by Ivy Clyde
Suddenly, the jeering shout of a man filled the area. All heads turned toward a tall man dragging someone behind him. As the figures came under the floodlights, I instantly recognized Egor and Maria. She kept her head lowered as he dragged her forward. Rage throbbed inside me at the sight. How dare he manhandle her when she was already being compliant?
Egor was simply enjoying bullying Maria during the last moments of her life. My hatred for him swelled, making my fingers itch to use the gun inside my jacket on him instead of Maria.
“She’s here,” Egor announced in a loud voice. “The thief. Hiding in plain sight.”
A few gasps rose up in the air. The name ‘Maria’ was whispered among those gathered.
“You’re lying, Egor!” A deeply familiar voice shouted. “It can’t be her!” Andrei leaped out from among the Romanoffs to rush toward Maria but several men held him back. “Let go!” he screamed. Thick curls of his dark blond hair fell all over his face as he struggled against those holding him. “It can’t be her. I know Maria. We all know her. It can’t be her.”
“As I said, Andrei,” said Egor. “The thief was hiding in plain sight.”
“She’s not a thief!” He was still fighting the men who held onto him. A kind of mad desperation came over him as he shouted curses in Russian. I suddenly found myself praying. Egor was cruel to the whole world except his younger brother. Please let Andrei change his mind and give Maria enough time to prove her innocence, I prayed.
“It has been proven to be true,” said Father’s grim voice, making me turn toward him. “The laws are clear in this matter. She dies for her treachery. It’s my mercy that we’re making it a quick one.”
“Mercy?” Andrei scoffed. “You’ve treated her like a daughter all her life and you believe she can do something like this? Think about how that makes her feel.”
“Stay quiet, brother,” snapped Egor. “This bitch has confessed to everything.”
“Maria.” Andrei’s voice was full of anguish and sorrow. “Please make this stop. Please, I beg you.” My own heart was bleeding but there was nothing I could do or say at this point to comfort him. Father was determined to get this over quickly. I had to keep reminding myself that we were doing this to “protect” Maria.
Maria raised her head to look at Andrei. Her face was white as a sheet. Tendrils of her dark hair hid her eyes but the tear streaks on her cheeks were visible to everyone. Sobs escaped her but she remained silent. Her petite body shivered in the cold night. Wearing nothing but a thin summer dress, she looked pitiful. Even her feet were bare.
I wanted to kill Egor right there. Did he have to strip her down to this state? I heard the shallow inhales and exhales from my father standing next to me. He was barely holding on.
“She has nothing more to say,” said Father in a strict tone. Only I could detect that he was close to choking up. “Get it over with now. I can’t stand this myself.” He stepped forward, emerging in front of the rest of the crowd. “Dimitri,” he called out my name. “It’s time you proved your allegiance to your family and the syndicate, Son. You’ll be the one to carry out the punishment.”
Taking a deep breath, I walked toward the spot where Egor stood with Maria. Ice water seemed to flow through my veins, drowning me in a deluge of misery and grief. Sharp spasms attacked my insides, the pain too great to be bearable anymore. The moment to kill the woman I’d vowed to protect had arrived.
“Dimitri! You can’t!” shouted Andrei, capturing my attention.
He struggled against the men holding him down. Tearing my gaze away from my struggling best friend, I took out the pistol from inside my jacket.
“You asshole! You said you loved Maria. How can you do this to her? Don’t you have a heart? You fucking bastard! Stop this madness!” His cries were piercing and painful but I forced myself to drown it all. I had to kill Maria with one shot. I steadied my breaths, willing my mind to focus.
I raised my gun.
“Are you sure you can aim right?” asked Egor with a nasty sneer.
I stayed quiet while Andrei howled like it was his own life hanging by a thread. Egor would never get the satisfaction to reduce me into the same state as his brother’s. Fate had cursed me with the task to kill Maria, not him. I didn’t have the luxury to break down.
