4
CORA
Mikhail can’t shut up. He’s incapable of it. So I do my best to tune him out.
As he rattles off all of the ways that I’m ill-suited to be with Ivan, I count stones in the grimy wall across from me. While he keeps blabbing, I twist my wrists against my bindings until I nearly cry out from the pain. I’d rather sever my own hands with nothing but friction than spend another second in the same room with Mikhail Sokolov.
Thankfully, before I can get that far, Mikhail’s phone rings.
“Finally!” A wicked smile twists his pale face. “Francia must finally be done with him. That didn’t take long, did it?”
He’s a liar. Nothing he’s saying is true. He doesn’t know what happened between Francia and Ivan any more than I do.
Still, the words stick their landing in a deep, jealous part of me. I turn away so he doesn’t see me cringe.
He presses his phone to his ear and turns towards the wall, the smile disappearing from his face. “Well?”
I watch him carefully, but I can’t hear anything. This room is soundproof. Airproof, too. The stone walls and floor are stifling, swallowing any drop of sound that might try to make its way to me.
Mikhail nods and hums. He lets out a few “Okays.” None of it is useful. None of it eases the burning need to know where Ivan is and why he isn’t here with me.
But the longer I wait, the more Mikhail’s words slither behind my weakening defenses.
Ivan chose Francia. He saw the way she manipulated his security and played her role. The fire he saw in me? It burns ten times brighter in her. She is everything I could never be: a fierce Bratva wife. An asset to his empire.
He’s going to choose her and this will be the end of me.
I sit straighter. Is this how I die? In the dark at the hands of Mikhail Sokolov? I literally can’t think of a worse ending.
Then Mikhail turns back to me. His expression is unreadable, but he thrusts the phone towards my ear.
I look up at him, ready to ask what he’s doing. Then, without warning, he grabs my arm and twists.
Fire shoots up my injured wrist. My shoulder blade burns and my forearm scrapes against my bindings. I cry out and try to pull away, but it only makes it worse.
Mikhail lets go of me with a laugh, the phone back against his own ear. “How is that for proof of life?”
My body still aches, but it dulls in the rush of relief. Ivan wanted to make sure I was alive. He cares. He isn’t going to leave me here with Mikhail. He’s just making a deal and then he’ll get me out. I’ll be saved.
By the time Mikhail is tucking the phone back in his pocket, I’ve convinced myself that this is almost over. If I just hang on for a few more minutes, Mikhail will untie me and hand me over to Ivan. I’ll go home with him. Home. To his mansion, his bed. I’ll be safe and warm wrapped in the heat of his body.
Jorden went through a phase a few months ago where she wouldn’t shut up about manifesting. Just tell the universe what you want and boom, presto-change-o, you’ll get it. I’m trying to believe in it, clicking my little ruby red slippers together and praying for Ivan to come bursting through the door.
But it stays shut.
And Mikhail’s grin grows wider.
“Oh, you poor thing. Is that still hope I see on your face?” Mikhail gives me a sarcastic pout. “Ivan is not coming. Is that what you were imagining? He isn’t coming for you.”
It takes everything in me not to dissolve into tears.
Mikhail senses the weakness and draws closer. His voice is a low, insistent hiss. “Are you finally realizing that you were nothing more than a pawn in Ivan’s game? He never cared about you. You were just the latest woman in a long line of them, willing to suck his cock whenever he felt the need.” I turn my face away, but Mikhail grips my chin and forces me to look at him. “Ivan Pushkin never gave a fuck about you and now, he’s going to marry Francia. You were nothing more than a distraction.”
I want to push back against what he’s saying, but I don’t have the energy. Not when everything he’s saying lines up so perfectly with what I’ve felt all along.
Ivan needed someone else. Someone better.
Now, he has that.
He has Francia.