Page 3

The name hits me like a physical blow, stealing the breath from my lungs. For a moment, I wonder if I've misheard, if the blood rushing in my ears has distorted his words. But the grim set of his mouth and the way his knuckles have gone white where they grip the armrest of his chair confirm my worst nightmare.
"No." The word tears from my throat, raw and desperate. "Papa, no. Not him. I won’t marry him."
Papa's face hardens, transforming into the mask I've seen him wear during business calls—cold, implacable, final. "This is not a negotiation, Kira. The arrangements have been made."
I surge to my feet, the leather chair scraping against the hardwood floor. My hands shake as I brace them against my father's desk, leaning forward like I can somehow force him to take back those poisonous words.
"He's a monster, Papa. Everyone knows what he is—what he's done." My voice climbs higher, hysteria bleeding through my carefully cultivated composure. "They call him the Butcher of Brighton Beach. He killed men with his bare hands. He?—"
"Enough." Papa's voice cracks like a whip, but I'm beyond caring about his authority now.
"I won't do it. I'll run away first. I'll disappear where you'll never find me." The threat spills out before I can stop it, desperate and foolish. "You can't make me marry him."
Something flickers across Papa's face—pain, maybe, or regret—but it's gone so quickly I might have imagined it. "You have no choice in this matter. Neither of us do."
The admission stops me cold. Papa always has choices. He's Anton Malakhov—he owns politicians, judges, and half of Manhattan's elite. He doesn't bow to anyone.
"What do you mean?" But even as I ask, pieces begin clicking into place. The increased security lately. The way conversations stop when I enter rooms. The tension that's been coiling through our household like smoke.
"The Novikov family has put a price on your head." His words are flat, matter-of-fact as if he's discussing the weather. "Two million dollars to anyone who delivers you to them alive."
Ice floods my veins. The Novikovs—our oldest enemies, the ones who've been circling our territory like vultures for years. "Since when?"
"Three weeks ago. Since their eldest son died in that warehouse fire." Papa's eyes bore into mine. "They blame me for his death. They want to make me suffer by taking what I love most."
The warehouse fire. I remember the news reports and the speculation about gang warfare. I never connected it to us, to me.
"But surely there's another way—security, relocation?—"
"There is no other way." Papa stands, moving to the window overlooking Central Park. "Mikhail Zhukov has the power and men to protect you. His organization has the reach and the connections. And he's willing to take on the Novikov threat in exchange for your hand."
"So you're selling me." The words taste like ashes in my mouth. "Trading me like livestock to save your own skin."
Papa whirls around, his composure finally cracking. "To save YOUR skin, Kira. Do you think this is easy for me? Do you think I want to give my daughter to that man?"
But I'm beyond reason or caring about his pain or his impossible position. Rage burns through me like wildfire,consuming everything in its path. I grab the crystal paperweight from his desk and hurl it at the window. It strikes the reinforced glass with a satisfying crash, spider-webbing the surface but not breaking through.
"I hate you!" I scream, sweeping his carefully arranged papers to the floor. "I hate all of this!"
I overturn his chair, sending it clattering into the bookshelf. Leather-bound volumes rain down—Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, all the Russian classics he insisted I read to understand my heritage. Now, they lie scattered like broken promises.
"Kira, stop this at once?—"
But I can't stop. I tear at the curtains and claw at the family photographs lining his desk. My manicured nails leave scratches on the mahogany surface as I rake them across the wood.
"He's a killer, Papa! A butcher! And you want me to share his bed, bear his children?—"
The study door bursts open. Two of Papa's bodyguards fill the doorframe—Luka and Sergey, men who've been part of our household since I was a child. They look uncomfortable but determined as they step into the wreckage of the room.
"Take her to her room," Papa says quietly. "And lock the door. She needs time to accept this."
"No!" I lunge for the desk drawer where I know Papa keeps a gun, but Viktor's massive hands close around my waist, lifting me off the ground like I weigh nothing. "Let me go! I won't marry him! I'll kill myself first!"
Sergey opens the door wider as Luka carries me through it, my legs kicking uselessly in the air. I claw at his arms, but his grip is iron-strong, immovable.
"Papa, please!" I twist in Luka's grasp, catching one last glimpse of my father standing amid the chaos I've created. He looks older than ever, defeated in a way I've never seen before. "Don't do this to me!"
But the study door closes with a final click, cutting off my pleas. Luka carries me down the hallway past the portraits of my ancestors, their painted eyes seeming to judge my hysteria. The marble floors I walked across so confidently an hour ago now blur past in a haze of tears and panic.