I looked at Maria. Her plain white summer dress fluttered around her petite form. Her pretty face was terribly pale but somehow, she didn’t look scared even as I aimed at her. She looked sad and regretful, but not scared. For fuck’s sake, I thought, gritting my teeth. Don’t look at me with so much trust in your eyes, Maria. I am going to kill you. Silent tears streamed down her face as she met my gaze.
I am going to kill the person who set you up, I vowed, staring right into her eyes. They will pay for using us to such an extent. Blood and vengeance will be ours, Maria. I promise you.
Egor pushed her forward, making her stand at the edge of the dock. Black waters swirled down below, eager to swallow up its victim.
Maria stared into my face. At that instant, it felt like the whole world had shrunk around us. It was just me and her.
“I am so, so sorry, Dimitri,” she said. Her voice was low and shaking, but in the silence that had settled over us, we could hear her clearly. “I love you.”
Something inside me broke at the sound of those words. If you truly loved me, you would tell the truth, Maria. You would live and I wouldn’t be the one to point a gun at you. Before, I was targeting a point on her forehead but I lowered my hand slightly, aiming for her heart.
She’d broken my heart that night. Now, I would break hers.
I pulled the trigger.
The sound of the gunshot shattered the silence that had fallen over us. Andrei howled as Maria’s body stumbled, holding the spot beneath which her heart lay. The front of her dress was quickly staining crimson. Next moment, her body fell backward and tumbled over the edge of the dock to plunge into the dark waters.
Father was beside me in the next instant. He lowered my arm and took the gun from my frozen fingers. “Let us go, Son.” He dragged me back to the car. Making me sit inside, he pulled the seatbelt around me in a rare display of fatherly affection. “You did good, Dimitri,” he said in a choked voice, taking a seat behind the wheels. “I’m proud of how strong you’ve been, Son.”
A sob escaped me, followed by others. Father drove us out of the docks, quickly taking us away from the execution grounds. He let me cry and shriek my heartbreak, not berating me once for showing such weakness. No, because he was himself shedding tears of loss and grief.
38
Skye
My eyelids felt heavy as I tried to open my eyes. Low beeping noises punctuated the complete silence as I fought against the immense lethargy pressing down on me.
“She is gaining consciousness,” an unknown male voice spoke nearby.
“What’s going on?” I slurred through a dry throat.
The haziness from my vision gradually disappeared. A white ceiling came in my view. Turning my head to the side, I found a man in blue scrubs talking with two women in maroon scrubs. A moan escaped me as I tried to sit up, drawing their attention toward me immediately.
“Easy there,” said the man at once. He was in his fifties with a balding head of dark, wiry hair. Leaning down, he stared closely at me. “How many fingers do you see, Miss Wilson?” He held up three fingers.
“Three?”
He gave a nod. Turning toward the nurses, he listed his instructions while my gaze took in the tube sticking from my arm. My left wrist was wrapped in thick, white bandages. I took several deep breaths, willing my mind to think through the fog.
The underground server room at Novomedik, the information I found on Maria Volkov, getting caught by Dimitri and his threats to hurt and torture me…
With Nikolai’s arrival, I knew my end was near. In a desperate attempt to escape the torture that waited for me, I’d decided to take my own life. I took in the hospital room before me, wonderin
g what I was doing in such a luxurious suite. Did they bring me here to save my life so they could resume what they’d originally planned for me? Were they so ruthless they wouldn’t let me die peacefully?
My heart turned cold at the thought.
“Could I get some water, please?” I asked, breaking up the doc’s monologue.
“Sure, honey,” said the younger nurse and moved forward to hand me a glass of water. She gave me a smile as I thirstily drank the water. “There are people waiting to see you.”
“What?”
“Your vitals look stable,” said the doctor. “You can talk to your friends and family for now but tomorrow, you will have a psychiatric evaluation. We don’t want you to hurt yourself again.”
