84
CORA
“I don’t understand,” I say, even as the horrible truth is taking shape in my mind. “What are you talking about? What did you start?”
She sighs. “It’s a long story, Cora. You’ve been falling for my shit for so long now that I have to take it way back to make this clear for you. It’s going to be, ugh, so annoying to rattle off all the details. Do I really have to?”
She sounds bored, but I can see the excitement brimming behind her eyes. Francia is lit up in a way I’ve never seen before. She’s practically glowing. “Radiating” might be more accurate, because the shit coming off of her is pure toxic.
“You made it clear I can’t get out of here, so what else are we going to do?”
The thought of what else we could do down here is not something I want to think about. I have a feeling Francia doesn’t intend for me to walk out of here alive.
She sighs and twirls her hair around her finger. “This all started… fuck, I guess this all really started when I was a teenager at that godforsaken prep school. I was never enough for the ‘cool girls.’” She sneers. “I’ll give you three guesses who the Queen Bee of the cool girls was, and the first two don’t count.” I stare at her silently, but Francia waves me on. “Go on. Make a guess.”
I gulp. “Katerina?”
“Ding, ding, ding!” Her upper lip curls. “Katerina Sokolov ran that place. If you wanted to be anyone, you needed to know her.”
“Katerina…Sokolov?” I frown. “Was she—”
“Mikhail’s sister? Yeah. Fucking keep up,” she snaps. “How were you engaged to a guy and you didn’t even know his family?”
Because I wasn’t really engaged to him, I want to say. It was all for show. Our fathers set it up, and then suddenly, I was going to parties with Mikhail and picking out a ring. It all happened in a matter of weeks, and there wasn’t much discussion in between. Mikhail didn’t care who I was and I knew it was a waste of time to get to know him when I had no intention of going through with the marriage.
Francia continues on. “Anyway, everyone thought Katerina was God’s gift, so I got to know her. She treated me like her servant. Anything she wanted—‘Fucked-Up Franny will do it!’”
I shake my head but it won’t settle into place. “Last time we talked, you said you wanted someone to take care of you. You said you were lonely.”
“God, you really ate that up, too.” She laughs cruelly. “I told you what you wanted to hear. It’s called strategic bonding. You wear your miserable backstory on your sleeve and I parroted a version back at you. Help me, Cora, I’m sad and lonely and I just want to be loved. Fuck that—I’m going to save myself.”
“How is this saving yourself?” I ask, gesturing around the dank room. “You are going to murder the only two friends you have? For what?”
Her face splits into a menacing grin. “For everything.”
“How? I don’t see how—”
“Then shut the fuck up and let me finish. I’m telling the story here. All you have to do is sit back and listen.” She huffs and continues. “So, I graduate. Katerina goes her way and I go mine. We never speak again, but I see her engagement announcement to Ivan Pushkin. I watch as her life carries on exactly as it was always gonna: high-profile marriage to a connected man, shit out his little brats, and live richly ever after. Every woman’s dream. But then something interesting happens.” She snaps her fingers dramatically. “Katerina disappears. Bam! No trace of her. Here one day, gone the next. Her father is desperate to find her and I see my chance. I call Konstantin Sokolov, I offer my condolences, and I tell him my plan.”
“What plan?” I ask, unable to keep the question inside.
“My plan to worm my way into Ivan’s life and figure out what happened to Katerina.”
My stomach drops. That’s why Francia had so many questions about Katerina. That’s why she wanted proof.
I just told Francia what happened to Katerina. Or, what didn’t happen to her, at least.
She didn’t die.
And now, Francia knows that.
“Konstantin loved my idea and he paid up front for it,” she says. “He gave me money for clothes I could only dream about, an apartment with a view, and access to every party I could ever want. All I had to do was hook Ivan Pushkin.” Her face sours slightly. “But Ivan didn’t bite. The bastard didn’t even recognize me when he showed up at Quintaño's to find you.”
I frown. “If you wanted to meet him, why did you send Jorden and me to his party?”
She groans. “You don’t listen. God, you really are stupid. Ivan wasn’t paying attention to me. He wasn’t interested, so I had to pivot. I had to come up with a new plan and I knew that you and Jorden were my best chance. If there’s anything men like Ivan love, it’s a couple of empty-headed skanks to flaunt around in front of him.”
I want to defend Ivan. She doesn’t know him at all. That is everything he didn’t want in a woman.
But I keep my mouth shut. The longer Francia talks, the longer I stay alive.
“Just like I thought, Ivan made a beeline straight for you. But what I didn’t anticipate,” she says, that unsettling smile curling the corners of her mouth again, “is how upset Mikhail Sokolov would be about the whole situation.”
My heart is thundering in my chest. All the buried threads of my life—the past I hoped I would never have to unearth—are being laid bare in front of me.
Francia.
Knows.
Everything.
