Seeing the shock on my face, he shrugs. “It’s a harsh world that we live in. And we were threatening to bring down the heat on everybody, not just our two families. So my great uncle and a distant relative of your father’s came to an agreement. They ordered the infant daughters of each family to be taken from their mothers and given to the other family to raise. There was a total of six taken from each family in the first year of the Peredyshka, all one year old or younger.”
What? They took babies away from their mothers? I can’t have heard that right.
“They were raised to be brides for the high-ranking sons of the family, to be married the year they turned eighteen. They were given to the distant cousins of the young men they would be marrying, and they did not see their birth parents again. There were specific instructions on their upbringing. They were raised mostly in isolation, home-schooled and taught to be traditional wives. They were trained to be eager to please their husbands, to understand the great honor of their position.”
I try to keep the disgust and rage from my face. No wonder my real mother grabbed me and ran.
“How was this a solution?”
“This way, the two families would be less likely to try to go to war with each other, if they knew they would be killing their own children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews.”
My throat constricts in horror at the thought of a mother having her baby ripped away from her and sent away to be raised by her enemies, trained to be some kind of house-cleaning sex robot.
“The mothers. How could they let someone take their babies from them?” I protest, faint with sorrow.
Matteo looks at me with pure contempt. “Because our women know the importance of family and loyalty, and the need to make sacrifices for the greater good. Because by letting another family raise their baby, they were ensuring the rest of their children would live to adulthood rather than being executed by the syndicate or cut down in an endless war. Our women are not selfish, spoiled and decadent like modern women are. And they knew their daughters would be raised with love, and discipline, and honor. It’s not as if they were sending them off to be raised by monsters or perverts.”
They weren’t sending Their daughters off at all; their babies were taken from them.
“And the wives have absolutely no rights and they live only to serve their husbands.” I force my voice to stay steady, but I can’t stop the contempt dripping from my words.
He shakes his head, looking disappointed. “You don’t get it at all. But you will. We all serve a greater good; we all have our roles to play. The husbands are honored to have such wives, and they treat them well. After all, a husband who can’t please and satisfy his wife is no man at all.”
“How often do these…baby exchanges take place?” I want to say kidnappings, but I’m sure he’d just punish me for it.
“Every five years.”
“How are the babies, and the husbands, selected?”
“By lottery.” He smiles at me and caresses my face. “I won the lottery when I was chosen to receive a Peredyshka. I was the envy of my brothers.”
“But then my mother ran away with me.”
“Yes.” His face darkens with anger. “Another baby was taken from its mother and given to my cousins to raise instead. Originally I was going to marry her, until we found you.”
Is it evil of me to wish that I’d never been found? I wish he was going to marry that poor brainwashed relative of mine. But that’s horrible; no woman should be forced to marry under these circumstances.
“My father…he seems to hate me.” And I hate him. The man who shares half of my gene pool – he’s a loathsome, corrupt, abusive bully. I’d kill him if I could.
Matteo frowns. “He looks at you and sees your mother. He sees his failure. A man who is not the master of his wife suffers enormous loss of face in our culture. He lost status when she betrayed him, and he’s never regained it. Mischa, our current boss, was not pleased when you were found, because he believes that you have been ruined. He does not believe that you can be trained to fulfil your role. But I have faith in you.” Suddenly all the anger vanishes from his face, and he smiles at me with what looks like genuine warmth and affection. “I know how great you can be, Natasha. I know that you can make me proud. Let us show him that you can overcome your terrible upbringing, shall we?”
He makes it sound as if we’re partners in this. I wish we were. I would love to have a man like him by my side – a man who is so strong and capable and fearless. But what this man wants is for me to abandon my adoptive family and my entire life and to sign away my freedom.
I swallow hard and look away. “What about the rest of the wives in the family? The ones who aren’t…”
“The high-ranking men in our families always have arranged marriages, to traditionally raised women from good families. Not so different from the Peredyshka, really.”
I sink back in my seat. “But the Peredyshka wives are locked away by their husbands forever and never see the light of day?”
He arches an eyebrow. “That’s left entirely up to the discretion of the husband. When our wives are raised properly, to understand their roles, to know the true meaning of family, it is not a problem for them to leave the home to go shopping or to go out to dinner with their husbands.”
The heavy weight of his words rests on my shoulders. I was not raised properly. I will not be allowed to leave his house, ever. I will be expected to stay home and make babies and cook and clean and play the dutiful mob housewife.
And someday, perhaps, if I give birth to a daughter and my number comes up, she will be whisked away from me to be raised for a life of servitude, all her choices stolen from her.
Never. I will never let anyone take my baby from me. I will fight my way back home or die trying.
“Natasha.”
I’m staring longingly at the back door of the van.
He raps me sharply with his hand. I look at him, startled. “You need to start learning to answer to your name.”
I don’t reply, and he looks disappointed in me.
Instead I ask him about something else that has been bothering me. “The man who came into the room and tried to… He mentioned something about thinking that I was for sale.”
