by Wiltz, Jenni
“Take it,” she said, holding out the book. “There’s blood on it.”
He reached for the Bible and she let it slide from her grasp. “Do you believe in ghosts, Avi?”
“I believe in Maimonides.” He glanced behind him, where bloodstains were seeping through the white sheet over Jacob’s body. “Are you afraid this room is haunted now?”
“No. That’s not what I’m afraid of.” She shivered. “Where did the university get that book?”
“An auction. Someone was selling a pretty big collection.”
“Who?”
Avi pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. “Some guy named Sinclair. British baron, fallen on hard times or something like that. Crawford keeps an eye out for stuff like that.”
It has begun, Belial said.
“What has begun?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Avi said. “What are you even talking about?”
The end, the angel replied. Next time, you will not be so lucky.
“Lucky.” Her gaze drifted back to the bloodstains on Jacob’s sheet. “Is that what I am?”
Avi touched her shoulder. “Are you sure you’re okay? Maybe you should talk to one of the paramedics. I’m just gonna put this back in storage, where it’s safe. I’ll be right back.”
She opened her mouth to tell him about the Stuarts, that this book was part of their story, that they’d touched it and kept it and cried with it for almost a hundred years, each believing he or she was the sinner for whom it was meant, the sinner upon whom God had focused the full power of his fury. But what did it matter when there was a dead body three feet away from her? Scholars called it the Sinners’ Bible, as if it belonged to every sinner. But it didn’t. It couldn’t.
It was the Sinner’s Bible.
It could only belong to one of them at a time.
Whoever possessed it was doomed to be alone in their pain. Maybe that was the real curse.
“I don’t want to be alone, Avi,” she whispered. “Take that thing away from me.”
I am with you, little one, Belial said. After all these years, you still don’t understand that, do you?
“I’ll tell you what I understand.” She looked across the room to Beth as her sister waved at the departing paramedics. “Polynomials,” she said. “And covalent bonds.”
The End
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Author’s Note
Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed the story, please consider leaving a quick review on Amazon - even a star rating can help! I’d be so grateful for your help convincing other readers to take a chance on Natalie and Beth.
You might be wondering how much of the historical component of this story is real. The answer is...most of it. There really are a few copies of the Sinners’ Bible left, and they come up for auction occasionally. The typo wasn’t discovered until about a year after printing, just like in Chapter One.
As for the Stuarts, I embellished several of the stories for dramatic effect. For example, although many at the time believed Henriette was poisoned, she likely died of a gastric ulcer. Similarly, the story about Charles II’s deathbed conversion is a bit murky. Was he the one who requested the conversion, or was it his brother or his Catholic mistress? Was he conscious enough to know it was happening? We’ll never know the truth, so I chose the version that best fits the theme of this story: devotion to a sibling.
Readers like you are an inspiration, and I love hearing from you. Email me anytime at [email protected].
The Romanov Legacy: Preview
July 1918
Ekaterinburg, Russia
The guards shot at anything that moved. Birds, stray dogs, even street vendors who came too close to the whitewashed palisade shielding the house from view—no one was safe and there were no warning shots. Target practice, they called it.
The men “practiced” every day after lunch, calling out the name of a different Romanov and shooting wildly at a tree trunk or a tin of food set on a fence post. They called this place “The House of Special Purpose,” and only the blind harbored illusions about what that purpose might be.
Marie was not blind.
She watched one of the guards through a crack in the bedroom door, which they were not allowed to close all the way. The rest of the family had gone into the dining room for supper. She stayed behind to wake her sister, Olga, who lay suffering with a headache. “Two minutes,” the guard had said. “Then I will drag you into the dining room by your hair.”
It was not enough time. Still, they had to try.
She glanced at Olga, feigning sleep while stiff as a tree trunk. “Olga, darling,” Marie called. “It’s time for supper. You must get up.”
Squinting through the crack, Marie followed the guard’s gaze to the pendulum clock in the hall. He was timing them. She took a deep breath and snapped her fingers.
At Marie’s signal, Olga sprang to life. She reached beneath the mattress and removed a pen and sheet of paper, torn from the front of Alexei’s diary. Scratching fiercely, she punctured the paper in several places and spattered her white dress with ink.
“Slow down,” Marie hissed.
Olga ignored the warning. Her pen flew across the paper, giving shape to the words she’d chosen while lying in bed last night. No one must know what she and her sister were doing: not the guards, not the Cheka, not the Bolshevik censors, and certainly not their father. This letter had to slip past all of them, dismissed as the lovelorn ramblings of a doomed princess. The lovelorn part was not difficult; she would die with Pavel’s name on her lips and the memory of that Crimean autumn in her breast. Yes, she thought. I know how to keep a secret.
