Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 64885 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64885 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Of course, I thought I'd been going just for a few minutes. Just to ruin myself as he liked to say, just enough that my father's plans would be prevented. But he’d been right. In the end, he'd been the one thinking clearly as opposed to me, who’d been spiraling.
He’d saved me by marrying me, but I knew our time was limited. I knew my father would work on a plan to take me back and make me pay.
I needed to get Gareth to understand that if my father thought there was a chance of getting his pure princess back, he would.
The only actual way I'd be free was if Gareth took my virginity. He seemed as opposed to that concept as anything else. All under the guise that he would ruin me, that I would only be trading one monster for another.
I didn't believe that.
As cloistered as my family kept me, the one thing they never lacked to show me was the monstrous nature of the men in my family. And while I’d remained untouched, I’d witnessed the sales of my cousins and the aftereffects of such deals.
Some feigned happiness and complacency while others returned to family gatherings looking like a shell of their former self, worn down by the constant demands from their husbands.
Gareth was not the kind of monster I was used to.
And in my heart, I didn't believe he was a monster at all.
He hadn’t demanded one thing of me since I'd become his wife, and according to the laws of the world we lived in, he could have demanded anything. Hell, I'd once heard a story about one of my cousins’ husbands forcing them to wear skimpy lingerie and serve all of his friends at a weekend retreat, like they’d been hired entertainment instead of a spouse.
I couldn't see Gareth doing anything like that, but I also knew that I didn't know him as well as I wanted to. And maybe that's all it was. Maybe if I could get to know him, and he could get to know me, then he’d understand.
I certainly didn't have a chance at seducing him, even though I’d been trying in pathetic little attempts. The art of seduction was conveniently left out of my approved studies, and it wasn't like I ever saw my mother seducing my father, as disgusting as that thought was.
The two people were as cold to each other as floating icebergs who never wanted to cross each other's paths. To the public, she was the perfect wife. Silent, submissive, and supportive. But when it was just us? She was a zombie. She was a shell floating in the wind, listless and unmotivated even to do things with her only daughter, like when I'd asked for a lunch date or a conversation or even simply watching a movie together.
What's the point in watching a movie if we can't even pick what we want to see? She would say to me any time I asked.
We could try, I’d begged.
The punishment isn’t worth the reward, she would say back.
And that would be the end of it.
She’d stopped trying a decade ago to have a relationship with me, and often I felt like I was a source of resentment for her. An anchor to a life she never wanted. A chain around her neck to tug in case she ever got out of line.
I wondered what she thought now. I wondered if she was happy for me, or if she assumed Gareth was just like any other mobster or worse, since he was from a rival family. I wondered if she cared at all? I wondered if Father had taken his anger out on her.
Guilt slithered through me, oily and thick and fueling the growing anxiety that bubbled in my chest.
I couldn't think about that. And as terrible as I felt at the possibility that my father took out my crimes on her, it was hard to linger in guilt for a woman who had never once stepped in front of a hit for me, even when she could’ve when I was a child.
No, I couldn't worry about that at all.
I had to get Gareth to see my side of things. To realize that the only way I'd ever be safe was if I became worthless to my father. And that wouldn't happen until Gareth did me the favor I’d originally asked for.
Seducing Gareth Maxfield was probably an impossible task, even to the most skilled temptresses, but to someone like me? Someone who didn't understand half of what I needed to in order to tempt him? Escaping his fortified estate would be easier.
I shifted off the bed, pacing a little as I tried to focus on what I could control.
Getting to know Gareth.
That was something I could do. Something I knew how to do. I’d been trained in the art of conversation whenever I was allowed to speak, and at the very least, maybe we could become friends.