He smiles then, but it’s not kind, it’s calculated and cold, like everything else about him. “I’m sure we’ll make a wonderful couple.” He glances at Papá. “She more than lives up to my expectations.” He sounds like he’s talking about a breeding mare he’s considering purchasing at auction and it makes my stomach churn.
“Good,” Papá says, unfazed by the way this conversation is going. “In two months, Eliza will become Mrs. Eliza Volkov.” He gives me a stern glare. “Now I’d like you to give Adrik a tour of the grounds. It would be good for you both to get to know one another a little before the wedding.”
Great.
The last thing I want to do is show this guy around our garden in awkward silence, but I’m not stupid enough to believe Papá will let me out of this if I refuse.
“Okay,” I reply, glancing at the man who is apparently now my fiancé. “Follow me.” I turn toward the door.
“And Eliza,” Papá says, stopping me in my tracks.
“What?” I ask, glancing over my shoulder.
“Behave.” He glares at me.
I clench my jaw as anger coils in the pit of my stomach like a viper ready to strike. I’m twenty-four years old, not fucking six. Instead of acknowledging his warning, I march out of his office and assume Adrik is following. Once I’m in the corridor, I check over my shoulder to see he is indeed following me with a whisper of a smirk on his lips.
“What are you smirking about?” I ask.
He arches an eyebrow. “Nothing.” He takes two strides to my next four to catch up with me, and I feel his eyes on me. “Does your father always speak to you like that?”
“Like what?” I ask, meeting his gaze and wishing I hadn’t, as a shudder races down my spine.
“Like a child.”
I clench my jaw again. “Pretty much. The grounds are this way.” I lead him down the back corridor toward the exit out onto the veranda. There’s no way in hell I want to marry this man. He gives me the creeps.
Even from the way he speaks and the way he looks at me. I fear him, and that’s never a good sign.
“I’m not sure why Papá wants me to give you a tour. There’s not much to see. It’s a hectare of parkland.” I glance back at him.
“Not much to see?” he asks, sounding amused. “There are millions of things to see in nature. It’s the most complex part of our world, buzzing with life.”
I release a frustrated sigh. “Right, but I mean, it’s all the same. The lake is perhaps the most interesting.”
“Then take me there.” There’s something edging his tone. Dominance perhaps?
I swallow the bile rising up my throat and nod, taking the left-hand path that leads down to the lake at the bottom. Adrik remains by my side, a little closer than I’m comfortable with. As the sound of birds singing fills the awkward silence, I realize that I’ve never felt at such unease with another human being in all my life.
It’s as if he radiates darkness and danger. Trust Papá to pick the most unnerving man in Chicago to be my husband. I’ve met all kinds of scumbags growing up as the princess of the cartel, but this guy is something else entirely.
“I didn’t realize my papá had an alliance with the Volkov Bratva,” I say, trying to break the heavy silence.
I feel his eyes move to me and it sends a shudder through me. “He doesn’t.”
My brow furrows as Adrik doesn’t expand on his comment. If he doesn’t have an alliance with the Volkov Bratva, then why the fuck is he marrying me off to one?
“I don’t understand.”
He stops then, forcing me to come to a stop to. “I don’t believe you need to understand, Eliza.” The way he says my name makes goosebumps prickle over every inch of exposed skin. “All you need to do is accept that I’m to be your husband.”
I nod in response. “Yeah, no shit, Sherlock.”
His jaw clenches, eyes turning darker as he steps even closer.
I swallow hard as he crowds my space, sucking all the oxygen from the air, even here outside. My heart pounds harder and faster as I look into those unique eyes which out here have more of a hint of blue than hazel, knowing that my life is going to be hell as this man’s wife.
“I will not tolerate being spoken to in that way by you once we’re married.” He clenches his fists by his side. “Perhaps learn some respect now.”