He took everything from me. My family, my life and my freedom.
But it wasn't enough for him.
Roman Cross is a monster. A cold, calculated and ruthless mafia king who trapped me in his castle as his bride.
Now Roman wants my heart but I can't affor...
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Winter
Roman 35, Winter 20
Time is a strange concept. One moment you're on a family ski trip in Aspen, Colorado in the midst of winter. Your boots deep in untouched white snow. The next you're all alone sitting on the cold floor with the number twenty in red icing on a cupcake staring back at you.
Twenty. I'm twenty years old and this is not the life I thought I'd be living. I should be in college, rushing to class one after the other; clutching a sketchpad under my arm. A painful pang pierces my chest as the thought of what could've been replays in my mind.
"Happy birthday." Nina chirps in broke English as she steps into my room with a broom. She's here to clean.
I never left the cell; he never took me back up to the room in the attic. I've been here since, rotting away. Losing my mind. My sanity being chipping away one day at a time.
He's won. I've surrender to him a long time ago. My mind and body are all his and he knows it. He abuses it especially late at night when I least expect him to come to me.
He'd come down and use me like the whore I am. And I would embarrassingly enjoy it. My body loving the way he touches me. I hate, hate myself for it. And, there's nothing in this goddamn cage that can help me to just end it all.
My mind drifts to the nights few weeks back when he came to me with bandages wrapped around his shoulder blade and torso. Red blood dried on the left side of his face and he was filled with some much adrenaline that his pupils were super diluted. His eyes were still an empty abyss of darkness. A black hole.
He fucked me so hard, so rough and so deep for hours that he bruised my cervix. I was rush to the makeshift hospital a few rooms over for excessive bleeding. That's when I found out my IUD was expiring and the in house nurse had it removed immediately. Under Roman's orders no doubt.
"I got some good news for you." Nina crouches beside me.
Her brown eyes are sparkling and his lips are upturned into a grin. She was the younger than Marta when she started taking care of me. She is brighter. Her dark eyes shine with positivity almost all the time and there's a bounce to her curls as she goes about her days. I wonder why Roman hired someone like her.
She is the complete opposite of the way he operates.
"You're getting out of here today." There's mischief in her voice. "Mr Cross had me arrange his room with some feminine products and clothes too." She leans in with a grin.