“Oh, that. He was talking about the Marketplace. The doctors who run our clinics test those who are going to be sold for everything from virginity to pregnancy to diseases.”
“People are bought and sold?” I ask in horror.
He shrugs. “You can buy anything you want in the Marketplace. People, court decisions, political positions.”
“That’s despicable!”
He is unmoved. “That’s reality. It always has been, it always will be.”
Tears fill my eyes, and I start to shake uncontrollably. The world isn’t what I thought it was. Safety and freedom are a bright shining lie. People who should be trusted are rotten and corrupt. I was just in an office with a doctor who didn’t care that I was being held prisoner by these men – a doctor who apparently participates in human trafficking.
Matteo cups my chin in his hand.
“Don’t cry, Natasha. You are so beautiful. I can’t wait to see you in your wedding dress.” His voice has gone all soft and tender. My heart melts a little, despite everything. All of a sudden he’s looking at me as if he loves me, as if I’m the most precious and wonderful thing he’s ever seen.
He leans in and brushes his lips against mine, and my lips part for his. Instead of kissing me, he teases me with the soft, feathery caress of his lips against mine. He moves down, his lips barely touching me, his warm breath heating the sensitive skin of throat. Heat floods my body.
This is madness. This is so horrible. Why did we have to meet like this?
If I’d met him under normal circumstances and he’d asked me out, I’d have leaped at the chance. I’ve never met anyone who affects me the way he does. He’s like a shot of adrenaline, snatching my breath away, sending my heartrate g
alloping.
He could have wooed me, and I would have melted for him. Why didn’t he? Why did he break into my friends’ bedroom and threaten me? Why did he talk to my father for months before he actually kidnapped me? Why didn’t he just either approach me like a normal guy and ask me out to dinner – or marry the girl who’d been brainwashed into actually wanting to be with him – and leave me alone?
I don’t understand any of this.
But he’s still holding my face, and he leans forward to kiss me, and my lips part to drink in his heat and sweetness. He doesn’t have to force me to let his tongue probe my mouth – my body just responds without consulting my brain, and I feel that shameful dampness between my thighs. The kiss goes on and on, and he’s the one to break it off, not me. He pulls away and looks at me with a dreamy light in his eyes.
That look is like a drug. It’s warmth and safety and adoration. It’s as powerful a force as his threats. No, even more powerful. His threats and punishments make me hate him and obey him out of fear, but that look? It melts me. I want to sink into his arms and surrender to him completely.
“It will be so hard for me to restrain myself until our wedding night,” he murmurs. “My princess. My beautiful bride.”
I want him to keep looking at me like that, but I don’t want to be his slave, his prisoner. I want to go home. Tears run down my face. He kisses them away.
“My darling,” he says, and kisses my lips, and I taste the salt of my tears.
Chapter 7
Natasha
I’m in a private airplane, and Matteo is sitting facing me, scowling at something on his laptop. He’s angrily tapping on the keyboard. He’s gotten news he doesn’t like. Good. Kidnapping bastard. We’ve been flying west for hours since we left Michigan, and I have been watching out the window the entire time. I have an excellent sense of geography. We’re in Oregon.
The wheels in my head are spinning. I’ve been raised by parents who were always planning and scheming and campaigning. That is what I must do now, if I ever want to escape.
I was supposed to meet my tutor after lunch. She’ll tell my parents I didn’t show. I know they’re distracted by Lauren’s accident, but when I don’t make it home tonight and they can’t reach me, they’ll report me missing. The search for me should start no later than tomorrow morning. Will that affect Matteo? Will it make him panic and release me? But I know too much now, he could never just set me free. And he doesn’t seem like the type who would ever panic.
We’re descending now, aiming for a private airstrip in a forested area. The nearest city is many miles away.
Matteo has his hand on my arm as we leave the plane and climb into a Jeep, but there’s a distracted look on his face. Whatever he found out on the plane really bothered him, I can tell.
We’re taken to an enormous red brick structure which is more manor than house. The circular driveway wraps around a massive Renaissance-style stone fountain with cherubs spitting arcs of water. There are easily twenty men patrolling outside, in dark suits, and several of them give Matteo a half wave, half salute as he leads me up the steps. If the sight is meant to intimidate me, it does.
We enter the house, stepping into an enormous marble-floored foyer with a floating stairway off to the left and three arched doorways that are easily ten feet high. A chandelier drips with thousands of crystals, splashing diamonds of light on the walls and floor. Gangster opulence. My parents – my adoptive parents – would smile politely and remark on everything in admiring tones, but inside they would be sneering with contempt at the gaudiness of it all. Understated elegance is the hallmark of old money. This house is a preening, insecure braggart.
It actually doesn’t feel like it fits with Matteo at all. He isn’t insecure or showy; his clothing is beautiful and top-notch but not flashy, and he carries himself with utter confidence, not like a man who’d feel compelled to shout “look at me!” by wearing pricey baubles.
“What do you think?” Matteo sweeps his hand around the foyer. It’s a good thing I was raised to be diplomatic, or I’d release the bitter laugh that bubbles up in my throat. What do I think of my prison?