MY DEAR PAVEL,
I MISS YOU MORE THAN YOU CAN KNOW. WE ARE SURVIVING, SO YOU MUSTN’T WORRY TOO MUCH. BABY’S KNEE IS SWOLLEN AGAIN, BUT HE LIVES UP TO HIS NICKNAME AND WE THANK GOD FOR EVERY MOMENT HE IS HEALTHY. THERE IS NOTHING TO DO HERE BUT READ, AND I HAVE BEEN THROUGH EVERY SCRAP OF TYPE SIX TIMES ALREADY. I WISH YOU COULD SEND ME SOMETHING NEW. JUST ONE WORD WOULD BE ENOUGH. WHAT WAS THE BOOK WE READ TOGETHER IN THE CRIMEA? A SILLY STORY ABOUT A DANCING GIRL WHO BECAME AN EMPRESS. IF SHE WERE A MAN, IT WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN SO SCANDALOUS, DON’T YOU THINK? THEY WOULD HAVE GIVEN HIM THE WORLD. WHAT POWER THERE IS IN A NAME! DO YOU SUPPOSE ANYONE WILL REMEMBER MINE WHEN IT IS ALL OVER? LIKE ME, IT IS SO VERY PLAIN. VERY FITTING FOR A HUMBLE SAILOR’S WIFE, WHICH IS ALL I EVER WISHED TO BE.
OLGA NIKOLAEVNA
She stared at her signature and wondered why the letters looked so childish. Then she raised her hand from the paper and realized it was shaking. “Your turn,” she whispered.
Marie flung herself onto the bed and pulled a second sheet of paper from beneath the mattress. But instead of writing, she grabbed Olga’s dress sash and untied it. “What are you doing?” Olga hissed, swatting at her sister’s hands.
“Leave it,” Marie said. “Just keep watch.”
Olga clutched the bedclothes and listened for the soldier’s footsteps in the hallway. He made one more circuit from end to end and stopped in front of their door. “Finish,” Olga whispered. “Now.”
The guard rapped on the door, pressing hard enough to swing it open. “What’s taking so long?”
Olga swallowed the peppery lump of fear in her throat. “One more moment, please?”
The guard’s suspicious eyes flickered over Olga and then Marie, hunched behind her sister. “What’s going on
here?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Olga lied.
“What are those?” He pointed at the ink spots on Olga’s dress.
Olga’s lips struggled to form words. She could think of no lie he would not see through. It is over, she thought. We are dead.
“It’s no use,” Marie said, reaching for the ends of Olga’s sash and tying them in a large bow. Olga felt her sister’s nimble fingers slip the folded sheets of paper between the sash and the dress, hiding them from view. “You’d better tell him.”
The guard narrowed his eyes. “Tell me what?”
“She’s too embarrassed to speak,” Marie said. “She laid down on a pen. Can you believe how clumsy she is?”
Olga felt her sister’s warm hands push her up from the bed. “You see?” Marie said, holding up the pen. “Her headache was so bad she collapsed without noticing it.”
The guard held out his hand. “Come here,” he said.
Olga looked at his open palm, its threaded crevices stained with something dark. Her throat swelled with fear. I do not want to die, she thought.
“Come here,” he said again.
Olga shook her head. It would only anger him further, but no force in the world could make her step forward.
The guard ripped his revolver from his belt and aimed it at her forehead. “You are nothing! You are less than dirt!” Then he gathered a mouthful of spit and flung it on her. “Don’t you know there is no more tsar?”
Olga felt the spittle pelt her cheeks. She bit her lip to keep from screaming, Yes, there is a tsar! He is my father and he sits in this very house. You will be sorry when the ghost of Great Peter rises up within him to defend all of Russia from the likes of you! But even as she thought it, she knew it was not true. Her father was weak; no shade of Great Peter lived within him. Her eyes filled with tears and blood trickled over her tongue.
Sensing her submission, the guard grasped a handful of her skirt and twisted it to pull her near. Up close, she could see the mosaic of pores and stubble on his cheeks—they reminded her of the patterned tiles on the floor of the Hermitage. We will never see Petersburg again, she thought.
“Is it true?” he asked. “Did you lay on the pen?”
She swallowed thickly, a mouthful of blood and bile burning her throat. “Y—yes.”
The guard frisked his hand up her thigh and across her side, dangerously close to the bow of her sash. “Most women notice what is in their bed before they lie in it. Are you not so picky, princess?”
Olga twisted her body to keep the letters out of his reach. “I had a headache. You needn’t suggest more than that.”
His thick palm connected with her face. “You will never again tell anyone what to do! Do you understand?”
Olga’s cheek blossomed with the sting of a thousand Crimean bees. We will never leave this house, she thought. Their hatred will strip the flesh from our bones.
“Hush,” Marie said, moving forward and squeezing herself between them. She smiled brightly at the guard, blue eyes wide and lashes fluttering in a pattern Olga recognized. Marie had learned at an early age how to soften a father’s punishment or warm a wounded soldier’s heart.
No, Olga thought. He is not worth your care. She put a hand on her sister’s arm but Marie shrugged it off. “Olga, go into the kitchen,” she said softly. “You know Kharitonov hates to be kept waiting.”
