Victor: Her Ruthless Owner: The VICTOR Trilogy Book 2 [50 Loving States, Rhode Island] (Ruthless Triad) Read online

  VICTOR: Her Ruthless Owner

  50 Loving States, Rhode Island

  Theodora Taylor

  VICTOR: HER RUTHLESS OWNER

  by Theodora Taylor

  Love and typo notes:

  [email protected]

  Copyright © 2021 by Theodora Taylor

  First E-book Publication: April 2021

  Cover Design: Qambar Design & Media

  Editing: Authors Designs

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  Contents

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part II

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part III

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Part IV

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Part V

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Part VI

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Also by Theodora Taylor

  About the Author

  Part I

  A cold winter day at the beginning of summer

  1

  DAWN

  A ring. I was looking at a wedding ring. My ex-boyfriend wanted to marry me. Not for love. But for revenge.

  Revenge. That word echoed inside of me, louder and louder with every passing second. Meanwhile, Victor stared at me over the box he’d opened after informing me that ten years of ownership would be the price for my betrayal.

  He looked so different from the boy I remembered. The messy hair he’d let get so floppy while we were dating was all business now. His inky locks might have still been long on top, but they’d been ruthlessly gelled back and molded into place. Underneath his thick brows, his eyes had somehow gotten even darker. The kind of dense black that put me in mind of the mysterious holes in outer space that depending on who you asked, could either crush you in an instant or send your spaceship hurtling to another time or dimension.

  His face was still a beautiful sculpture that even a lapsed artist like me would want to capture on paper. But the planes of it had sharpened over the years. They were now razors that cast shadows.

  I’d only compared him to a raven in my mind before. That “like” stuff was done. He was the human embodiment of that infamous and scary bird. And I was sitting right across from him.

  This was Victor.

  Victor. The boy I fell in love with when we were both high school students in Japan.

  Victor. The mafia prince I had watched kill a man in cold blood. Without blinking an eye. Less than an hour before he proposed to me.

  Victor. The ex who was now proposing again.

  No, not proposing.

  Despite Mount Holyoke’s best efforts with required writing classes, I still had to majorly edit myself. At least when it came to Victor.

  Commanding. He was commanding ten years from me.

  Of marriage.

  I was breathing. I must have been breathing, or else I would’ve passed out. That’s basic biology. But for an eternity of minutes, there was no air to be had. I couldn’t inhale. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t even think.

  May 25th. That had been the date we’d agreed to get married on four years ago. One of the many promises we had made to each other. Before it all fell apart.

  And now, here I was on that very same date. Sitting in front of some town hall in Rhode Island, the monster’s expectations hanging heavy in the air.

  All I could do was stare at that ring. He wants to marry me.

  Not out of love, I reminded myself as my lungs gasped for air. But out of revenge. Again, that word echoed inside my mind.

  “No,” I finally managed to choke out. “I won’t marry you. That’s crazy!”

  Victor snapped the box closed. And the sound brought me out of my eternally held breath. I greedily gulped down oxygen as if he’d been strangling me while making his crazy demands.

  He set the ring box down in the seat beside him. Like it had somehow become a living participant in our conversation. Then he signed, “So you are choosing the destruction of your family over my ownership?”

  The destruction of my family? Was he serious?

  It was almost too much air now. His threats, combined with all that oxygen, made me dizzy like I was about to pass out. “This is insane. Why don’t you just kill me and get it over with? Why threaten my family? Try to make me marry you? I mean, ten years…what is that number even? How did you come up with that calculation?”

  “Ten years is the sentence my father was given after his plea deal,” Victor explained, his expression impassive.

  My mouth dropped open. “He only got ten years for killing that guy?”

  “He was sentenced to ten years for cutting off the nose of a fellow gang member,” Victor answered. He almost appeared bored with the conversation. “It was part of a plea deal that included my release, or he wouldn’t have even gotten that. However, he died of cancer before he could serve that unnecessary prison sentence.”

  “He died? Your father’s dead?” My heart stopped at this new information. Then filled with sorrow for Victor.

  He’d lost his father. He was an orphan now. No wonder he looked so ravaged.

  “Victor I’m so sorry for your loss. I know you loved him…”

  I gave him my condolences, then felt terrible because I had to add, “But that’s not on me. I shouldn’t have to serve his time.”