“It’s amazing.” I say it in a manufactured tone of wonder, my gaze sweeping the rooms beyond the foyer, with their elaborate wood-paneled walls. “Someone hired a very talented interior designer.”
“You see, being with me isn’t the worst thing that could happen to a girl,” he says in a tone that’s gently self-mocking as he moves me through the foyer and into a large room off to the right. Parlor? Morning room? I’ll call it a parlor, because it sounds foofy and pretentious, like this house.
An older woman, probably in her seventies, trots toward us, looking at me narrow-eyed. She has a full face of makeup, and her gray hair is perfectly roller-set in a sixties-style bouffant. Her house dress looks to be Pucci, with an A-line shape and splashy abstract designs, and she’s wearing white sneakers, a whimsical touch that would make me smile under any other circumstances.
“My Great-Aunt Alonza,” he says. “She only speaks Italian.”
“Hello, I’m pleased to meet you.” I say it in my best politician’s-daughter voice. She says something to me in Italian, and I shrug apologetically. She throws up her hands in annoyance and walks off. Like it’s my damn fault that she hasn’t bothered to learn to speak the language of the country she lives in?
Then I hear the clatter of little feet, and a girl with huge eyes and brown hair runs through the doorway and hurries over to us. She’s wearing a blue dress with embroidered flowers on the hem. She looks to be about seven or eight. She lights up with a beautiful smile and throws her arms around me. I hug her back, instinctively. She’s a hugger, just like me.
Matteo shakes his head at her in mild reproof. “Valentina, you shouldn’t be here. What about your lessons?”
“I’m finished for the day. I wanted to meet her! She’s going to be my aunt!” She pouts charmingly at him.
He gives her hair an affectionate stroke. “All right, you’ve met her. You will see her at dinner. What’s the rush?”
“I’m delighted to meet you.” I smile at her. And I actually mean it – she’s lovely.
She bounces on her feet. “Will you watch my piano recitals? My mother says I’m very good.”
“Oh, how wonderful!” I say with genuine enthusiasm. “I’m sure you are.”
She waves at me and skips off. What a charming little creature. How horrible that she’s growing up in this family. At least she seems happy enough, for now.
“My niece,” Matteo says. “She’s visiting us while her parents go on a second honeymoon.”
He takes me by the arm again, leading me through the house.
“You may go anywhere in the house except my office. I will show you where that is. You will not walk outdoors without me,” he says. “My men will remain outside the main house and will not enter unless there’s an emergency. If at any time you are alone in a room with a man, without either me or Alonza or an approved chaperone, you will be subjected to another virginity test.”
This is like a medieval hell-nunnery! What’s next, a chastity belt? But I don’t dare say that out loud. I don’t want to give him any ideas.
He takes me upstairs to a room on the second floor. It’s easily triple the size of my bedroom at home, with sculpted medallions on the ceiling and a hand-carved four-poster bed. There are book shelves and a suite of living-room furniture at one end of the room.
“This is connected to my bedchamber, but you will sleep here until we’re married.”
He looks at me expectantly, so I nod.
He places his hand on my lower back again and steers me toward a door, which he pulls open. It’s an enormous walk-in closet. “These are the new rules you will live by, Natasha.” His gaze seizes mine and holds it prisoner, and I stare up at him wordlessly as a chill flows over my body. “You will obey my orders instantly and without question. You will never speak disrespectfully to me or argue with me. You w
ill treat my family members with respect. You will never speak ill of the Council or of our lifestyle. Loyalty to family above all. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” My voice only trembles a little. Understanding doesn’t mean agreeing, you bastard.
“I hope so.” He’s so close to me right now, so big and overwhelming. My emotions are a tangled web, twisting inside me like yarn that will never be unwound. I am very attracted to him, physically, and very afraid of him. I don’t feel affection; I don’t like him as a person. I do respect him – or rather his strength and his power. When I look up at him, all I feel is trepidation. I can’t be what he wants me to be, which means I’m at war with him.
And this is not a man you go to war with. He’s deadly; he always wins. What weapons do I have? My mind, my determination…and nothing else.
He tears his gaze from me, reaches into the closet, and pulls out a green dress.
“Change and give me your clothing. Your earrings too. You are my fiancée, Natasha Dubrova, and everything from your old life will be destroyed.”
Psychological warfare. And it’s working. A wave of dizziness sweeps over me as I strip in front of him and hand him my clothing and my earrings. I feel horribly naked and vulnerable – just the way he wants me. I take the dress from his hand. He runs his hand gently over my breasts and down my stomach, then grabs my breast and squeezes it painfully hard.
I cry out in pain and anger, and tears flow from my eyes. “Why did you do that? I obeyed you!”
He releases my breast, and his smile glows with cruelty. “I did it because I can. Because I own you, and obedience is the bare minimum of what I expect from you. You will submit to me gladly at all times. If I want to hurt you, you will be eager to please me by accepting pain.”
Matteo: A Dark Mafia Hate Story Page 5
