of her objections to Grisha was that he’d been linked to sex-trafficking rings and she found that repulsive. How long before the young women of Castallegna began to disappear with him as their crown prince? No one would ever be safe.
It was times like this she wished she had more power. She wished she was more than a princess.
“Plotting my death?” Grisha asked conversationally.
She studied him for a moment. “Of course not. It’s no secret I don’t want to marry you, but I don’t wish you dead.”
“Why don’t you want to marry me, Damara? I have money and power. I can trace my lineage back to Catherine the Great.”
She doubted his royal lineage, but she wasn’t going to say so. “You’re a bad man, Grisha.”
“All great men are.”
She shook her head. “I must marry for my people. You know that. What would you bring to Castallegna? Convince me.” If she could keep him talking, maybe she could buy some time.
He grabbed her and pushed her up against the wall, but she shoved at his shoulders. “I said convince me for Castallegna. My body may come as a gift with the responsibilities of my people, but it has nothing to do with the decision of who will lead them.”
She prayed he heard her. His hands were just as strong and just as damaged as Byron’s, but they were not noble and they turned her stomach. Damara held her body stiff and immobile. She didn’t close her eyes, and she didn’t look away from him. Not even when he dipped his head to kiss her.
Grisha paused when they were eye to eye. Damara didn’t flinch, didn’t hide from what was about to happen. Something he saw there caused him to pull back. “Perhaps you are not as useless as your brother says.”
“Perhaps not,” she agreed.
“How is it that you make even your acquiescence sound like a challenge?”
“I assure you, it’s not. You’re obviously the one with the power. You’ve caught me. I have nowhere to go and no one to turn to for help,” Damara said calmly.
“But you’re not afraid of me.”
“Should I be? Would you like me to be?”
“You said I was a bad man.” He studied her.
“Just because you’re bad doesn’t mean I should fear you. Fear is a waste of imagination. You will do what you must and I will do as I must.”
He eyed her, hard. “I meant what I said about the mercenary. I will kill him.” As if she’d somehow said otherwise.
“I’ve no doubt. Which is another reason I can’t marry you. You kill someone because they disagree with you? My father had a dream for Castallegna.”
Grisha snorted. “A dream of democracy?”
“Yes. Being born into a family doesn’t make a person any more fit to lead than any other.”
“I did not expect to drag you to the captain’s quarters to talk politics.” Grisha scrubbed a hand over his face.
“No? What did you expect? To haul me down here, make me cower in fear and then force yourself on me so I’d be so humiliated that I would have no choice but to marry you? If my brother told you that would work, you are sadly mistaken.”
“And yet if we were on Castallegna, we would be legally married if I did.”
“That’s another thing that’s gotta go.” Tendrils of fear unfurled in her belly, but she ignored them. It didn’t matter what he did to her. She was still the Jewel of Castallegna. But her brother and men like him were convinced that her only worth lay between her legs. No man would want her if she wasn’t a virgin.
“What if I agreed to all these things you wanted?” Grisha surprised her.
“In writing? A contract that would be for all the world to see?”
“No, not in writing.” He unbuttoned his shirt and she gritted her teeth, fear blooming like a rancid flower. But he didn’t pounce on her. Instead, he showed her the tattoos on his chest, his belly. His arms. His shoulders. “I already have a contract in writing, you see. Bratva. If I am ever found unworthy of the ink on my skin, it will be removed for me.”
She found herself looking at the art on his skin. The stars on his chest. The church with the spires on his belly. “I don’t understand.”
“These are what mark me as a bad man.” He pointed to a marking in Cyrillic she didn’t understand. “The first man I killed for The Brotherhood.”
“And you want to sit on the throne?” She was incredulous as to why he would think she’d choose him to lead her people. To be her husband. He’d admitted to killing a man. Not just one, but the first of many.
“It could be good for both of us, Damara. When you lead men, you must make choices, hard choices, and sometimes people die. If you order your army to war or you set your people against me, you’re sentencing them to death.”
“You can’t offer me peace with one hand and threats with another.” Why didn’t anyone understand that?
“It’s how things are done.”
“No.” It would not be how things were done. She’d never agree to marry him. Never. No matter what he did to her.
“I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.” His voice was a growl, low in his throat.
“As I said,” she said, her mouth dry as the desert, “do as you must.” Damara tried to focus her mind, find her center and remember her training. He was bigger than she was, but she had speed and strategy on her side.
She studied her surroundings surreptitiously looking for a possible exit and weapons.
He lunged for her, and she grabbed the lamp on the nightstand, but it had been secured to the table in case of rough waters. So she used the table and the desk as leverage to deliver a roundhouse kick to his head.
It stunned him long enough for her to do it again, but he still didn’t fall. The man’s head must have been fashioned from concrete.
The door to the room swung open, and a flower of blood bloomed on his chest where Byron shot him with a .38.
Grisha clutched at his chest and staggered forward, but Damara didn’t stay to watch him fall. Byron grabbed her hand and pulled her out into the hall.
“This was not how this was supposed to go down.” His hand was warm and strong; his very presence made her feel as though everything was going to be okay. “But next time I tell you to stay put, stay put.”
“It was the only way.”
“I know that. But I had a plan.” He yanked her up the stairs toward the deck.
“What’s the plan now?” she asked as she hurried up the stairs behind him.
“Run
