Page 159 of Cruel Juliet

The truth is, I could reach for my gun. I’m a quick draw. She might get a stab in, but she’ll be dead seconds after.

But she’s still my brother’s wife. My sister-in-law. No matter how angry I am at her for what she did tonight, I can’t execute her in cold blood. I wouldn’t be able to look Dimitri in the eye ever again.

So I’ll wait for my chance to disarm her. It shouldn’t be hard, not with how panicked she is.

But fuck if she didn’t pick the biggest knife she could find.

As if on cue, she swings it again. I back Sima up a step, my arms still outstretched in front of her.

“It shouldn’t have been her,” Kira grits, her eyes wide and manic. “It should have been me! I was supposed to be the wife of thepakhan,not her!”

“You were,” I tell her. “You will be again, once Dimitri is back in?—”

“Oh, please.” She scoffs. “You’ll never let him back into power. And he’s too much of a vegetable to rule again. If he’d given me a child before his accident, it’d be a different story, but how could he have?” She barks out a deranged, bitter laugh. “Always out at night, always back late. He called them meetings, but I knew what it was.Women.”

I clench my fists. Dimitri’s marriage was arranged, too, like mine had been with Polina Sidorov. In these situations, it isn’t unusual for the husband to find gratification elsewhere. For the wife, too, if she’s smart and careful about it.

I can’t say if Kira’s telling the truth or if it’s just her paranoia talking, but I do know my brother enough to understand that it’s possible. Dimitri was never one to get tied down. And Kira always acted like she was devoted to him, but he rarely seemed to give back with the same intensity.

I’d told myself it was none of my business. My brother’s marriage was his own, and he wasn’t the type to show his feelings openly anyway. I barely even noticed signs of unhappiness between them. Back then, I didn’t have anything to compare it to.

Now that I do, I feel sorry for Kira.

“You didn’t deserve that,” I say carefully. “If Dimitri really cheated on you, then he was in the wrong. But Sima’s innocent. She had nothing to do with?—”

“She haseverythingto do with it!” Kira roars. “She took you from me. After Dimitri’s accident, I could have still been the wife of apakhanif she hadn’t gotten in the way. I could have been your wife.” Her tone softens, her face painted with pain. “I would have been a good wife to you. Better than her.”

“That’s impossible.” It’s not the smart answer to give, but right now, I don’t care about being smart. No one insults Sima to my face—no one. “And regardless, you still would have been married to Dimitri.”

“An easy enough problem to fix.” Her eyes go cold again. “If that shitty assassin had just done his job.”

I freeze. “What did you say?”

“Oh, please. Don’t tell me you haven’t figured it out already.” She laughs, but it sounds wrong. Crazed. “I’m the one who sent that idiot to the hospital. He was supposed to kill Dimitri with an overdose, make it look like an accident, but you just had to be there, didn’t you?”

My pulse roars in my ears. “You tried to have my brother murdered.”

Behind me, Sima gasps. “Kira, why?—?”

“Shut up!” Kira slashes again, a downward arc that misses me by a hair. “You don’t get to fucking speak, you homewrecker!”

She isn’t making any sense anymore, but she’s too far gone to see it. As for me, I’m blind with rage. The thought that Kira was the one who put Dimitri’s life in danger is enough to almost make me reach for my gun.

Then I realize the implications.

She was the culprit. She knew that. If the assassin had talked, it would have been over for her.

So she planned to kill him at the warehouse. And then…

She pointed me to Sima.

It seems so obvious in hindsight. It was Kira who first brought up the possibility of Sima being the traitor. Every time I doubted my wife, Kira had been the one to push me. She manipulated me from the start.

She almost made me lose her.

I can’t blame it all on Kira. If I hadn’t been blinded by my own mistrust, I would have seen Sima’s innocence right away. But Kira has been a part of this family a long time. She knew exactly where to push with me.

All those times she threw herself at me—had those been part of her plans, too? Seduce me, then marry me?