Page 3 of The Pakhan’s Stolen Bride

It’s like being hit by a physical force.

His eyes are cold, hard, and terrifying. He freezes. The boredom in his posture vanishes, replaced by a sudden stillness.

Don't look at me. Look at the beige idiot next to me. Look at my father. Just don't look at me.

A slow, terrifyingly beautiful smile spreads across Ilya’s face. It’s not a nice smile. It’s the smile of a man who just realized he holds all the cards.

"Actually," Ilya says, his voice dropping into a register that makes the hair on my arms stand up. "I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want the fourteen million, Mikhail."

No. No.

Mikhail blinks, hope flickering in his pathetic eyes. "You... you don't?"

Ilya points a gloved finger directly at me. "I’ll take her instead."

Kill me. Now.

The world stops. I’m pretty sure my heart actually skips a beat.

"Like hell you will!" my father roars, his hand flying to the holster at his back.

"Petr, don't!" Mikhail screams, but it’s too late.

The sound of the first gunshot is the trigger. My father’s men open fire, and Ilya’s team responds with a wall of lead that sounds like the end of the world.

The smell hits me first. Sulfur. Burnt ozone. Gunpowder.

It’s not just a smell. It’s a key turning in a lock I’ve kept bolted for twenty years.

Suddenly, I’m not twenty-three. I’m three years old. I’m sitting on the marble floor of our old sunroom, playing with a wooden doll. I see the flash of the muzzle.

I hear the wet, heavy thud of something hitting the ground. I look up, and my mother’s face is gone. There’s just red.

Red on the white lilies in the vase.

Red on my hands.

Red on the white lace of her dress.

"Via! Move!"

My father is screaming, but he sounds like he’s underwater. I can’t breathe. The air in the cathedral is thick with white stone dust and the metallic tang of blood.

I’m paralyzed.

I’m that little girl again, waiting for the monster to come for me too.

"Please," I whisper, though I don’t know who I’m talking to.

A hand grabs my waist. For a second, I think it’s my father, but then I’m yanked backward.

"Stay still, damn it!" Mikhail’s voice cracks in my ear.

He's not protecting me.

He’s crouching behind my voluminous skirts, his hands gripping my hips as he tries to hide his cowardice behind five layers of expensive lace.

You piece of shit.