“Mikhail was upset because his fiancée had disappeared on him.” She pouts dramatically. “She ran off, leaving him jilted…only to pop up again under a new name on the arm of Ivan Pushkin.”
Realization dawns. “That’s how Mikhail knew we were at The Coop the other night. You told him.”
“Genius, right?” She laughs. “When Ivan showed up, I hoped he would see the two of you together and get jealous, but you had him wrapped too tightly around your finger by then. He threw Mikhail out without asking any questions. He wanted you. God knows why, but he did.”
The venomous rage running through Francia’s words is obvious. No matter how powerful she claims to be, she hates that I caught Ivan when she couldn’t. She despises me for it.
“Naturally, I realized I was being presented with yet another opportunity,” she continues. “In an attempt to find one missing daughter, I’d discovered another. And I wanted my due. So I called your stepfather.”
My head throbs. Everything is falling apart. The fragile life I built is crumbling under my feet and I’m not sure what hell is going to swallow me whole. But I know it won’t be good.
“So who are you delivering me to?” I ask bitterly. “My stepfather or Mikhail?”
“The Sokolovs gave me more than enough to search for Katerina and I’m sure there will be an even bigger payout when I tell them what you just revealed. Thanks for that, by the way.” She winks at me. “And your stepdad was a bit cheap, to be honest. I figured he’d pay a bit more to find out where you are, but you must not be worth that much to him. Either way, I got my money there, too. Those deals are closed.”
I frown. “So what’s the point of this, then?”
“That is your problem, Cora. Oh, wait—do you prefer Cora or Cordelia?” She waves a hand through the air. “It doesn’t matter. Your problem is a failure to think creatively. I mean, you had so many powerful men at your disposal, and you ran from all of them. For what? To be a waitress? To live in a shitty studio apartment and scrape by? It’s pathetic how you wasted every opportunity thrown your way.”
“One woman’s opportunity is another’s prison,” I deadpan.
She rolls her eyes. “Well, your prison with Ivan looked pretty fucking nice. Over and over again, he put himself on the line…to save you. He risked his position as pakhan and all his connections…for you. It would have been romantic if it hadn’t been so pathetic. But it gave me an idea.” She paces back and forth in front of me. “If you weren’t going to appreciate what you’d been given, then I would take it for myself. By any means necessary.”
“Ivan?” I ask, not quite able to believe what I’m hearing. “You think that you are somehow going to trick Ivan into…into wanting you?”
“He doesn’t need to want me. I’m not naive enough to think something like that is important. But if Ivan shows up here and finds me clinging to my life after a brutal, heroic fight to save you and Jorden from death—a fight I’ll unfortunately lose, sadly for the two of you—then he’ll marry me out of convenience. He’ll marry me to keep this story quiet and as thanks for trying to save you.”
It’s terrifying how much her plan makes sense. Ivan has told me multiple times that he wants to marry someone who is well-connected. Check. Someone who isn’t emotionally invested. Check. Someone who knows what they are getting into with him—money and protection, but no love. Check.
Francia could give Ivan everything he wants.
“You’re forgetting something,” I tell her. “You have to pin this murder on someone. Ivan is going to want to know who is responsible and it will all come back to you.”
She wags her finger. “Konstantin won’t breathe a word to Ivan. Not when he has a spy living in his enemy’s house. I’ll keep delivering information to Konstantin until he finds Katerina and our business together is done.”
I snort. “Good luck getting that past Ivan.”
“I’ve gotten everything else past him so far,” she says simply. “He already knows someone is after you. Your stepdad is in bed with a lot of bad people. Could be any one of them who came after you, honestly. Ivan may never be able to puzzle it out.”
My stomach is in knots. I’m trying to poke holes in a plan I’m hearing about for the first time, but Francia has been plotting all of this since the moment we met. Every second of our friendship has been a scheme and I had no clue.
Francia has thought of everything.
“You’re insane,” I breathe. “Actually, clinically insane. None of this is normal. You understand that, right? You’re a crazy fucking bitch.”
Francia walks around my chair. I try to angle back to see her, but I can’t. The ropes are too tight. Then she squeezes my knuckles painfully and yanks on my finger. Something cracks. Pain flashes. Then a weight disappears.
My ring.
She walks back to face me. Slowly, she slips the huge diamond onto her finger.
“Maybe I am crazy.” She holds out her hand, letting the diamond reflect the muddy lights of our dungeon. “But you’re about to die in a dank basement while this crazy bitch gets everything she has ever wanted.”
My fear vaporizes in an inferno of rage.
“Ivan will never be yours,” I spit. “He is and always has been mine.”
Francia opens her mouth to respond…just as something loud shudders upstairs.
She turns towards the door. For the first time since she revealed her loyalty, Francia looks scared.
“Looks like my big, muscled man has come to save me,” I spit.
I’m hoping like hell that I’m right.