  “I read the case reports,” Victor answered. His expression was a cold blank. “The footage you provided was the cornerstone of the case against him. If not for you, he might have gone to a doctor sooner. He might still be alive.”

  “I don’t know what was in those reports, but I was just as surprised as you were on the day of that raid. I didn’t know—”

  “I read the case reports,” he repeated, his signs even more precise, even colder than I remembered them. “All of them. You set me up from the beginning. You even planted that story about your brother to lure me back to Tokyo from Hong Kong. You were so relieved when you were finally able to contact your father with something he could use against Red Diamond—that’s what you said in your recorded statement.”

  A sick sensation filled my belly. “What? No, that’s not how it went at all, and I only said those things because—”

  His expression went from cold to enraged in a blink of an eye.

  “Try to tell me one more lie,” he threatened, his hands slashing through the air like knives. “Claim even one more time that you were innocent in all of this. And I will not leave your mother off the list of people I will kill if you do not acc
ept my sentence. Or Lena. Or any man you even think of entering into a relationship with for the rest of your life. Until you pay this debt, no one you love will ever be safe.”

  The calm intensity in his eyes left no room for doubt. The raven who sat before me was even more powerful and ruthless than the boy I once knew. These were not threats but promises, the promises of a man who now hated me enough to destroy everyone I loved.

  Icy terror hollowed out my stomach.

  “But Victor, I…” I broke off because how could I finish that sentence?

  The truth would not only be dismissed by the monster sitting across from me but could also bring on my mother’s death.

  In the end, all I could come up with was, “You can’t do this. Ten years. It’s too much. And how do I even know you’ll let me go after that? That you won’t just kill my dad and everyone I love after all of this is done.”

  The enraged monster transformed back into a beautiful statue in an instant at my words.

  “Unlike you, my word is bond. Ten years is what I require.” He regarded me, his expression solemn. “As long as you don’t get pregnant, in ten years on May 26th, you will be free, and your family will be safe. This I vow to you on my life.”

  On his life.

  I believed him, but ten years….

  “Victor,” I whispered. “Please, don’t make me do this. There’s got to be another way. Let’s talk or anything but this. Please—”

  Victor dead-eyed me for a few seconds, then he announced, “You have five minutes to make your decision. Then I will put in a call to my cartel friends.”

  Without signing anything further, he climbed out of the car. And left the door open. As if he expected me to follow.

  So after about a thousand “What in the entire fuck”s, I did. I mean, what was the alternative?

  He knew where my father was embedded for his undercover assignment.

  And apparently, Victor could have him killed with just one call. He could also have my brother shot by some petty gangster with just one call—maybe the same call.

  Maybe there was some way out of the situation, other than taking his deal. But if there was, I couldn’t see it.

  2

  Instead of following the signs that pointed toward the marriage license counter, Victor led me up a set of wide stairs inside the town hall. And by led, I mean he plunged ahead, seeming to trust that I’d follow behind him like a good little threatened dog.

  He was right. I had no clue where Victor had been for the last few years or what he had done. But I believed that he would hurt my family just like he killed the guy in the garage.

  Without blinking an eye.

  We entered a door toward the back of the second-floor hallway without knocking and found a judge in full robes, sitting behind a large desk made of dark wood.

  He stood to greet us with a hearty, “The future Mr. and Mrs. Zhang! Great to meet you!”

  The judge had what I privately called a character look. A ring of white hair laid neat and combed around his otherwise bald head. And a pair of little round reading glasses sat perched on the end of his nose like they lived there, even when he slept.

  My fingers itched to draw him as I took my turn, shaking his hand. I’d been ignoring those kind of drawing urges for the last four years. And today, it felt especially inappropriate, given the circumstances.

  After confirming with Victor that he would be signing all of his responses to the ceremony questions, the judge gave me a wink. “I don’t understand sign language, but you’ll tell me if he messes up, right?”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer.

  But the judge didn’t seem to expect a response. He launched straight into the ceremony without pausing for me to laugh. And way too fast, we got to the part where he told us it was time to exchange rings.

  My heart was beating so loudly as he talked. I was surprised I could hear what the judge was saying at all.

  Was I really going to do this? Was I really going to marry the monster who was threatening to destroy my family?

  I looked up at New Victor, searching his face for a sign—any at all of the boy I used to love.

