"You bastard," she hisses, her voice low and furious. "You absolute bastard. Six years. Six years I thought you were dead, and you—"
She tries to slap me again, but this time I catch her wrist.
"Careful," I warn. "You don't get to play the grieving lover. Not with me."
"Play?" Her laugh is sharp enough to cut. "I mourned you.”
She stops, her free hand coming up to cover her mouth. I can see tears gathering in her eyes, and something in my chest cracks.
No. I won't let her manipulate me with tears.
She’s an actress. I will never believe her words or tears.
Never again.
Chapter Seven
Kira
The moment his hand touches my shoulder, every instinct screams danger.
I start to turn, to fight, to scream—and then I'm against the wall, stone cold and rough against my back through the thin fabric of my dress. A hand covers my mouth, cutting off sound, cutting off air, cutting off everything.
My brain catalogs threats in the half-second before I see his face.The moonlight hits his features, and the world stops.
No.
No, it's not possible.
Maksim.
My Maksim.
The man I mourned, the man I dreamed about every single night, the man I loved so desperately that his death nearly killed me too is here.
He's alive.
And he's furious."Hello, Kira," he says softly, his voice rougher than I remember, edged with something dark and dangerous. "Miss me?"
The hand over my mouth prevents me from answering, but I couldn't speak anyway. Can't breathe. Can't think. Can only stare at him and catalogue all the ways he's changed.
Scars. God, the scars. One cuts through his eyebrow, another along his jawline. More disappear beneath his collar. I know—somehow I know—there are more hidden under his clothes. His face is harder, leaner, carved into sharp angles that make him look like a stranger wearing Maksim's features.
His eyes are what break me. They used to be warm, full of laughter and love and dreams about our future. Now they're cold. Dead. Looking at me with such hatred that I physically recoil against the wall.
This isn't my Maksim. This is someone else. Someone hell forged into a weapon and pointed directly at me.
He leans closer, and I can smell him—different cologne, or maybe no cologne at all, just soap and something sharper. Dangerous.
My heart is hammering so hard I'm surprised he can't hear it. The hand covering my mouth is calloused.
He removes his hand slowly, watching me like I'm a threat he needs to neutralize.
The second his palm leaves my mouth, I slap him.
The crack of skin-on-skin echoes in the garden. My palm stings. His head snaps to the side from the force of it, and when he turns back to look at me, there's something almost like surprise in those dead eyes.
"You bastard!" The words explode out of me, too loud, I need to be quieter, but I can't, I can't control anything right now. "You absolute bastard! Six years. Six years I thought you were dead!"