I stared at him dumbly. I had no “friends and family” except for Mom and it was doubtful she would be able to come here. It was probably Dimitri or Nikolai wanting to see whether I was still alive.
“Is something bothering you?” asked the doctor with a light hand on my shoulder. “You seem tense.” Releasing a long breath, he gave me a small smile. “You’re safe now, Skye. Don’t worry about anything else.”
I shook my head and looked away. He had no idea about my internal thoughts. He probably thought I was suicidal to have slashed my wrists.
The doctor and the nurses left the room. I glanced around and found a few large bouquets on a shelf. They looked expensive with satin bows and a myriad of fresh roses and lilies. I was about to reach for them but the stabbing tug on my arm reminded me I was hooked to the IV.
Barely a minute passed when the door slid open again and the least expected figure stepped inside.
“Hey,” said Paris Dumas, striding toward me. The kind expression on her face took me by surprise.
“Hi,” I said with a wave.
“I’m glad you’re better now,” she said, seating herself on a chair by my bed. A concerned look came over her as her gaze took me in. “The doctor said there was no injury on you except for the knife wounds. Did you do that to yourself or was it Dimitri?”
“It was me,” I confessed.
“Did Dimitri do something to you? Did he hurt you?”
I thought back to the moment when he’d dragged me inside that bedroom suite. He’d forced me to shed every piece of clothing from my body but miraculously, he hadn’t laid a finger on me. He’d barely even glanced at my body. Apart from the mental pressure he’d created by making me feel terribly vulnerable, he hadn’t technically done any physical harm to me.
“He didn’t even touch me,” I said slowly.
“Then, why did you do something so drastic?” Paris was a stranger to me but was talking like she knew me pretty well. “You’ve been through worse things in life. Why did you feel the need to cut yourself?”
“Dimitri was forcing me to tell the truth,” I said. She was Nikolai’s girlfriend, after all. There was nothing to hide from her anyway. “He threatened to torture me until he had the truth. Then one of the guards said Nikolai had arrived. I guessed he wanted to silence me before Dimitri could get the truth out of me. Either way, I was going to end up dead. At the very least, I was choosing to give myself a quicker, slightly less painful death.”
Paris listened to me with complete silence. “You didn’t want to die though?” she asked after a while.
“No. I wanted to die to avoid going through all the torture waiting for me.” I drank the remaining water in my glass. “So, what’s the verdict? Did Nikolai bring me here so he could torture and kill me on his own terms?”
A startled look came over Paris. “Nikolai won’t hurt you.”
The strict confidence in her voice surprised me.
Her green eyes glowed with a fierce emotion. “You don’t have to be so afraid, Skye. Nikolai wasn’t alone when he went to meet Dimitri. I was there with him.”
“What were you guys doing there?”
“We wanted to be close by in case something like this happened,” said Paris in a grim tone. “Malory managed to call us minutes after Dimitri’s men took her away. She was in no immediate danger and all background checks on her would reveal she worked for Dumas Corporations for over ten years. It was you we were worried about.”
“So, you guys came to rescue me?” I asked in complete disbelief. “There was no hitman waiting on the other end to silence me?”
Paris closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. When she looked back at me again, she said, “No one wants to torture or kill you. Not even Dimitri wants that or at least, that’s what he’s been claiming. He said he was trying to scare you into admitting you were involved in some elaborate plan devised by Nikolai.”
I nodded. “He was being very convincing. He threatened me with rape and torture if I didn’t tell him. There was no way I would betray Nikolai. Doing that would mean the same thing again.” I leaned forward and looked into the stranger’s eyes, desperately hoping she wasn’t faking that concerned expression on her pretty face. “Cutting myself seemed like the only way out of that situation.”
“You’re loyal.”
“Not really,” I said with a hollow laugh. “This isn’t my first stunt with the mafia. I know what happens to liars, deserters and backstabbers.”
Paris leaned forward and took my unhurt hand in hers. “You don’t have to be so afraid of Nikolai. He won’t hurt you.”