  But I couldn’t find a trace of him. New Victor just grabbed my hand and shoved the ring he’d shown me less than fifteen minutes ago onto my wedding finger.

  Flutters went off in my belly when his hand made contact. This was the first time he’d touched me in four years….

  He hated me now. But why did it feel the same as when we were seventeen-year-olds, and our hands accidentally grazed during our tutoring sessions? My hormones were all grown up, but they went just as crazy at his mere touch now as they did back then. Excited energy, dumb and electric, lit up all my nerve endings.

  I jerked my eyes up to his face again. Had our first touch in four years affected Victor the same as it had me?

  A weird hope lit in my heart, despite the circumstances.

  But then he dropped my hand to sign, “This ring makes me your owner…I own you now.”

  And that small hope fizzled out as quickly as it had begun.

  Victor turned back to the judge, and his expression remained impassive as he made legally-binding promises in perfect ASL. He was a cold winter day at the beginning of summer.

  When the time came for me to put a ring on it, he pulled another band out of his inside pocket. But instead of handing it to me, he pushed it on his own finger before motioning to the judge to do my part of the ceremony.

  The ring itself was a shock. It was exactly the same as mine. Two raised bars of titanium sandwiched between a band of onyx. My teenage self might’ve found matching rings romantic. Now I saw the rings for what they were, a shackle and lead with an invisible chain going from my finger to his.

  I repeated back the judge’s words, but I barely registered them. I was too busy staring at the ring he hadn’t let me put on him, just like cops don’t let prisoners cuff themselves.

  “… I now declare you husband and wife.”

  The judge’s words drew me out of my daze.

  The ceremony…

  It was done.

  I looked up at Victor and found him staring down at me, his black eyes glittering with anger…and something else. My throat tightened. I guessed this was the part where we were supposed to kiss.

  He took a step forward, hovering as close as you can without actually touching. It didn’t matter. He didn’t have to touch me. My hormones did that crazy zap-zap-ping through my body just the same.

  He leaned forward, and I braced. But at the last moment, he stepped back.

  “Thank you,” he signed to the man who married us.

  Then he walked away. Just walked away, leaving me there alone with the judge.

  It was obvious—so, so obvious that he expected me to follow him. Wherever he led.

  Face burning, I turned back to the judge to murmur, “Thank you.”

  The judge gave me a considering look like he was heavily weighing his next words.

  “Listen,” he said. “I don’t know what this marriage is to either of you or why you both have decided to go through with it.…”

  He emphasized, “you both have decided to go through with it,” like he was also trying to convince himself of that blatant lie. “But with these kind of marriages, the kind that begin in anger, my advice is to release the past, and whatever came before today. This marriage might have begun for certain reasons, but you and he can decide where it goes. You’re husband and wife now. Try to make this into the kind of union you want. I’ve seen others do it.”

  Husband and wife.

  It certainly didn’t feel like that. And as for this marriage being anything other than a total nightmare, that wasn’t something I could fathom. Not anymore.

  But this judge was trying to be kind. So I murmured another, “Thank you” before following my new husband into a marriage that would be filled with anger and bitterness, no matter what the judge advised.

  Ten years….

&nbs
p; How the hell was I going to get through this?

  3

  VICTOR

  “Did you marry her or kill her?” Phantom asked when Victor came down the town hall steps alone.

  His cousin was smoking a cigarette next to the Bentley they only used on special occasions. Victor frowned at the sight. Phantom had quit smoking a couple of years ago. Now he only lit up when he was stressed. Which strangely, was never when he was cracking heads, making deals, or slicing off various body parts on behalf of The Silent Triad.

  However, “this shit” stressed him out. Victor knew because Phantom had told him that exactly before they drove up to Western Massachusetts.

  Victor also knew his cousin’s question hadn’t been in jest. Phantom wouldn’t have judged him if he had decided to end Dawn’s life instead of marrying her. He might’ve even respected him for it.

  As if confirming Victor’s thought, Phantom muttered, “Killing her for what she did to your dad makes a helluva a lot more sense than this plan. Why didn’t you kill her again?”

  It was a good question. Too good. The molten black rage that had been simmering inside of him for four years rose to a boil. He wasn’t sure who he was angrier with at the moment. Phantom for asking the obvious or himself for not having a strong and comprehensible reply.