His laugh made me fall silent, my mouth moving but my words no longer forming.
“Oh, you’ve got some fight. I like that, it will make taming you all the more fun. And if you do step out of line, it won’t just be you that suffers. I’ll cut your father’s tongue out. I’ll have your mother gutted. So just think on that, you little bitch.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. Instead, he turned and headed back toward the front entry, leaving me standing there in the snowy darkness, speechless.
And utterly terrified.
It was no act to convince my father that I was feeling unwell and needed to leave. I couldn’t get my hands to stop shaking. I could barely breathe. I waited until he had folded his hand before squeezing his shoulder to get his attention.
All I wanted was one last night in my own room at boarding school, the one place I felt like myself. One more night before this nightmare became my life.
“Father, I need to leave,” I said softly into his ear.
When he looked up at me, I saw that old familiar gleam of maniacal gambling optimism in his eye.
“Not yet,” he said cheerfully. “Things are starting to go my way.”
I swallowed hard and gave him a pleading stare.
“I don’t feel well.” I blinked back a sudden rush of tears, focusing hard on the sting in my nose to prevent them from spilling down my cheeks.
By some miracle, the look on my face or the desperation in my voice broke though the blur of his addiction.
He furrowed his salt-and-pepper brows. “Goodness, Valeria. What’s happened?”
I could feel Petre’s eyes on me then, leering at me. Threatening me.
“I just need to lie down. It’s been a long day. Please, father. Dad...”
The word dad was not one I said very often, but in this moment when I so desperately needed a lifeline, it worked. My father nodded and rose, taking me by the arm.
Though he and I fought like animals half the time, I did love him. And I hoped deep down that he felt as bad about all of this as I did.
I was still numb and fearful from my encounter with Petre, that my father’s excuses to the Greengallows sounded far away, underwater almost.
Old Mr. Greengallow said he was calling it a night too and showed us out, chatting with my father as we walked. I didn’t hear any of it. The whooshing in my ears was like a blizzard gale.
All that mattered to me was that before I knew it, I had my coat wrapped around me and was getting back in our carriage. Once the door swung shut and the carriage started rolling away, I pressed my forehead gently against the ice-cold glass. And covered my mouth to stifle a sob.
My father had said that if I got in trouble in my marriage, Vasile may be the one to help me. But that was nonsense and I knew it. He was as bad as my father.
I was on my own in this. And I wanted nothing to do with either of the Greengallow brothers.
CHAPTER 5
Vasile
I felt her absence like a fucking knife wound. It had taken everything I had, everything, to pretend to be focused on the game while she was still in the room. I kept catching sight of those aqua-blue eyes watching me, kept getting a hint of her scent on the air like evergreens after fresh snowfall. When she walked by to go to her father, her golden-brown honey-drizzle hair shimmered and streaked under the gas lamps.
And when she crouched next to him, pushing those fucking magnificent tits together...?
Fuck, she may have been slight and short, but those tits…
It was all I could do just to avoid staring at them. Because if I had, I wouldn’t have been responsible for what came next. I would have forced her pretty, pink-tinged cheeks onto the baize of the card table, flipped that dress up over her ripe ass and rutted into her until she came in fits and screams that would have torn the whole fucking house apart.
The cards didn’t interest me in the least. The game was nothing compared to the rush, the desire, the fucking urge I had to get my hands on her. And to think, my psychopathic shit of a brother was going to marry her.
That undeserving son of a bitch.
Once I realized Petre caught on to the glances passing between us, I had to ignore her. Not for my sake but for hers.
A lifetime of competition between my brother and myself could make any interest I showed in his future bride dangerous for her. I hadn’t wanted her in his line of fire.
But judging by the way she feigned sickness just after she returned to the room moments after Petre, I knew I hadn’t kept her safe enough. Pissed me right the hell off—both at myself and at him.