
"What do you want?" Ishmael asks, circling the acquisition price of £350,000,000 before writing a single word in the margin: Revalue.
"Did you not hear me the first time?" Jacob says.
He shuts the folder, finally looking up at his closest confidant, wishing he could wipe that presumptuous grin off his face for good. Yet, almost immediately, his thoughts make a full circle back to Neva.
At least at work, he tries to keep his head calm and clear against the wild emotions that surge through him whenever she takes hold of his mind, body, and soul. Which is, more often than not, always.
Almost three days have passed since he brought her here, and he's still overcome with disbelief and elation that she is actually here. Beneath the same roof as him. Sharing his room. Sharing his bed.
Through hell and back again, what had he not done to finally have her home with him?
His Neva. His beloved. His childhood sweetheart.
Jacob leans back into the sofa, his arms folded across his chest.
"I've driven here straight from the airport after a business trip overseas rather than go home to my fiancée. All for what?"
He pauses, then adds, "And, brother..." A smile etches at the corners of his lips. "You're really something, aren't you? Stealing another man's wife in broad daylight.
I heard she even had a child. Am I right?"
Anger sweeps through his head in a brief, dizzying jolt before only the
painful realisation remains, like a heavy knot of rope tied around his throat with a stone weighing it down.
Jacob doesn't need to pour acid into his wound. He does enough by stabbing the wound each time he unwillingly recalls the fact he wants to burn to ashes.
A soft laugh escapes Jacob.
"Did she finally give in to you after realising what you could offer her, with a net worth in the billions?"
Before he can fling the mug of untouched coffee into Jacob's face, a knock sounds at the door.
Swallowing back the rage surging through his chest, he draws in a deep breath. "Come in."
Mr. Virtanen, his butler in his early sixties, opens the door and bows in greeting.
"What is it?" Ishmael reaches for the black folder containing the S-portfolio for his cartel business.
"Miss Neva refused her meal again."
Mr. Virtanen wears an apologetic expression on his pale, age-worn face.
Ishmael closes the folder. "Leave," he says. "Don't disturb her again."
"Yes, sir." Mr. Virtanen bows before turning to leave.
"Sir, the acquisition?" Mr. Caillet looks up from his tablet.
Ishmael heads toward the door. "Tell the sellers we're not proceeding at their valuation."
"Would you like to make a counteroffer?" Mr. Caillet asks.
"Not yet," Ishmael says. "Let them come back to us."
"She's a human being, Ishmael," Jacob says. "How long will you keep her shackled before she breaks?"
Ishmael pays him no heed and walks out his study.
His shoes click against the checkered tiles as he proceeds along the marble corridor, pale beneath its intricate designs, until he reaches the master bedroom, set up on the same floor as his study.
His hand remains still on the doorknob as he listens to the sounds within, but other than the faint sound of his own breathing,
it is deathly quiet throughout the mansion.
Without rendering himself another moment of reflection,
he pushes the door open, his gaze immediately landing on the figure tucked beneath the duvet.
He removes the lid from the breakfast tray on the coffee table before moving towards the bed, the bowl of light chicken-and-rice soup warm in his hands.
He sits on the bed beside her, watching as she pulls the duvet higher over her face.
"Love," he murmurs, brushing the strands of her dark, untamed curls away from her face. "You need to eat something."
She hasn't taken a drop of water since she was brought here, yet she remains stiff and silent, still turned away from him.
How long does she plan on sulking like this?
He places the bowl on the nightstand, hoping she won't snatch it and crash it against his head like she did with the vase.
"Love." He rests a hand on her shoulder.
"Don't touch me." Her voice is merely a whisper.
Even if her words dissapoint him, he's still glad to hear them, a small sign of progress after she had gone completely numb following her breakdown and attempt to stab him with a shard of glass.
Still admirably feisty, despite the fear rattling her bones, just like the little girl she once was.
Indeed, nothing has really changed between then and now. And with the slightest nudge to remember him, to remember their time in their true homeland, the hidden love buried within her would rise again like new shoots breaking through the earth.
"Neva," he says, trying to pull the duvet away from her face.
"Get away from me!" she cries, clutching the duvet tightly.
His jaw clenches.
That's it. He's done playing nice.
He had even vowed not to touch her again until she yielded to him willingly, after the day he gave in to his anger over all the signs of another man's presence in her life. The man's clothes, the shoes, the child's belongings hanging from the hangers,
everything that had nothing to do with him.
He even kept his promise, staying well away from her even though they shared the same bed.
And this is what he gets in return?
He roughly catches her by the jaw, forcing her face towards him.
"You don't want to test me," he warns through clenched teeth, his gaze fixed on her swollen eyes,
her pupils trembling and widening with fear.
For a moment, he almost feels bad, seeing how much she resembles a doe shuddering beneath the gaze of its predator.
He doesn't think he will ever forgive her for what she did to him.
