Page 143 of Cruel Juliet

“Let me go!” I scream. “Get your fucking hands off of me!”

My shoes skid across the slick floor as they set me down. I smell the air, hear the way my screams bounce off, and realize we’re in some kind of garage. Big, echoing. Spotless in a way that makes me more nervous than if it were filthy. This is the kind of place that doesn’t get used for cars.

I never considered my father might have me killed, but now, I kind of am.

I barely have time to find my footing before one of them yanks me forward. We pass through a steel door and into the night again. The shift from artificial light to moonlight makes my head spin.

My brain tries to catch up to what’s happening, but everything’s moving too fast. We step out into a garden, a ridiculous one that I recognize on the spot, even if some details have varied over the years. Perfect hedges, fountains, roses lined up like soldiers.

Typical. My father always liked to dress up his rot.

The men drag me up a path of polished stone, past marble pillars and warm yellow windows, toward a house I know too well.Hishouse. The same one that was supposed to be mine once, back when I was still someone else.

We step through the glass doors, into the foyer. It’s all chandeliers and thick, uncomfortable silence.

My kitten heels click too loudly on the floor. Every sound feels wrong, like I’ve broken something by existing here again. Just like old times.

And then I hear him.

“Bring her in.”

His voice hasn’t changed. The same smooth, cruel monotone I remember from when I was a kid.

The henchman shoves me forward. I stumble just as he emerges from the living room.

And there he is.

My father, Nikolai Danilo.

His expression curdles the moment he sees me. At his side, Maksim tenses.

“So it’s true.” Father’s voice doesn’t waver. “You’re alive.”

“You could sound happier,” I snark before I can think better of it.

Father’s face darkens instantly.

Shit.This isn’t how we play this. It’s not smart to mouth off to the man who literally holds my fate in his hands. If I want to do like the Bee Gees and keep stayin’ alive, I’m gonna need to learn how to shut it, and fast.

Maksim snorts at his side. One glare from Dad is enough to wipe the humor off his face and nail his gaze to the floor.

He descends into the foyer and stops a few steps away from me. Standing, whereas I am not. He has a fetish for looming over people. “Would you care to guess why I’m not?”

This time, I zip my mouth shut.

Father continues. “It’s because I lost two sons.” He starts pacing, the slow, measured prowl of the lion. King of the pride, fuck everyone else. “Two sons to your madness.”

“I didn’t ask you to send them after me,” I snap.

Because my heart is already cleaved in half with grief over them. Ugly, complex grief that won’t let me mourn them all the way.

Anatoli and Feliks were cruel. Too cruel for me to wish they were still in this world. The truth is, the world is better without them in it.

But they didn’thaveto be cruel. They weren’t born that way. That was my father’s doing. His hand is the force that molded them into the monsters they became.

“Quiet.” He barely looks at me when he says it. He’s so used to shushing women, it doesn’t even register with him anymore. “You ran from me, Sima.” He spits my name like it’s a filthy word. “I thought you were dead.”

I wanted you to think that.I keep those words to myself, but they’re right there, on the tip of my tongue.