She cried out and scrambled to get her towel, only to have Johannes reach for it as well. Laura wasn’t entirely sure what happened, but they somehow managed to bump heads, and she ended up on the floor, not covered, and Johannes stared at her.Panic filled her, and she scrambled for the towel and her diary. Johannes seemed to still as she got both and pulled away from him.Within seconds, it became a tug of war as Johannes grabbed the diary, and she had no choice but to turn her back and immediately wrap the towel around her.Johannes had never seen her naked.No man had seen her naked.Her heart raced.“Please give me back my diary,” she said, keeping her back to him.Her face was so hot. She had never been so embarrassed in her life.“No.” He stepped past her. She tried to grab his shirt, but she had no choice but to keep one hand on her chest.“Please.”Johannes turned at the door. “You’re my wife, and a Augustus never begs. Don’t do it.”He slammed the bathroom door, and Laura gri
“You hate this. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bore you.” She snapped the book closed.“How did I not know about this?” he asked, pointing at the room.“What was there to know?”“You have never asked for one of these.”She shrugged. “It’s your home and your apartment. You never wanted to know, and you told me to leave your place as it was. That it was perfectly functional.”“What have you been doing the past couple of months?” he asked.“Reading.” She moved back behind her machine. “A lot of reading. Watching some television.”“But do you want one of these at our place?”“Our place?”“Laura, we are married.”“We don’t have to be,” Laura said. “All you have to do is say the words, and we can get our marriage annulled. I even looked into it. If neither of us contests it, we can have it done so fast. You can goback to your old life, and I can go back to mine.”“Is being married to me really so bad?”“You don’t want to be married to me, and besides, didn’t you once tell me I wasn’t good enou
His past lovers and the women in his world were anything but. Innocence was often destroyed, and quickly, unless they were young children.She rubbed at her temples. “You’re right.”Johannes stepped closer toward her. “You care for that boy, don’t you?”“I care for all of the kids at the orphanage. They’re all special.He was the one I found.”“He relies on you a lot.”She sighed and rubbed at her temple. “Can we not talk about this? It’s hard enough to leave them. I don’t want to think of them alone at night.”“Don’t they have guardians?” Johannes asked.“They do, but they’re being paid to take care of them.” She went to step around him, but he placed a hand on her waist, stalling her. He didn’t grip her too tightly as he didn’t want to startle her or make her afraid.“Laura,” he said.“What is it?”He stared into her eyes.Johannes had never taken the time to look into her eyes before. They were a deep brown. At first, he had thought they were cold, malicious, and that she was after
Being seated at the dinner table with Lucas, her father, Johannes, Saya, Marcell, and Cash was the most surreal experience for Laura. She sat next to her father, while Lucas sat opposite him on the other end of the table. Johannes was beside her father, next to her. Opposite were his three friends.Billy and a few of their wait staff brought out platters of food for them to serve themselves.“You have food prepared at home?” Lucas asked.“Yes, it has always been this way.”“And you don’t find that reckless?”Leon smiled at Billy, who was shooting dangers at Lucas. The man had just insulted her cooking.Laura wondered if Lucas had a death wish. She wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t do something awful, like not season his food.“I have found that if you have the right allies, make friends, and don’t fuck them over, they don’t want to poison you. Maybe you should try it. It beats all that crap they serve at restaurants.”“There is no way I would allow my family to eat at such … places.
“You are determined to make a mockery of me, of everything our family built?” Johannes asked.“I want to set us both free.”“And how many lives are you willing to take to get it?”“There will be no lives lost.”He chuckled, but it sounded forced. “You heard Leon. A future of peace. The moment you request an annulment, peace will be a thing of the past. It will be the fairy tale that mothers tell their children in the hope of helping them fall to sleep at night. War will rage, and no one, not us, or Leon, can guarantee who will win. We all have enemies. Your father’s are now ours, and our enemies are now your father’s. We are united by blood. By marriage. Take that away, and all that will remain is war.”“You’re lying.”“I’m not, Laura. Do you think I entered this marriage lightly? I did not. I know what is expected of me. One day, men and women will look toward me, not my father. I will be the Boss of the Augustus outfit. It will be up to me to decide who lives and who dies. This unit
He closed the distance, and Laura’s head was pressed against the wall. She seemed to try to escape through it. “So how about we have a little … experiment?” “Experiment?” she asked, frowning.“Yes, how about we see how much we don’t mesh?”“How?”“Simple. We start with a kiss. Just some kissing, nothing too… heavy. My hands will stay on the walls. Just our lips will touch.”“Why should I believe you?”“I’ve never given you a reason to doubt me before.” “And what does this experiment prove?” she asked.At least she wasn’t hitting him and telling him to get the fuck out. “We’ll see how far our … meshing abilities go. If we enjoy the kiss, then we will give it time, and we will keep enjoying kissing. If it doesn’t, then we will come to some arrangement that means this marriage can survive.”“I think this is ridiculous. We can just come to some arrangement where it can work. I agree with the latter.”“And you want a marriage that is completely cold and dead?” he asked. He didn’t have a c
Jealous?”“I don’t have anything to be jealous about.” She had never felt jealous. Not a moment in her life.Johannes smiled.“I don’t know why you’re smiling.”“Simple, you’re jealous.”“Whoever you sleep with is none of my business.”“So, in your ideal marriage, you wouldn’t care if your husband was with other women.”“Of course, I would. In a real marriage, I’d want love, and I’d love him. We don’t have that. We will never have that.”“How about this then? Is there a chance you like me?” he asked.“No.” She bit on her lip and glanced away as he tensed. “I’m sorry. I don’t know you.”“But what you do know, you don’t like.”“I don’t think we should be having this conversation,” she said. This was going from bad to worse. The menu lay open on the table in front of her. “Maybe we should just order.”Johannes didn’t let go of her hand, and even as she tried to avoid his gaze, he still stared at her. She looked around the room, trying to find an excuse to distract him, but she had no cho
Johannes looked at his father, a little taken aback. “What?”Leon wasn’t in the room, and Lucas sighed. “If his daughter dies at the hands of our enemies, then we are not responsible and you don’t have to stay married to her.”“You wanted this union,” Johannes said.“I know what is good for the family, for our side, Johannes. Do not be stupid and pretend you don’t know what that is. We all know what it is.”He wasn’t sure exactly what he was hearing. “Did you … was this … do you want to kill Laura?”“Of course not. I’m a man who sees opportunity.”Leon entered the room. The man looked like he’d aged twenty years since Johannes had last seen him. At least his fists weren’t clenched, and he wasn’t ready to take another swipe. “Any news?” Leon asked.“Nothing yet.”He was starting to have doubts about his father’s involvement in the attacks on Laura.“I will go see if we have an update,” Lucas said.Johannes watched his father go, and he didn’t like the suspicion flooding him. It suddenl