Page 197 of Nine Months to Love

We all turn.

Mikayla is still on the ground, blood pooling beneath her. But she’s not dead. She’s propped up on one elbow, pale and shaking, but alive. “It wasn’t suicide,” she mumbles through fat lips quickly darkening to blue as the blood seeps into the grass. “Mikhail was murdered.”

Natalia’s face goes blank. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I was there.” Mikayla coughs, blood flecking her lips. “I saw it happen.”

“You’re delirious.”

“I sawyou.” Mikayla’s eyes lock on Natalia. “I saw you kill him.”

Iakov looks like someone just slugged him in the gut. “What?”

“She killed him,” Mikayla repeats. “Made it look like suicide. But I was there. I saw everything.”

“Stupid bitch!” Natalia raises her gun again, aiming at Mikayla’s head. “You should have died the first time.”

I move without thinking. My hand goes to my gun, my finger on the trigger.

But before I can fire, there’s a crash.

Everything happens at once. The cattle shed door flies open. And Olivia bursts out, running full speed across the yard.

Her arms are pumping, hair flying behind her, dead-set on one target and one target only: Natalia. My mother swings her gun toward Olivia. I raise mine toward Natalia. Iakov draws his weapon and aims at his mother. Taras goes for Natalia’s men. The armed guards all point in different directions, no longer sure what to do or when.

“Olivia, get down!” I roar.

She doesn’t listen. She keeps running, straight toward us, toward the gunfire, toward certain death.

Right as she plows into Natalia, I fire.

But so does someone else.

56

OLIVIA

I’m trying to breathe, but the air won’t come. My lungs are locked, my mind fractured into a thousand jagged pieces. All I can do is watch through the splintered gaps in these cattle shed walls as Stefan stands exposed, marooned in the grass outside the farmhouse, encircled by men with guns who will kill him the moment his mother gives the command.

He’s going to die. He’s going to bleed out in the dirt, and I’m going to have to sit here and watch it all happen.

My fists crash against the door. “Let me out!”

Silence is all that answers. The guards who hauled me in here like livestock have vanished, consumed by the violence erupting in the yard. Angry voices tear through the air. I catch snatches of it, but it’s not enough. If I have to sit here and watch Stefan die because of my idiotic mistake, then Natalia might as well kill me, too.

I drive my shoulder into the door. The wood doesn’t even shudder.

Again.

Again.

It groans, but refuses to surrender.

Through the slats, I watch Natalia raise her chin and sneer. How did I ever look at her and see anything maternal? She looks like unhooded death, like something carved out of ice. Inhuman.

My hands fumble at the locked door latch, shaking it with everything I have. The metal is ancient, corroded, but it just rattles in its casing, mocking me.

Come on. Come the fuck on!