“I didn’t have any other options.” Luka squared his shoulders to me. “Addison, this is my father, Dimitrije Markovic.”
Was I supposed to espouse some sort of pleasantry after he’d just referred to me as a situation? My mouth wouldn’t cooperate, so I stared at Luka’s father and nodded my acknowledgement.
Luka put his hand on the back of one of the dining chairs and his tone was flat. “I see you brought the whore.”
Dimitrije Markovic was so dominating, I hadn’t even noticed the blonde woman sitting to his left until then, and my mouth fell open at Luka’s insult. It was impossible to guess her age. Her casual dress was tight and low-cut. She had flawless makeup, perfectly colored blonde hair, and a wide, bright smile. The ageless woman could have been thirty or fifty, and I suspected she was closer to the latter, maybe with an excellent plastic surgeon at her disposal.
Her laugh was shrill and she grinned, waving away the comment like it was hilarious, her wedding ring glinting in the chandelier light. “Oh, Luka.”
Only there was nothing in Luka’s demeanor that said his statement had been a joke. He looked like he’d meant it exactly as it sounded. He pulled out the chair and pointed to it, wordlessly demanding I sit. I collapsed into the seat, and as he sat, I was thankful Luka was a buffer between me and his father. It put the blonde woman directly across from us, and my gaze naturally went to her.
“I’m Tori,” she said, when it was apparent neither of the Markovic men was going to introduce her. “You’re the first girl Luka’s brought to meet Dimitrije.” Her sharp blue eyes shifted Luka’s direction. “I was beginning to wonder if he wasn’t into girls.” She’d said it with a light tone and a smile on her lips like she was teasing, but I could hear the burn beneath.
There was no love lost between these two.
Beneath the table, I balled my hands into fists. The tension in the room was stifling.
“You met at a party?” Tori asked me.
“We know each other,” Luka answered. “She was a student in the calculus class I was a TA for.”
I stared at the plate in front of me. The china was simple but elegant. White with a silver rim, and I wondered if a single plate cost more than my mother’s entire set of good china.
“Why is she here?” Dimitrije demanded.
There was an excellent question.
Luka drew in a long breath. It was the same as he’d done on the couch at the party, right before he’d forced himself on me. “I drank last night,” he said, “and so did she. We went upstairs and things got out of control.”
Oh my God. I had to breathe through my nose to try to keep myself calm.
“How out of control?” Dimitrije’s voice sliced through the tension-filled silence.
“We fucked. She said I moved too fast.”
I gasped and glared at Luka, my eyes burning with furious rage and my face flushed hot.
There was a terrible crash as Dimitrije brought his fist down on the edge of the table, making the silverware rattle and both Tori and me jump. Then a slew of words burst from Mr. Markovic, but I couldn’t understand a word of it except for Vasilije. Was he speaking nonsense? No. My stunned mind was slow. It was a foreign language, and one I didn’t recognize.
Luka did. His posture snapped straight and his eyes narrowed, and then he was responding in the language with the same vitriol his father had used. From Tori’s blank expression, it seemed doubtful she understood any better than I.
“You don’t think I tried?” Luka said, abruptly switching back to English. “It didn’t work. All it did was make her sick. She remembered everything, and it didn’t matter. She was a virgin.”
I stood up so quickly the chair almost tipped backward. I had no plan, only that I needed to get the hell away from the table before I lost it completely. I couldn’t listen to Luka tell his father all the sordid details of last night.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Dimitrije bellowed. “Sit back down.”
The voice stopped me cold, but I couldn’t get my muscles to comply. I stood as a statue halfway to the front door, facing the illusion of freedom. I was in a sleeveless dress, it was November, and I was barefoot. Plus, it was dark outside and I hadn’t a clue where I was. The cards were stacked against me, and yet every cell in my body was still screaming to run.
“Luka,” Dimitrije said. “There’s a simple solution to this problem.”
A chair squealed as it moved back. “No,” Luka said quickly. “I’m handling it.” Footsteps approached, but I still flinched when Luka grasped my shoulders. “Come back to the table.” His voice dropped low so only I would hear. “Please.”