I raised my gaze from the spot where she held my hand. “He already forced me into working with him. There’s no way I’ll come out the other side unscathed.” My voice was bitter as I thought of his threats of handing me to the cops for unethical hacking and stealing.
“I know he forced you.” The tone of her voice was similar to mine. “Believe me, I told him to leave you out of everything but he convinced me it was better for you this way.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, pulling my hand away from her. “Why would you care what happens to me?”
She was silent for a while.
“I was there the night Maria Volkov was killed,” she said in a low voice. “And I was there when you crashed into Nikolai. The resemblance between you and her is freakish.” She gave her head a shake. “I’m sidetracking. But the fact remains that I was there. Maria was innocent. Andrei drove himself mad from shouting for Dimitri and Egor to stop.” A shudder ran through her. “Egor seemed almost happy and eager for her to die but Dimitri…he looked dead inside as he carried out his father’s command.”
Paris reached for my hand again. “While Nikolai planned to use you, I decided to watch over you.”
“I still don’t understand,” I said. Paris Dumas was an heiress to one of the largest technology firms in the world. What reason would she have to protect a nobody like me?
“You remind me a lot about myself,” she said in a soft voice. “I studied at Kensington High until my sophomore year after which I transferred to Knightswood Academy. My mom died in a fire that destroyed the bakery she ran as well as our home. Until then, I was just one of those people trying to make it.”
She smiled at my confused stare.
“Back then, I had no idea who my father was. My mother’s old acquaintances became my guardian and sent me to Knightswood. I was treated as the ‘charity case’ and almost everyone thought they could abuse me because of that one single fact. They didn’t want someone from the wrong side of town dirtying the hallowed grounds of their prestigious school.”
Paris’s words reminded me strongly of Miranda and Saxon.
“My best friend and my three boyfriends are the only reason I was able to survive the two years there. I was kidnapped, violently abused and even came close to getting murdered.”
“Wait. Three boyfriends?”
She gave a nod as a shy grin spread on her lips. “I am in a relationship with three men.”
“And Nikolai is one of them?”
“Yes.”
“Wow.”
She chuckled. “My boyfriends are the reason I was able to stand strong against those who bullied me. Back then, I was weak
and poor but things are different now. I am no longer the ‘charity case’. My father is one of the most powerful tycoons in the IT industry. I have the power to make a difference in someone’s life now. And I chose you.”
“But why? I am nothing special.”
She shook her head and squeezed my hand. “You’re special, Skye. Not many would be brave enough to do what you’ve been doing for your mother. I loved my mother a lot too. It’s always unfair how they get taken away from us.” She took a deep breath and let go of my hand. “I know you don’t feel worthy enough of anyone’s love but you are. Trust me, okay?”
I swallowed the painful choke in my throat. This was the first time someone said they understood what I’d been going through. It was intensely painful and relieving at the same time.
A nurse entered the room with a tray of food. She approached the bed and began setting up a foldable table before me.
“You need more rest,” said Paris, getting to her feet. “I want you to relax and take care of yourself. You’re not alone anymore.”
“So, no one’s coming to hurt me?”
Paris’s expression turned grim once more. “No. I have placed my own guards outside your ward. They won’t let anyone but me enter this room. Relax for now. Nikolai isn’t mad at you and once I tell him what you told me, he will understand why you attempted to…hurt yourself.”
“Thanks, Paris.”
She gave me a smile before walking out of the room. The nurse fussed with the pillows behind me but I was too distracted. Instead, I let my mind mull over the facts I’d learned during my searches in the Novomedik database. With all threats of torture and death lifted off me, I was left to think about Maria and the people who were involved in her death. Suddenly, I couldn’t wait to meet Nikolai and tell him about the transactions I’d seen happening in her account.
39
Dimitri
I was in the hospital’s visitors’ center when my phone vibrated in the pocket of my coat. Taking it out, I unlocked the screen to see if it came from an important source. My brows knit together as I read the name of the sender.
