Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 69662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
“When I brought up seeing a specialist because maybe he couldn’t have kids, he made sure to show me why he’d been named a death dealer. He showed me exactly how sadistic he was as he raped me repeatedly, telling me he’d get me pregnant one way or another, or I was no good to him.”
I covered my mouth with a hand.
“He left for Moscow the next morning and was gone for months, leaving me alone like I was nothing but a piece of his property.”
I didn’t know whether to be empathetic toward my mother because she clearly had to do what she did to survive, or to be utterly disgusted that I was created as a pawn, a bargaining chip for my mother’s life.
“It was after a month had gone by after Vladimir had left that I knew I had to do something. And I saw the perfect opportunity. Timur stayed back to guard me. I plied him with wine one night. We got drunk. And we had sex. I knew he’d keep his mouth shut or Vladimir would’ve slit his throat and watched him bleed out on the ground.” She glanced at Timur for only a second. “I also knew he cared for me. He didn’t hide it well, which made seducing him easy.”
My father made a disgusted noise.
“And I kept sleeping with Timur until I got pregnant, which had only taken a handful of times. So my suspicions were right about Vladimir.” The horror in my mother’s face was slowly vanishing as I could practically feel her being transported back to that time as she looked at my father. “Vladimir was shooting blanks, but was too much of an arrogant, misogynistic male in thinking he could never have issues.”
The next moment happened so fast I was left reeling.
My father pulled the trigger, putting a bullet right through my mother’s temple.
Her head cracked to the side, blood and flesh and brain matter splattering across the floor. My mouth was open and I was pretty sure I was screaming, but I couldn’t hear anything.
I looked at my father… no, not my father. Not biologically, and no longer in the figurative sense. Not after what he’d done to Kostya, and now to my mother, who lay slumped over in the chair, blood dripping from the bullet wound out of the side of her head.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
I stared at that puddle of red, viscous fluid that started to grow and spread, covering the Persian rug my mother had picked out last summer. I realized I was crying as I lifted my head and looked back at Timur. He stared at me with anguish that I felt spread out and wrap around me.
“I never wanted you to find out, not like this.” He shook his head. “I didn’t know you were mine at first,” Timur said in a strangled voice that finally pierced through my brain. “She confided in me after you were born after a particularly nasty fight with Vladimir. We were overheard, and you now know the rest.”
A shuddering breath left me as I thought back to what Vladimir had said about one of the servants confiding in a soldier, who then told him.
God, I thought the situation with Kostya had been bad, which it was, but now there was this thrown in and I was thrust into a deeper level of hell.
It was too much, the nausea rising too fast. I sat down on the floor, brushing away the tears that were steadily falling down my cheeks.
I looked at the man who raised me, the man I called Papa. He wasn’t who I thought he was. He never had been.
I knew he loved me… up until he found out this revelation. The way he looked at me now, the truth between us that I wasn’t his, and his focus on me that was absolutely menacing, was filled with so much hatred that I actually pushed myself backward.
“Breaks my fucking heart to do this, dorogaya moya, but I’ll look weak if I don’t handle the betrayal at all angles.” He took a step closer. “And truth be told, I can never look at you the same knowing how you were conceived and how I was betrayed. I’m going to put a bullet in your head, Anastasia. And I’m going to make your father and your lover watch.”
He spat out “father” as if it were a vile word.
“And then I’m going to kill Timur.” Vladimir lifted the gun and every part of me wanted to fight back, but the shock filled me so hard I could barely even breathe. “It’ll cause problems killing Ruin since he brings in so much money for the Bratva, but I’ll deal with that when the time comes.”
I couldn’t move, the wall to my back, the air frigid in my lungs.