The Marriage (Darkest Lies Trilogy Book 3), Bethany-Kris [books for 8th graders txt] 📗

Still, she said nothing.

Roman gave her a second chance. “How did you find out where Karine was?”

Her admission of being near Maxim geared his questioning in that direction. He was trying to connect dots; testing the waters to see if he hit the right mark with Masha, but she gave him nothing.

Definitely, she refused to speak.

As if she had a choice.

When she dared to square her trembling shoulders in the face of his anger, he lunged at her, grabbing her by the jaw, and digging his thumbs into her cheeks. She gasped, letting out a broken cry while she struggled to get out of his grip, but she was powerless.

Roman drew her forcibly towards him, pulling her by the face and feeling her hot, wet tears slide over his fingers. “Let me make something very clear to you—in the grand scheme, you mean nothing. Not to me. You will tell me everything in the end, every detail of what you did, or what you know. Whether or not I have to make you tell me, Masha, is where you can make it easy, or I can make it really hard. And trust me, the only person it’s going to be hard on—is you. I’ll enjoy watching you bleed.”

He let go of her, shoving her away and Masha fell back with a sob, still shaking like a leaf in the wind.

Roman stood over her, telling the woman, “She thought of you as a mother. A protector. Someone she could trust, and look what you did to her. You betrayed her. You betrayed me. I swear to God if he’s going to hurt her, I’ll fucking kill you. I’ll keep you alive until I know, and every second will be so painful for you.”

Masha pulled in a shaky, loud breath before saying, “I-I didn’t hurt h-her. All I ever did was keep her safe. She is the only ... the closest thing to family I have. I j-just want to keep her s-safe.”

The words seemed to break the woman. Her sobs became more violent, and she couldn’t contain her shuddering as she cried.

He didn’t feel sorry for her. He hated her pitifulness, and that part of him believed her. Whether it was her willful ignorance, or something else, he did think she truly cared for Karine like she proclaimed to. If only that made a difference to him.

“How did you find out where I took her?” he asked again.

Masha tried to breathe slower. She gulped in large mouthfuls of air, exhaling in steady streams of three and four seconds long. Eventually, she’d calmed enough to mutter without stuttering, “Your father’s office. I found some contact information in his desk drawers from a file I had taken. We were trying everything. It was just a number and a name on a Post-it, but when I called it—”

Roman cursed severely under his breath, stopping Masha from saying anything more. He knew it. The rage coursed through him like a leather belt whipping his back. He was mad at himself for being so careless. He never should have shared that information with his father. Yet, what was done was done.

“She’s where she should be,” Masha suddenly whispered.

And just like that, the anger simmering inside of him boiled over. He wouldn’t have struck her so hard with his open palm had he been even a couple of steps back, with her out of reach. But instinct drove him to slap away the lie that she dared let slip out of her mouth.

Fuck her.

Karine had nothing and no one before Roman—and he was nothing and no one without her.

Masha fell with a piercing shriek, sprawling on the floor.

Roman straightened up again.

“Fucking bitch,” he groaned under his breath.

He really didn’t want to do that—hit her. It wasn’t his style to hit women, and when a situation came up, he often let others do the job ... if it absolutely had to be done. He always saw his mother or sister’s face, and couldn’t stop himself from imagining how it would feel to see a man beat them.

In their business, justified or not ...

Regardless, Roman would do whatever he needed to do here to get the information he needed about Karine, and her current whereabouts. He hadn’t lied, by the time they were done here—Masha would tell him everything.

He allowed the woman on the cement floor to gather herself before he spoke again. The slap to her face was just a demonstration of what he was willing to do to get the information he needed from her. The only sympathetic part of him hoped she had learned her lesson before this got way worse.

Masha managed to sit up again after a while, rubbing at her cheek with her bound hands the best she could to soothe the sting. “I had to do something—you took her away from me! I didn’t know where she was.”

Roman pulled a chair out of the corner—an old, foldable thing someone had thrown into the basement and forgot about it. Turning it around, he sat facing her with his arms propped up on the back of the chair.

He shook his head. “Actually, from where I sit, it looks like you wanted to find out where Karine was to supply Maxim with that information.”

Masha said nothing but her wet gaze pleaded with him, begging him for some respite. It wasn’t coming. This wouldn’t end until he had everything he needed from her.

Sighing shakily, she whispered, “Karine belongs with her father.”

Was that what she honestly believed?

“The father who treated her like shit for all her life—who hid her away because he was ashamed of her? The one who was willing to give her to a monster—that father?”

“He didn’t know what happened,” Masha rushed to say like it was going to make a difference. “He never knew. I told him, and you don’t know Maxim ... not like I do.”

He felt an ache in his body; somewhere deep that he