Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106541 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106541 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
“That’s not true.” When she dismisses my claims with a firm head shake, I shout, “Everything he did, he did for Lera.” When she looks like she doesn’t believe a word I speak, I say, “I stayed for Lera too, because I didn’t want Ghost to lose everything because of me.”
When I drag my hand under my nose to remove the contents spilling there, Sofia uses the breather to defend herself, “Then you understand why I did all the terrible things I’ve done?”
“No, I don’t,” I reply, shaking my head. I thrust my hand to Lera. “She’s your daughter. Your flesh and blood, yet you let him mark her—”
“To save my family.”
My angry voice reverberates around the room when I shout, “From what? A life of pain and devastation? Little good that did.”
I swallow my harsh tone when she says matter-of-factly. “I either stayed with them or they killed my entire family… including Ghost. I was fifteen.”
Them?
“You think you’re the only victim they’ve taken? The only type they crave?” My heart breaks for her when she murmurs, “He said I looked exactly like my mother when he claimed her for the first time and that he couldn’t wait to reminisce. Kirill stopped him two minutes too late.”
Oh God. “Sofia, I’m—”
My sympathies are cut short when a loud bang overtakes the raised voices. It can’t be concealed as a raucous group of men who have had too much to drink. It is explosive and loud and has me instantly moving for Lera.
When I realize Sofia is already sheltering her with her body, I cocoon them both. My life means nothing to these men, but if this is in retaliation for the shooting of the man I spent most of my morning with, perhaps it might mean something to the foreign accents pouring into the room.
A handful of them are Russian but most sound American.
“No,” I shout, kick, and scream when I’m yanked away from Sofia and Lera a nanosecond after a door with multiple locks is kicked open.
A man wearing all black with a balaclava covering his eyes continues yanking me away while announcing there are two more victims in the room with me.
Victims, not perps?
“Go in light. One is a child.”
As shock stills my legs and arms, my eyes dart to the dark pair peeking out of the balaclava. They’re as black as the pits of hell but oddly familiar.
“Rico?”
I can’t breathe when his eyes lower to mine. It is the teenage boy from the room. The one who had acid poured on his back shortly after I was kidnapped, except he is no longer a teen. He is a man who can hide his scars far more easily than Ghost since they’re not covering his face.
Instead of summarizing how my life has come full circle, my focus is pulled to a commotion in the living room. Sofia and Lera are being carried out of the room by men dressed similarly to Rico, but instead of being grateful they’re moving them away from Kirill, Sofia fights to get free before she skids to a stop in front of Kirill. He’s hogtied on the blood-stained concrete floor and has a hessian bag over his head, but everyone in this room knows who he is.
His arrogance suffocates the room of oxygen.
When we make it outside, my vision is hindered by the headlights of many oversized vehicles as Lera is rushed past me. “Her pulse is dropping, and her skin is clammy. I think she’s going into shock.”
“She’s a diabetic,” I shout, aware of the warning signs Ghost constantly looked for whenever Lera was in his vicinity. “Her sugars drop when she’s stressed…” My words shift to a shallow groan when one of a hundred men racing in all directions plops a bag of jellybeans into Lera’s lap.
The axis keeps tilting when Lera murmurs, “дядя,” before she groggily opens the packet to hunt for the pink jellybeans.
“Ghost?”
Unaware I am wiggling to be put down and not palmed off onto someone else, Rico hands me to a man with similar features as Ghost but with an unscarred face.
He is big, but his reflexes are slow. A second after I land in his arms, I shoot out of them like a rocket, then take off in the direction the shadowed figure went. There’s a sea of black and devastation as far as the eye can see, but there’s nothing more terrifying than looking into a pair of familiar icy blue eyes when a bullet whizzes past his head.
It isn’t earmarked for a man who has oddly similar eyes to Ghost or me.
It is for Blaire, and her rounded stomach no one would ever believe is fake.
56
KATIE
Six months later…
“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?”
I raise my eyes to Hailey, smiling when I notice she borrowed the hideous white leather jacket she gifted me last Christmas. It is a flawless cut, designed to enhance all your desirable assets, and it would have cost her a pretty penny, but the color alone ensures I’ll never wear it.