After the years I’d run and scrabbled to survive, all the years I’d looked for Kirill and waited for him, it was all going to end like this? Stabbed to death in the back of a stolen minivan by my lover’s psychotic half-brother?
Nikolai pulled my arm toward him, and I had no way of stopping him as he moved the knife over the back of my hand. I barely felt the pain; the blissful haze of sleep was crowding into my brain. He made an incision and then pressed his fingers into the wound. I stared at the blood welling down my arm and onto the seat from the small, precise cut. That was going to hurt when the drugs wore off, but if it did, it would mean I was still alive, which would be a pleasant surprise.
Nikolai set the knife down before fishing a roll of masking tape out of his pocket. After tearing a length off, he pressed it over my bleeding skin. I stared in horror at the makeshift bandage. He patted the top with a sickly gentle touch.
His wide mouth pulled in a grin that set my teeth on edge. “There we go. All patched up for now. Sorry if that hurt, but it had to be done.”
My blood looked like a glove on his hand as he held his palm out to me. A tiny black shape sat in the center. The painful reality I found myself in was fading quickly, and my brain couldn’t quite keep up with the implications of that tiny microchip.
The last thing I heard was Nikolai’s voice murmuring as soft as a lullaby. “We can’t have Kirill tracking us down too quickly, can we?”
* * *
Molly
Age 17
On my seventeenth birthday,my father threw me a formal dinner. I was the only woman there.
I was wearing the party dress he had chosen for me and tried to fold my napkin over my nearly exposed chest.
Father wasn’t happy that I had a friend.Kirill.I had stopped going to his house, but I still invited him to mine. Surrounded by staff, there was never any doubt of having enough chaperones. Father accepted it, though he didn’t like it. Maybe he saw in my eyes that finally having a friend was making me less brittle. Less likely to break into a thousand pieces.
But this dinner was his reminder not to get too comfortable. I should never get too comfortable. I should remember that any mercy he showed me was only a stay of execution, not a pardon.
My high school bully, Kaplan Holmes, was there with his father. Tonight, he was another potential owner to look over the wares. Kap kept toasting me with mocking smiles. It sat between us that no matter our power dynamic, if my father decided a merger with Kap’s family would be good for business, everything would flip. I’d be given to Kap as a wife and be at the whim of his mercy.
I’d rather marry the fat, balding man speaking to my dad and staring at my barely concealed chest at every opportunity. At least he might die soon.
My phone vibrated in my lap, where I’d hidden it in my chiffon skirt. I knew who it was.
The only person who ever texted me. The only person I cared about.
“Holding up, princess? Engaged yet?”
I could hear Kirill’s teasing voice through the words. A warmth filled my chest at his message. He was thinking about me. It gave me the strength to summon a smile for my father when he asked me something.
I lowered my hands to my lap when I could and quickly typed out a reply.
“Not yet, but the evening’s young. This is the rager every girl dreams of for her birthday. Even Kap’s here.”
I went back to pretending I was listening to the people around me, though my mind was firmly on Kirill. I could almost picture him. He’d be in his room with the windows open because it was summer, and he didn’t have A.C. He usually went without a shirt when it was hot. He’d be sitting on his bed, under the window, staring at his phone. His hair had gotten longish and flopped over his forehead in a way that made me want to smooth it back.
My phone vibrated again, and I could hardly wait to open the message. He’d sent a picture, and I turned the phone to see it.
I was right. He was sitting on his bed, and his shoulders were bare. He’d pulled a Kylo Ren mask from last Halloween over his face.
“You need me to come get you?”
I stifled a snort of laughter and took a deep drink of water, hiding my smile. Of course, he couldn’t come. Of course, he couldn’t stride in here and cut down all the evil men in my life with a laser sword and rescue me from my father. But knowing he would try if I asked him made me feel less alone, even if I already knew I never would. I would take the hurt a hundred times before I allowed my father to turn his attention to Kirill.
* * *
Now
I wokewith a start as hot, urgent vomit pushed up my throat. The dream lingered on the outskirts of my consciousness. No, not a dream. A memory. A memory of Kirill.
“Fuck,” a rough, masculine voice cursed.