“Do you want to live?” I asked.
“Sir?”
“Get out now and head to Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Find my father and tell him where I am.” I stepped back from him, allowing him to get up. “Do as I say, and you just might live out the night. Understood?”
He nodded quickly and left just as fast, realizing that this was the only way he was making it through this war. Because that was exactly what it was now—war.
I pushed my gun back into my waistband and took the stairs two at a time, calling out her name as I went and praying that he hadn’t already killed her. She’d warned me of how bad it would be if we were found out and I’d pushed her into it regardless. I’d wanted her and that was all I had cared about, and now…now she might be gone because of me. My heart squeezed, my chest tightening at the thought of harm coming to her, so my immediate reaction as she left the room to the right and came into view was joy.
Joy, because she was alive.
Joy, because I was taking her away from this.
Joy, because she was finally going to be allmine, and with my mother's blessing no less.
Her eyes widened when she saw me and she tried to hide her face, but it was too late. I’d seen what he had done, and the joy slipped away, replacing itself with rage so deep that I felt it to my very marrow.
“Alexander,” she whimpered as I walked closer.
Her face, her beautiful face, was broken, bloody and swollen. Large purple and black bruises were forming across her right cheekbone and eye socket and her lip was puffy and split, dried blood still on her chin.
My Marisha was alive, but he’d broken her and now he would pay the ultimate price.
Chapter Twenty
Marisha
“Don’t look at me,” I spoke quickly, my voice frail as I turned to the side to try and hide the worst of my damaged face from him.
It hurt to speak. Tiny bolts of pain shot through my face with each syllable I uttered. I was sure something was fractured. My cheekbone, maybe. I licked my lips nervously, wincing as it stung.
“I’ll fucking kill him,” Alexander growled as he approached me, gently cupping my chin to force me to look at him. His nostrils flared and his eyes widened with rage when he saw the damage up close.
“He knows, Alex,” I shortened his name, quickly realizing that I’d never called him anything but Alexander. And maybe he wouldn’t like it. Maybe I’d upset him too. “I’m sorry. Not Alex. I meant Alexan—,”
He pressed a gentle finger to my swollen lips. “You can call me Alex, Marisha. Your Alex. Nobody else’s.”
His words, though they struck a gentle chord in my chest and made me feel warmer, could not erase the horror of Ivan’s violence, or the promise of more to come. Ivan was going to kill me.
There was no getting away from that fact anymore.
I’d seen the simple truth in his eyes; I was already as good as dead, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
I raised a shaking hand, pressing my palm against his chest over his heart.
“My Alex,” I whispered, for a brief moment letting my mind imagine a future where I was alive, Ivan was gone, and Alexander could truly be mine. I loved him so much, loved him to the center of my being. No, beyond that. I loved him in a way I’d never loved anyone or anything before. He had planted himself inside me, the creeping roots of his every detail reaching into the different parts of me until he could never be cut out, no matter how I tried to weed the thought of him from my mind and body.
It seemed cruel; to bring Alexander into my life and then take him away so quickly, yet I accepted it for what it was, because life wasn’t fair. It never had been for me or my family, and despite my death so quickly approaching, I knew I could die happy because of one simple fact… I loved this man. Deeply. Truly. Madly.
Alexander leaned forward and pressed his mouth so gently against my forehead that his touch barely registered.
Without thinking it through, I said what I was on my mind. “I can die happy, because I’ve been with you. Because I’ve learned…what love is from you.”
Alexander gripped my arms and shook me, but only for a second. His gaze grew wider, realizing that I’d been manhandled enough for one lifetime. He released me, running both hands nervously through his hair.
“Don’t say that, Marisha. Don’t ever say that. I won’t allow anything to happen to you,” he said firmly.
“This is Ivan, Alex… we both know that you won’t have a say in the matter. I’m his wife and he can do with me as he pleases,” I said, sadness gripping my words like a vice. “It’s the Bratva way.”