Whenever she refuses him, it is her own doing that allows the pain, disgust, and anger to overwhelm his love for her. Then he hurts her, knowingly or unknowingly, only to pity her afterwards, the sight of her suffering calming him enough for his love and care to overcome the pang of her betrayal.
"I... I want to go back." Tears streak down her cheeks. And he's taken aback by
how impossibly beautiful she still looks even with the faint purple shadows beneath her eyes.
"Why?" He searches her face for a hint of recognition, something that might allow her to soften towards him sooner.
But all he finds is wariness, fear, and longing.
Longing, he realises, not for him.
He tightens his grip when she says nothing. "I asked, why?"
Her nails dig into his skin, but he couldn't care less. Her eyes close, tears slipping down her temples.
He leans closer, her lips quivering as he asks again, each word strained through a precariously restrained outburst. "Why do you want to go back?"
Only an infuriating silence answers him.
"Tell me!" he shouts in her face.
She flinches, choking out the words. "I... I can't live... live without them."
At once, he grabs the bowl of soup, the lukewarm liquid sloshing over his knuckles as he shoves the bowl against her lips,
pouring the soup down in a brutal rush.
She struggles against him, choking as the fluid floods her mouth, but he forces her face still, forcing her to swallow before she can spit it out.
When the bowl is empty, soup streaking from the corner of her mouth and soaking into the sheets, he releases her.
She immediately folds in on herself, one hand flying to her throat as a fit of sharp,
rasping coughs tears through her.
He hurls the bowl aside.
Porcelain explodes against the floor with a piercing clatter, and before the sound has even died, his fist tangles in her hair, wrenching her face towards him.
Her face crumples with pain,
her fingers weakly clawing at his skin as another cough tears through her.
"You will live as long as I want you to," he says coldly.
"Exactly as I want you to.
Wherever I decide you belong."
"You don't own me." Her voice quivers, yet remains resolute. "You're nothing to me."
The venom in her words stings like a swarm of wasps crawling over his skin, an intense, burning pain coursing through him.
What happened to the Neva he once knew?
The Neva who couldn't bear to leave his side?
His grip slackens as he presses his lips to hers.
For one fleeting second, he savours the softness of her sweet, salt-tinged lips, until she jerks back and shoves hard against his chest.
As she scrambles to put distance between them, he catches both her wrists and forces them back against the headboard.
"No—no, please—" Her cries fall on deaf ears as he kisses her again.
She twists violently beneath his hold,
wrenching at her trapped wrists as his hand clamps her face still, forcing her to meet his gaze.
Why does she keep rejecting his touch? For what?
He told her the agent was dead. Yet even if he were dead, he couldn't be dead enough.
"Your aunt and uncle," he says quietly. "If you want them safe, you'll do exactly as I say."
She goes pale at the mention of those scoundrels who had kept her hidden from him all these years while he had been desperately trying to find her.
But he finally found a promising lead in the familiar name attached to an enrolment at Vernellia University. By the time they discovered it, she had already been long moved to Erriador.
He dug deeper into her history and discovered that she had been adopted the same year she went missing, raised by her paternal aunt and uncle.
She had been enrolled in a private school until a school bus accident apparently convinced them that the world was too dangerous to ever let her face it again.
From then on, they cut her off from the outside world, allowing her access to little
beyond the walls of their home and the education provided through private tutors. It was the same accident that had stolen her memories.
They had no children of their own.
Their twins had been born prematurely and died within a week of each other.
So, in a way, he understood where their possessiveness came from.
But they had kept her away from him for years
that felt like an endless desert, stretching on and on without a single trace of an oasis.
If only he had found her sooner, he could have spared them both so much suffering.
To think that he could have been the only man by her side. Yet she had to be such a slut.
To run off with the first man she met in Erriador.
She let him hold her, kiss her, fuck her.
His throat tightens, choking him on the rotting emotions stirred by the image that flashes through his mind.
She was never supposed to belong to anyone but him.
Her heart, her soul, her body, all of her should have belonged to no one but him.
But it is only a matter of time before she realises that whatever she feels for that agent can never compare to what she feels for him.
Yet his mind keeps circling back to the fact that she has already been married.
That she even had a child with another man.
Another man.
"P... please..." She stutters, swallowing hard. "Don't hurt them."
"Then stop resisting." He peels the black silk robe from her shoulders, his chest still rigid and heaving with barely restrained anger.
"N... no. Please." She pushes against his chest, but his hand closes around her slender wrist.
"You don't want their blood on your hands." He gently brushes her hair away from her shoulders. "Do you?"
A sharp sob escapes her as he presses a kiss to her throat.
"If I loved you less, it wouldn't have hurt this much."
He kisses a tear away from her soft cheek.
"Give me a baby, Neva," he whispers. "A child of our own."
"Never—" Her words are cut off as he shoves her back onto the mattress.
He watches her scramble backwards like a terrified hare, her eyes and cheeks reddened against her milky skin.
And while he unbuttons his shirt, he thinks she deserves every bit of the brutality coming her way.