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“The ring’s a lock,” he says. “I put it on you. That’s the point.”

I stare at him. The absolute nerve of it, delivered without a flicker of shame, standing in my bedroom in his shirtsleeves like he’s just explained something perfectly reasonable. He’s a crazy bastard, he’s always been a crazy bastard, and I walked into his house and proposed this marriage myself, put the ring on his finger with my own hand, and now I’m standing here arguing about gate keys because the terms I negotiated didn’t include the part where I become furniture he keeps behind a locked door.

“You are,” I say, “without question, the most deranged man I have ever encountered. And I have encountered some genuinely unhinged people. You are the worst of all of them.”

“Da,” he says, completely unbothered.

“A pervert,” I say. “An absolute sex maniac with no boundaries, no shame, and apparently no understanding of basic human rights.”

“You’ve said worse.”

“I’m warming up,” I say. “You’re an asshole, Volkov. A controlling, paranoid, grief-stricken asshole who thinks a marriage contract gives him the right to keep a person locked in a box and call it protection. You sit in your dead brother’s room drinking his vodka, and then you walk in here and take it out on me because I’m the only target available and you’re too broken to aim at the real one.”

The room goes very quiet.

His jaw tightens, and his eyes go flat and cold, which is worse than loud. I think I’ve pushed past wherever the line is and I’m about to find out what happens there.

“Say that again,” he says.

“Which part,” I say. “The broken part or the coward part.”

He crosses the room in three steps and stops close enough that I have to hold my ground to keep from stepping back. I hold it because I’ve been holding my ground since the day I walked into his compound, and I’m not stopping now because he’s decided to loom at me.

“You don’t know a fucking thing about my brother,” he says.

“I know he died because someone set a room and you walked into it,” I say. “I know you’ve been burning through everyone around you ever since because you can’t burn through the person who actually gave the order. I know you put a bullet in my father because he was the closest target you had, and I know you agreed to have me in here because you need to know what I know but you don’t know how to ask for it, so instead you make speeches about locks and rings and call it a marriage.”

His hand comes up and closes around my jaw, not hurting, just holding my face toward his. I don’t move, don’t flinch, just meet his eyes and wait.

“You want to talk about your father,” he says.

“I want a gate key,” I say. “We can talk about my father after.”

“Your father rented the room where Lavro died,” he says.

“My father was being used by someone, and you know that,” I say. “You just haven’t admitted it yet because admitting it means you shot the wrong man and you can’t live with that on top of everything else.”

His grip tightens on my jaw for one second, one, then he drops his hand.

“You’re in this house because I let you in,” he says. “Don’t forget that.”

“You’re in this marriage because I proposed it,” I say. “Don’t forget that either.”

We stand there, both breathing, both furious, neither moving, and the air between us is doing that thing it does, hot and charged and completely at odds with everything I just said, which I meant, I meant every word of it, I hate him specifically and completely, and the fact that my body is currently betraying me is a malfunction I intend to examine in private and fix.

“I hate you,” I say.

“I know,” he says.

“I hate you, and I want a gate key, and this conversation isn’t finished.”

“Your nipples are hard,” he says.

The heat that floods my face is instantaneous, and I cannot stop it, and I hate everything about this moment. The fabric of my nightgown is thin, and he can see exactly what’s happening, and there is nothing I can do about it except stand here and refuse to acknowledge it.

“It’s cold,” I say.

“It’s seventy degrees in here,” he says, and he reaches out and runs his thumb across my left nipple through the fabric, one slow pass, and something travels from that point directly downward through my body, bypassing every rational thought I have, and my jaw tightens because I’m furious and none of that stops what’s happening to me.