Page 86 of Forgotten Vows

How can we just randomly be lumped together like this?

Questions filled my head, but seeing Gabriella fighting the man who carried her out the back door of the church somehow kept my panic at bay. Seeing my new friend in danger ignited that mama bear mode. I was defensive of her, and her new baby, too.

I would not be fucking kidnapped like this. Nor would she.

Outside, before we were pushed into cars, I bucked and fought harder. Like an animal, I thrashed and used all I had to break free.

“Fuck. Hold on to her, dammit,” one man, an old Petrov guard I remembered, said.

That did it.

This was my father’s doing. They’d come here for me and had taken Gabriella with me.

I arched my back and drove my foot into my captor’s crotch. It worked. He grunted and nearly dropped me. The instant his hand flew off my mouth, I lunged into the air for Gabriella’s attacker.

A sharp hook to his head did the trick. He groaned, releasing her. Already, another “nun” was rushing to grab hold of me again. Using my back to block him from getting Gabriella, I screamed at her to go.

“Run. Go get help. Run!”

She didn’t wait. She didn’t try to be a hero and stay to help me. Fortunately, she ran. After skidding and scrambling to get onto her feet fully, she stood up and bolted out of there.

I was too late to fight for my freedom again.

She got away, but I was tossed into the backseat of the car too quickly. The door slammed shut.

And as the car began to pull away, I spotted the vicious snarl my father wore. He sat in the front, glowering at me through the reflection of the mirror.

“Where’s the bastard?” he demanded.

I gathered up spit and shot it at the back of his face. “Fuck you.”

He growled, cursing and ranting, but I tuned him out.

There wasn’t a chance in hell that he’d get away with this.

Ivan would never let Lev near this man.

He’d be safe. And it was with this moment of danger that a new fact crystallized in my mind. With so many changes, I hadn’t paid much attention to how I was no longer a single parent. It wasn’t solely up to me to provide for Lev. Even if something happened to me now, Lev would have Ivan and the others.

It was a morbid, depressing fact to acknowledge, but I did. I wasn’t a defeatist. This fight was only beginning as far as I was concerned, but I didn’t have to be paranoid and gripped with the fear of Lev losing his whole family—me. He’d have others.

It was up to me to get back to them as quickly as possible now.

My father went too far to threaten me and my son before, and I’d be damned if he succeeded in this retake of violence today.

35

IVAN

Awoman wailed up near the altar. The sharp sound of mourning distracted me from listening to what the church’s security manager told the Dubinin soldier with us.

Luka looked up too. So did the manager, who paused mid-sentence.

“She just lost her husband of sixty-three years,” the polite man said.

“Long time,” Luka said, eyeing the woman who clung to an older man, perhaps her son.

Seeing the sadness of a woman losing her husband sobered me. One day, that could be Raisa, missing me. If I didn’t actively plan to step back from the line of duty, she could lose me sooner. Lev too.