On Board The Argo
I scream as Rokiades’s men bind my hands together behind my back. I try kicking at them, but it doesn’t anything other than stall the process by a minute or two.
The whole time, Rokiades watches me with a steely glint in his eye. A perverted smile plays at the corner of his mouth. It makes him look deranged.
“Calm down, glikia mu,” he tells me.
“You fucking bastard.” I spit at his feet, but he’s standing far enough away that it doesn’t hit him like I intended it to.
Yannis smirks a little, but I can see the humor fading fast from his small, greedy eyes.
This boat is almost as big as Kian’s. But whereas Kian’s is refined and luxurious, this one screams “wealth” like he wants everyone who catches even a passing glimpse to know that it belongs to a rich man. Gold dripping everywhere you look. Diamond-encrusted handrails. That sort of shit.
“Your brother is dead,” Rokiades says. “You do you know what means for you, don’t you?”
I don’t say a word. It’s a rhetorical question. One I’m not going to fall into the trap of answering. I just stare at him, realizing how much I’d missed during our first introduction—if you can even call it that.
He’s so old. The sunken wrinkles and lines that mar his face make him look like an aged turtle who’s crawled out of his shell. His nose is sharp and slightly hooked at the bottom and his thick eyebrows betray more than a few white hairs. He must be at least thirty years older than me.
Kian’s age was something imposing, daunting, but all the more sexy for it. This, on the other hand, feels creepy. Wrong.
“No?” Rokiades asks. “You don’t know what that means for you? Well, I’ll tell you then.”
I tense. He draws out the silence and I resist the urge to roll my eyes. The dramatic tension is less impactful, considering I know exactly what he’s going to say.
“It means you’re a lucky woman,” he says, “because you have my protection now.”
“And who’ll protect me from you?” I retort.
The smile falls off his face instantly. “I did not invite you to speak. I expect my wife to be respectful and obedient.”
“Fuck you,” I breathe. “This isn’t the 1600s. Women are not the property of the men around them.”
“In my world, they are.”
“Which is precisely why I have no intention of marrying you.”
“Fortunately, darling, your opinion doesn’t mean a thing.”
I know he’s probably right. I have zero power here, but I don’t care. I’m willing to risk everything, including my life, if it means getting away from Rokiades and whatever the hell he plans on doing to me.
“I will never be a respectful wife,” I tell him. “I will never be obedient.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Well, then, I’ll just have to break you, won’t I?”
“Other men have tried to break me,” I say with a confidence that I don’t actually feel. “They all failed.”
I remember Kian’s words down in The Room. You’re not broken. You’ve fought me at every turn. Even when the odds were against you. If anything, what happened only made you stronger.
The memory sends fire surging through my bones. The fight in me flares up again.
No matter what happens next, one thing is certain: I won’t go down easy.
“Then they haven’t tried hard enough,” Yannis fires right back. “Either way, it doesn’t really matter. I don’t need your cooperation. All I really need from you is an heir.”
I still. But it’s not dread I feel—it’s relief.
Actually, it’s more than relief. It’s happiness.