AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’m asleep. I’m dreaming. That is the only way those words are coming out of Ivan Pushkin’s mouth right now.
“I’m going to get you out of there and send you… God, so fucking far away,” he continues. “I’ll get you away from this city and these people—from me. Where you’ll be safe.”
Just like that, the dream pops. “You’re going to send me away?”
“Halfway around the world if I have to. Whatever it takes to keep you safe.”
Okay, so this doesn’t seem like a trick, but it also isn’t the romantic rescue I was hoping for.
“I don’t want that,” I protest. “I don’t want to be sent away.”
“It’s the only way you’ll be safe, Cora.”
“I don’t care about being safe if I’m not—”If I’m not with you.I swallow down the words. “Even if that is what I wanted, it’s impossible. I can’t leave.”
“The fuck you can’t,” he growls. “I’m going to get you out of there. No one is going to stop me.”
“Jorden.”
He hesitates. When he speaks, his voice is icy cold. It sends a shiver down my spine. “Is Jorden involved in this shit, too? Was she working with Francia? If she is involved, you need to tell me everything—”
“No, no. She isn’t involved. She’s a victim,” I tell him. “But they have Jorden. If I escape, they’ll kill her.”
“Who will kill her?” he asks.
I bite my lip, guilt rising up in me. “I should have told you about all of this that night at The Coop. I should have told you before that probably. But I was… I was running away. I was trying to hide. I didn’t think—”
“Mikhail.”
“Yeah.” I sag, head dipped low. “Maybe if I’d been honest about everything from the start, you could have stopped this before it started. But now, it’s too late. Mikhail has Jorden and he is going to kill her if I don’t marry him.”
“Mikhail does not have Jorden.”
I stand tall, my every cell at full attention. “What?”
“Mikhail doesn’t have Jorden,” he repeats.
“But… I heard her. There was a scream, and—How do you know?”
“Because she is with Yasha right this second.”
I stare at the wall as reality shifts around me.
“Fuck,” I hiss.
One scream through a tinny cell phone is all it took for me to buy into Alexander’s version of events. That is all it took for me to go quietly. To do what I was told and obey without question.
I could have plowed through my mother and her two friends at the shop and sprinted down the sidewalk this afternoon. I could have screamed for help when Mikhail and I walked to lunch.
“I could have escaped so many times,” I grit out. “I’m going to kill them. All of them.”
“Cora, wait.”
I walk to the bookshelf and pull out my letter opener. The maid is still in the room, but if Ivan trusts her, then I guess I trust her, too.
“I’m tired of waiting,” I say. “I’m going to—to—shit, I don’t know! Force my way out?”
He snorts. “With what? Do you even have a weapon?”
