Page 74 of The Pakhan’s Stolen Bride

The left side of his jaw is a horrific ruin of pink scar tissue, the flesh twisted and melted in a jagged line that runs from his bottom lip all the way down his neck, disappearing beneath his white collar. It is the exact path of the bullet Ilya put through his face on the altar. The scar has pulled the corner of his mouth upward, forcing him into a permanent, grotesque smirk that looks like a caricature of the man I used to think was safe.

He stands five feet away, a silver pocket knife resting loose in his palm, his blue eyes staring down at me with a raw, twisted satisfaction.

"I always loved the way you looked in green, Viallentinka," he says, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that carries none of the boring, soft-spoken warmth I remember from our dinners in my father’s garden.

I pull Ekaterina tighter against my side, my chin lifting as I meet his gaze, refusing to let him see the shaking in my legs. "You look terrible, Mikhail. Did you forget how to use a mirror, or did the surgeon just hate you as much as I do?"

He lets out a short, rough laugh, the sound dry and empty in the quiet basement. He walks closer, his boots scraping against the concrete, and drops to his knees in front of me. He reaches out, his cold, rough finger tracing the line of my jaw, his touch making a shiver of pure disgust run down my spine.

"Still so sharp," he murmurs, his finger sliding down to my neck, stopping right over the dark purple bruise Ilya left on my skin. His eyes narrow, the scarred side of his face twitching violently as he stares at the mark. "You’ve changed since the wedding, Via. You used to be so quiet. So sweet. I was looking forward to breaking you. I was going to do it slowly, in our house, after we got married. But then your father let you get taken by the monster."

"My father didn't do anything. You singlehandedly did everything." I say, my teeth grinding together. "And Ilya is ten times the man you’ll ever be, you half-melted coward."

Mikhail’s face turns into a terrifying mask of rage. He stands up slowly, his hand going into his pocket to pull out a black, encrypted phone. He taps the screen and holds it in front of my face. "You think your brute is going to save you? You think he is coming for his little prize?"

The screen displays a live security feed.

It is the Kovalevskii estate. The heavy iron gates are gone, reduced to twisted, blackened shards of metal. The main house is a smoking, ruined furnace of fire and ash, the roof of the east wing completely collapsed, a massive column of black smoke rising into the pale blue sky. It looks like a war zone, a pile of pulverized concrete and burning wood that has been entirely erased from the map.

My chest contracts, the room suddenly spinning as the cold reality of the image hits my brain.

No. No, no, no.

"Thermite," Mikhail says, his voice dripping with a sick, proud satisfaction as he slides the phone back into his pocket. "Twelve tons of it, right through his front gate while his captains were sitting in the war room. I planned to kill them all, Via. I wanted to burn his entire empire to ash while you were locked in your bedroom. But you just had to escape, didn't you? You just had to run to the mall and survive."

He bends down, his blue eyes inches from mine, his breath smelling of stale tobacco and mint.

"You're a bad wife, Viallentinka," he whispers, the permanent smirk on his face widening. "You let yourself be kidnapped. You let my family's business be destroyed, and then... you started sleeping with my murderer. I was going to save you. I had my teams waiting at the museum. I wanted to drag you out of his cage until I saw you at that ball. You were looking at him like he was your entire world. You were disgustingly in love with the brute who put a bullet in my face."

"I was never in love with you, Mikhail," I say, my voice a cold, sharp blade that cuts through his words. "You were just the terrible option my father chose to keep the peace. You were boring. You were predictable. And you were too weak to even survive a single wedding."

Mikhail snaps.

He lunges forward, his hand grabbing the collar of my green silk dress. He pulls the silver pocket knife from his pocket, the blade clicking open with a sharp, metallic sound that makes Ekaterina shriek in terror.

"Via! No!" Ekaterina tries to pull him away, her small hands clawing at his beige sleeve, but he pushes her back, her body hitting the concrete wall with a dull thud.

He presses the cold steel of the blade directly against the soft skin of my collarbone, the tip biting just deep enough to draw a single, tiny drop of blood.

The coldness of the metal triggers the panic, my mind instantly throwing me back to the altar. The smell of incense. The sound of the gunfire. The white lace of my dress turning red. The world starts to spin, my breath coming in short, panting hitches as the darkness tries to drag me under.

Don't break. Not now. Protect the baby.

"You're shaking," Mikhail whispers, his eyes tracking the rapid flutter of my pulse under his blade. "Are you finally starting to understand what happens to bad wives?"

He slides the knife down, the sharp edge slowly slicing through the green silk of my dress, the fabric parting with a soft, tearing sound to reveal the pale skin of my chest. The cold metal drags across my breast, tracing the line of my ribs, his eyes dark with a sick, twisted pleasure as he watches me shiver.

"You couldn't even kill him, Mikhail," I say, my voice steadying, my sass turning into a razor-sharp weapon as I force myself to meet his eyes. "You brought a twelve-ton truck, you blew up his gates, and you still didn't get his head. He’s out there. He’s crawling out of that rubble, and he’s going to peel your skin off inch by inch when he finds you."

He pulls the knife back, his face turning a dark, splotchy red. "He’s dead, Via! He’s buried under ten tons of concrete!"

"Get over yourself. You think you can kill him?" I mock, a dry, bloody laugh escaping my split lip as I spit a mouthful of copper-tasting saliva onto his beige shoe. "You're a failure, Mikhail. A half-melted, pathetic failure who has to kidnap women because no one would ever look at your face without vomiting."

Mikhail’s arm swings out in a blur of movement.

The backhand catches me dead center across the jaw, the force of the blow snapping my head back against the rusted iron of the radiator. A sharp, explosive pain whites out my vision, my teeth cracking together as my bottom lip splits, a hot, thick rush of blood instantly filling my mouth.

"Via!" Ekaterina screams, her hands clutching her head as she weeps in the corner.