While I’m wondering this, Greta throws her hands up in frustration “This isn’t you, Sebastian! What are you doing? You’re letting Yenin turn you into some kind of monster.”

I can tell she didn’t want to say that to me—her expression is miserable. But she means it, all the same.

I look at Greta without anger—only seriousness. “There was always a monster in me,” I say. “Yenin just let it out.”

Greta shakes her head at me, her pale blue eyes accusing. “You’d better not hurt her,” she says.

I sweep past her without making any promises.

I pause momentarily at the door of the laundry room. I see the heavy, industrial-size washer and dryer, and Greta’s neat row of jars containing detergent pods, fabric softener, and clothespins.

Impulsively, I open the last jar and grab a handful of pins, stuffing them in my pocket alongside my switchblade.

Then I stride down the stairs, past the garage, all the way down to the lowest and most hidden level of this house. Beneath our weaponry, beneath our safe, way down deep in the earth.

That’s where my bride is waiting.

I wrench open the door, startling her so that a book falls from her hands. It was one of my father’s—I recognize the cover with its image of a rose and a skull, in the style of an illuminated manuscript.

As she always does, Yelena searches my face, trying to read my intentions before I even open my mouth.

She won’t guess them today.

I stride toward her and she rises to meet me, her hands held up in an instinctive protective gesture. I shove them aside. I grab her by the back of the neck, seizing her and kissing her roughly.

She stiffens with shock.

I shove my tongue between those tender, soft lips, kissing her so hard that I taste blood in my mouth.

When I release her, she looks up at me, anxious and confused.

“Do you still love me?” I demand.

“Yes,” she breathes.

“What would you do for me?”

She answers without hesitation. “Anything,” she says.

“Are you sure?” I ask her.

“Yes.”

“Don’t say it unless you’re really sure.”

Yelena regards me with an expression as clear and serious as I’ve ever seen it.

“I made a mistake, Sebastian. I was selfish and foolish. But I love you. And I will do anything for you to prove it.”

I look at her standing there—the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, and the most ferocious. Even half dressed, locked up in a cell for days, she remains unbowed and unbroken. She won’t submit. Not to that beast Rodion, and not to her psychotic father.

But she just might submit to me.

I push the cell door shut behind me. It closes with an ominous clank of metal. The room is lit by only one flickering overhead light. It’s a dank and depressing space. But right now, it feels perfect. If feels right.

I take a step toward Yelena. She looks nervous. Which is also right—she should be nervous.

Even exhausted, recovering from a bullet to the shoulder, and locked in this basement for days, Yelena is so beautiful that it hurts to look at her. Her silvery hair hangs loose down her back, tangled but still lovely. She’s paler than ever, with concrete dust smudged across her skin and dark circles under her eyes. It only serves to highlight how clear and luminous her skin actually is, under the dirt. Her eyes look bigger than ever under the straight, dark slashes of her brows, and her full lips are trembling slightly.

She’s wearing the pajamas that Greta brought downstairs—soft cotton, with buttons up the front.

“Take those off,” I bark.

Watching me warily, Yelena starts to undo the buttons. She fumbles with the first few because her fingers are unsteady. But she manages to get them all undone, and she slips out of the top, then the bottoms.

Now she’s standing there in only her bra and panties, showing that body that men would fight and die to possess. The body that’s strong, tall, and rebellious, and completely under my control at the moment.

I thought from the minute I met her that she looked like a warrior princess.

Well, now she’s been captured from the barbarians. Now she belongs to me.

I took her. I married her. And I now I own her.

She says she loves me?

Well, she can fucking prove it.

“Stand against the wall,” I order.

I see a flutter in Yelena’s throat as she swallows hard. Still, she obeys me, stepping away from the mattress and pressing her back against the cold concrete wall.

I pick up the manacles off the floor, where they’ve been laying since I unlocked her.

I close them around her wrists and ankles again. They shut with a metallic snap. I can see the little goosebumps rising on her arms, from the chill or from nerves. I pull the chains tight so she’s bound to the wall, her ankles apart and her hands only able to move a few inches.

I can see her pulse jumping in her throat. I hear her rapid breath, though she’s trying to stay quiet. I can even smell the sharp tang of her adrenaline, laced with the enticing natural scent of her skin.

She’s afraid, and that’s exactly how I want her. I want her to feel just the smallest bit of the anguish I experienced over the last few days. I need to know if she truly wants to give herself to me, or if she’ll crack under pressure.

So I take my knife out of my pocket and I snap open the blade.

Yelena eyes the razor-sharp edge as I bring the knife up to her ribs. She doesn’t flinch away. She stays perfectly still, jaw clenched.

I lean over and put my lips right next to her ear.

“I’m going to push you to the limit, Yelena,” I tell her. “Any time you want, you can tell me to stop. I’ll stop, and I’ll leave. But if you want to me to stay . . . if you want to be mine . . . it’s not gonna be so easy this time. I want ALL of you. I want every last fucking shred of you. Body and soul, you belong to me. I want you bare, vulnerable, and willing. I want to know you aren’t holding anything back from me this time. Do you understand?”

She nods slowly, her eyes wide and unblinking.

She doesn’t really understand.

But she will soon enough.

With one quick slash of the knife, I cut through the band of her strapless bra. The bra falls away from her body, baring those soft, warm breasts. The moment they’re exposed to the chilly air of the cell, her nipples harden and point slightly upward, like they’re inviting me to take one in my mouth.

I will. But not yet . . .

Instead, I cut through her underwear too, tearing the remains of her panties off her hips. Now her tight little pussy is bare, the lips slightly parted because her ankles are chained to the wall two feet apart. She can’t close her legs. She can barely move at all.

It’s incredibly erotic to have her chained up, completely at my mercy. It’s even more erotic to see the look of determination in her fiercely narrowed eyes.

She thinks she’s going to rise to this challenge.

I think I’m going to break her.

We’ll soon know who was right.

Roughly, I grope her bare breasts with my hands. I press her against the wall with the weight of my body. I squeeze her nipples hard until she gasps, and I growl in her ear, “Does that hurt? Do you want me to stop?”

“No!” she says, her stubbornness rising to meet mine.