Page 22 of His Stolen Bride

Mikhail’s hands close around my wrists and pull them down. “Look at me,” he says.

I shake my head, but he holds my wrists steady until I do.

His eyes are hard, but there’s something else there too, something that wasn’t there earlier. Not softness, exactly. Presence. The fact that he’s still here, still in front of me, still holding me in place when everything else just vanished.

“My father is dead,” I whisper, and my voice sounds small. “And now she’s dead too.”

Mikhail’s hand closes at his side. “Not yet.”

I blink at him. “What?”

Enzo comes back in fast, face pale in a way that makes my stomach drop deeper.

He speaks to Mikhail first. “Hospital confirmed. She didn’t make it.”

I make a sound that is half laugh and half choke. My body folds forward, and Mikhail catches me before I hit the floor. His arms go around me, and for a second I fight it, because I don’t want to need him. From my state of haze, I hear him say some words to Enzo, who leaves immediately.

Then I stop fighting because I don’t have anything left to hold onto. I clutch his shirt with both hands and press my face to his chest. His body is solid. Warm. Real. My tears soak into expensive fabric, and I don’t care.

Mikhail doesn’t say sorry or that it’ll be okay. He holds me tighter, and his voice drops close to my ear. “I will find who did it.”

I shake my head against him. “It won’t bring her back.”

“No,” he says. “It will end it.”

I pull back enough to look at him, eyes blurry. “You can’t fix this.”

His gaze burns into mine. “I don’t need to fix it,” he says. “I need to punish it.”

The rage in him is so clear, it steadies me for a second. Not because I like it, but because it gives my grief a place to go. I wipe my face with the back of my hand, then I hate that I did it because it feels childish. My body starts shaking again, deeper, from the inside out.

Mikhail’s hand slides to the back of my neck, firm and grounding. “Stay here,” he tells me. “Don’t leave this room.”

“Where would I go?” I whisper.

His eyes flick to the door. “Nowhere you can be reached.”

The words should scare me.

Instead, they make my throat tighten again.

I don’t have anyone.

I don’t have a mother to call. I don’t have a father to hate. I have a husband who bought me, and a second man out there who might try to take me, and the people who knew my mother’s grocery route well enough to kill her.

Mikhail stands, but he doesn’t step away. He looks down at me, and his gaze is sharp enough to hurt.

“You’re not alone,” he says.

I let out a broken laugh. “That’s a lie.”

His eyes narrow. “No,” he says. “It’s ownership. There’s a difference.”

I should slap him, or scream. Instead, I stare up at him and feel my body betray me again, because ownership from him still feels safer than being floating and untethered. In reality, I want my mother. But my mother is gone. Mikhail starts to turn, and panic spikes so hard, it feels physical.

“Don’t leave,” I say, and it comes out harsher than I expect.

He pauses. I push up from the bed and step into him, close enough that my chest hits his. My hands land on his shirt, fingers gripping fabric the way I gripped it when I cried.