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I’m only as weak as I make myself.
So I take a step out from behind him. Followed by another.
“Nikoletta, no,” Konstantin commands me in a harsh whisper.
But I need to do this. If this comes down to a fight and we don’t have the manpower to win, I need my father to know exactly what I think of him.
“You can physically take me, but you will never possess me. Never.”
“No?” My father cocks his head and evil lurks in his gaze. “I took your mother, I possessed her, and when she betrayed me, I scooped out every last bit of humanity in her until there was nothing left to do but discard her.”
I’m shaking my head before he even finishes his words. He didn’t kill her. I was there when they pulled her body from the bottom of the cliffs. “No. Mama was sick. She killed herself.”
“But did she, child? Tell me, were you so naïve that you believed that?”
Broken and battered, I saw her. I—I meet his eyes then, the slow smile spreading over his face chilling me to the bone.
I saw exactly what he wanted me to see.
“No more.” Konstantin pulls his shoulders back and stares my father down.
“And you… did you tell her yet, Konstantin? Did you tell her the only reason you loved her was because you were in love with her mother, but her mother chose me over you?”
No.
No, it can’t be.
But I turn to him then and a flash of guilt so utterly horrifying flits through his eyes and I stumble with the truth of it.
“Pcholka,” he says, laying a gun on the altar and reaching for me.
“Is it true?” My voice is deceptively calm despite the vicious staggering pain that seizes every cell in my body. I gave myself to him and the whole time—the whole fucking time—he’s what? Been in love with my mom? Saw me as a version of her he could have?
My God, he called me by my name. When he fucked me—because I refuse to call it anything else now—he called me by my given name.
Her name.
“It was a long time ago.” His eyes plead for me to listen to him, to give him a chance to explain. But this world is twisted in lies, drowning in deception, and the one person I thought I could count on is the last person I should have given myself to.
Weakness frustrates me.
But feeling stupid and small—cut me open wide and leave me bleeding endlessly.
Too stunned to cry, I stumble back another step just as a torrent of bullets rip through the front doors, splintering pews and shattering centuries-old glass. Vlad and my father dive behind marble displays, guns ready, but instead of worrying about us, they’re aimed at the door.
The twisted sordid tale lies between us, and I should be grateful that I know before it could go too far.
A humorless laugh bubbles from my throat followed by a sob I’m helpless to contain.
Because it’s already gone too far for me to ever go back, and it turns out the one man trusted to keep them from breaking me broke me most of all.
Konstantin doesn’t cower. He doesn’t flinch. Strong and sure, he reaches out to me even as the war arrives at our feet and our sanctuary crumbles in a hail of gunfire. “Take my hand, Pcholka. Right now! Take my hand and I’ll go with you. We’ll leave all of this behind.”
ALSO BY BECK KNIGHT
Konstantin and Nikoletta are not done
with one another yet…