Olga’s knees wobbled as she stumbled past the guard. When she turned around, she saw her sister’s seraphic gaze locked on the guard’s pockmarked face. “You may search our room if you like,” Marie said. “I promise we have done nothing wrong.”
The blood and bile in Olga’s throat nearly choked her as she crept into the parlor and spotted the basket used by the Novo-Tikhvinsky nuns to deliver bread and eggs. Behind her, Marie’s soft voice echoed in the hallway. “Shall I show you our diaries? Our prayer books? Is there anything else you might like to see?”
Olga imagined Marie’s fingers touching the man’s hand, trailing up his arm, promising a favor that would banish all thought of their possible transgressions: a kiss or perhaps an embrace. Her stomach clenched and she fought a pang of revulsion for the sister who was capable of such deception.
Olga pulled their two letters from her sash and held them to her lips. This is the only way, she thought. The only way I can tell him I still love him. She had given up all hope that either recipient would be able to mount a rescue. Neither she nor Marie knew if their first letters had made it through. If they hadn’t, the secret would die in this house and these second letters would be a benediction from the dead. Still, it would be enough to know that Pavel might touch the same piece of paper she had kissed with her still-breathing lips.
“Go with God,” she whispered, placing the letters between the layers of cloth folded in the nuns’ basket. “May He have mercy on our souls.”
The Romanov Legacy
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The Natalie Brandon Thrillers
Book 1: The Romanov Legacy
A murdered tsar. A missing treasure. One woman holds the key.
Natalie knows Nicholas II, the last Russian tsar, left behind a secret bank account to provide for his family in exile. But no one believes her…until a Russian spy kidnaps her, claiming she’s the only one who can lead him to the treasure. Shop on Amazon
Book 2: The Dante Deception
The most dangerous enemy is the one closest to your heart.
Natalie knows a 700-year-old Dante manuscript up for auction is a fake, but no one believes her because she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Working with her sister, Natalie disrupts the forger’s scheme...and exposes a web of lies spun over forty years. Can they catch the forger without turning an international conspiracy against them? Shop on Amazon
Book 3: The Carmelite Prophecy
A priceless relic. A daring theft. A bloodline revealed.
When Natalie’s recurring hallucination guides her to the church of Saint-Joseph-des-Carmes in Paris, she stumbles on two deadly secrets - a family connection to the massacre that took place there during the French Revolution, and a long-lost relic buried deep within its walls. But she’s not the only one after the relic. Can she stop a right-wing professor and his Legionnaire accomplice before they steal one of France’s greatest treasures? Shop on Amazon
Also by Jenni Wiltz
I write in a lot of different genres. If you like to read different types of books, I hope you’ll check them out!
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The Cherbourg Jewels
(romantic suspense - Cherbourg #1)
Gem historian Ella Wilcox is cataloging the collection of the wealthy Cherbourg family when someone steals the gems right out from under her. As Ella and Sébastien Cherbourg race to find the thief, danger ignites an uncontrollable passion…and a dangerous secret threatens to shatter any chance they have for happiness. Shop on Amazon
The Cherbourg Bodyguard
(romantic suspense - Cherbourg #2)
When Honorée Cherbourg saves a young boy’s life in Paris, she gets tossed into protective custody while police track the would-be killer. Her protector is the boy’s father, sexy policeman Adrien Gerard. When the kidnapper surfaces again, revealing a connection that strikes at the heart of the Gerard family, she’s forced to make a choice between her freedom and the new family she never knew she wanted. Shop on Amazon
The Red Road
(literary, women’s fiction)
Emma’s dad has always promised to send her to college. But when an act of gang violence almost takes his life, Emma can’t move on. Will she do what he wants and focus on her own future…or will she
jeopardize everything to seek revenge? Shop on Amazon
A Vampire in Versailles
(historical paranormal)
Jean-Gabriel de Bourbon is a vampire whose survival is tied to the French royal family. As long as a king sits on the French throne, Jean-Gabriel lives. But the year is 1788, and the French Revolution draws near. Is anyone, even a vampire, strong enough to stop the force of destiny? Shop on Amazon
I Never Arkansas It Coming
(mystery)
Brett Sargent isn’t adapting to life in Arkansas very well. A native New Yorker in the Witness Protection Program, she’s trying to keep a low profile after testifying against a Mafia up-and-comer. But when a Little Falls truck driver turns up dead with a Mafia calling card stabbed to his chest, Brett knows she’s next on their hit list. Shop on Amazon
Dedication
For Sara
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 by Jenni Wiltz.
The Romanov Legacy excerpt copyright © 2012 by Jenni Wiltz.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews or reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, organizations, places, events, or incidents is completely coincidental.
Published in the United States by Decanter Press.
For more information, contact:
P.O. Box 277
Pilot Hill, CA 95664
http://DecanterPress.com
