The Stroganov's Bride

The dress is the color of a bruise. My stepmother, Isabella lays it across the foot of my bed like she's delivering a death sentence. Purple silk. Too tight. Too revealing. Everything I am not. “You'll wear this tonight,” she says, not looking at me. She's already checking her phone. “The Stroganov family doesn't buy damaged goods.” Buy. Not marry. Not welcome. Buy. “Of course, Mother.” She doesn't correct me. I'm not her daughter. I never have been. I'm the inconvenience her husband brought home after his first wife died. The extra mouth. The punching bag when her real daughter needed target practice. “Be ready by seven,” she adds, pausing at my door. “And Ria?” I wait. “Try to look like you've been fed this decade. The Stroganov don't want a skeleton.” The door clicks shut. I look at the dress. Then at my mirror. The girl staring back is thin. Pale. Dark circles under her eyes that concealer can't hide. My father stopped looking at me three years ago. My step-sister, Chloe, only looks at me when she needs an audience for her cruelty. No one has ever looked at me and wanted to stay. Tonight, a stranger will look at me and see a transaction. *** The Stronagov’s mansion doesn't look like a home. It looks like a mausoleum built by people who have too much money and not enough soul. Black iron gates. Hedges trimmed into perfect, threatening shapes. A driveway that goes on so long I think we've driven into another country. Chloe laughs from the backseat. “She's going to throw up. Dad, look at her. She's going to ruin the upholstery.” My father glances at me in the rearview mirror. He looks away just as fast. “Don't embarrass us,” he mutters. Us. Not me. Never me. The car stops. Footmen in black coats open our doors. Chloe loops her arm through mine like we're sisters. Like she didn't pour bleach on my hair last year and laugh when it burned my scalp. “Smile, Ria,” she whispers, nails digging in. “You're about to meet your new owner.” *** The dining hall is too big for four people. Three settings on one side. One on the other. I'm the one sitting alone. My stepmother noticed immediately. Her smile turned sharp. My father's face went gray. Chloe just looked delighted. The head of the Stroganov family, old man Stroganov, all cold eyes and colder silence, gestures to the empty chair across from me. “My son sends his apologies. Business in Zurich.” My son. Singular. I'd been told I was marrying the eldest. Nikolai Alexeevich Stroganov. Thirty-two. Ruthless. Head of Stroganov Acquisitions. The one who buys companies and strips them for parts. No one mentioned a second son. The door opens. And I understand. *** He's identical to the man in the photograph. Same sharp jaw. Same pale grey eyes. Same cruel mouth. But different. Where Nikolai's photo showed a man carved from ice, this one burns. His hair is the same dark brown, but it's messy. His shirt is untucked. His tie is loose around his neck like he's been pulling at it all night. He doesn't walk to the empty chair. He walks to mine. “My brother sends his regards,” he says, voice low enough that only I can hear. “I'll be keeping you company tonight.” His hand finds my lower back. It stays there. My stepmother's fork pauses halfway to her mouth. Chloe's eyes go wide. My father doesn't notice anything anymore, he's already halfway through his wine. “I'm Lev,” the man says, pulling out the chair beside me. Not across. Beside. “And you're Ria. The girl my brother bought.” I flinch at the word. Something flickers across his face. Too fast to name. “Sorry,” he says, and he doesn't sound sorry at all. “That was cruel. Let me try again.” He leans closer. His knee touches mine under the table. “You're Ria. The girl my brother doesn't deserve. And the girl I'm going to steal.” *** Dinner is a blur of silverware and silence. Old man Stroganov watches me like I'm a stock he's not sure will pay out. My stepmother performs graciousness like an oscar-bait actress. Chloe keeps staring at Lev like she's rewriting her life plan in real time. But Lev only looks at me. Every time I reach for water, he reaches first. Every time I drop my eyes, he waits until I lift them again. His hand hasn't left my lower back. It's burned through the bruise-colored silk. I feel the heat of his palm like a brand. “You're not eating,” he says halfway through the main course. “I'm not hungry.” “Liar.” I freeze. No one calls me a liar. They call me quiet. Compliant. Invisible. But no one has ever looked at me close enough to know when I'm lying. Lev cuts a piece of steak from his own plate. Lifts the fork to my lips. “Eat,” he says. “You're shaking.” I'm not shaking from hunger. I'm shaking because no one has ever fed me. No one has ever noticed. No one has ever looked at my thin arms and thought starving instead of pretty. I open my mouth. The fork touches my tongue. My stepmother's eyes could drill holes through my skull. *** After dinner, my father pulls me aside. “Don't ruin this,” he hisses. “The Merciers are our only chance. If you so much as…” “If I so much as what, Father?” He blinks. I never interrupt. I never push back. I'm the good daughter. The forgotten one. “Just… be agreeable,” he finishes, weaker now. Be agreeable. I've been agreeable for eighteen years. It got me scars. It got me bleach burns. It got me sold to a family of wolves. “Ria.” Lev appears behind my father like a ghost. Or a predator. My father steps back immediately. Fear smells the same on every man, I'm learning. “Your parents are leaving,” Sebastian says. His hand finds my back again. “You're staying here tonight.” It's not a question. My stepmother opens her mouth. Closes it. For once, she has nothing to say. The Stroganov are above her. Everyone is above her. But the Stroganov are sky. Chloe grabs my wrist before she leaves. Her nails leave crescents. “If you think you're coming back to this family as some kind of princess,” she whispers, “you're wrong. You're still nothing. You'll always be nothing.” She leaves. Lev watches her go. “Your sister,” he says. “Step-sister” “The one with the nasty habit of touching what's mine.” I open my mouth to correct him. I'm not his. I'm not anyone's. But the words don't come. Because the way he says mine makes my stomach flip in a way I don't understand. *** He walks me to a wing of the mansion I've never seen. The walls are dark wood. The floors are black marble. Every painting is a Stroganov ancestor with the same cold grey eyes. “My room is at the end,” Lev says casually. “Nikolai's is at the other end of the hall. Consider it a demilitarized zone.” “I don't understand what's happening.” He stops. Turns. We’re alone in a corridor lined with dead Stroganovs. He's close enough that I can smell his cologne. Cedar. Smoke. Something dangerous. “You're marrying my brother,” he says slowly, like he's explaining something to a child. “But I don't share. And I've never wanted anything the way I wanted you the second you walked through that door.” “That's insane.” “Probably.” “You don't know me.” “I know you flinched when I said bought. I know you haven't had a full meal in weeks. I know your sister has hurt you, and your father lets her, and your stepmother enjoys it.” My breath stops. “How…” “I had you investigated this afternoon.” He says it like it's nothing. Like ordering takeout. “I know everything, Ria. I know your mother died when you were four. I know you sleep on a twin mattress in the basement. I know you've never been kissed.” My face burns. “I know,” he whispers, and now his mouth is near my ear, “that you're not shaking because you're afraid of me.” He's right. And that's the worst part. *** He leaves me at a door. “My room is three doors down,” he says. “If you need me. If you want me.” “I won't.” He smiles. It's not a nice smile. It's the smile of a man who's never been told no and liked it. “We'll see.” The door closes. I lean against it, heart slamming, hands shaking. This was supposed to be simple. Marry a stranger. Survive. Maybe, eventually, escape. But there are two of them. And one of them has already decided I'm his. And the worst part, the absolute worst part, is that for the first time in my life, someone looked at me and didn't look away.