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His words seem to unleash something in my mother, and she nods furiously, pointing her finger at him.
“Yes! He can’t do this to us,” my mother snarls. “Not to you. Not to our family.”
My father nods and storms out of the room with my mother right on his heels.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt this helpless in my life. They’re like two maniacs, dead set on getting rid of the enemy I wish they could see as family. I run after them, hoping to stop them before they make a mistake. But it seems my pleas are falling on deaf ears. They don’t listen, and before I can do anything, they barge into the living room.
I come in just in time to see my brothers pull out their guns and aim them at Nik.
“No!” I scream, and throw myself at him, positioning us so the guns are aimed at me now.
“Serdtse,” Nikolai warns in a low voice, trying to grab my arms and put me behind him.
“No!” I cry again, refusing to budge. “No. No. NO!”
“Kata,” Igor hisses, and cocks his gun. “Step away from him.”
I don’t move.
Everything happens so fast.
A gun goes off.
THIRTY-SEVEN
NIKOLAI
The shot rings through space, and it’s the end of the world. The woman I’m in love with shields me, her body tensing in my arms.
I don’t experience physical pain, but my heart’s bleeding. It’s hurting for her, knowing that if I wasn’t the one hit by the bullet, it must’ve been her. She had rushed to me and shielded my body with hers.
“Nikolai!” she cries out, turning around just as gracefully as ever.
My brows furrow in confusion, and I pat her body to look for a wound. “Where are you hurt, serdtse?”
“I’m not,” she replies, sounding just as confused.
Dimitri clears his throat. “Enough of this charade.”
Katarina and I turn to him. It’s then that I notice the gun in his hand and the white powder at his feet. I’m willing to bet that if I looked up, there’d be a bullet hole in the ceiling.
I see red. I storm toward the oldest Sokolov, pure rage pumping through my veins. I’ve never wanted to cause more harm than right now. I want to put an end to this pig once and for all.
Before I can reach him, the other guns cock, and Katarina pulls me back.
“Stop, Nik,” she pleads. “Just stop.”
“There’s no need to keep fighting,” her mother says, joining her brother. “You lost.”
I back up with Katarina by my side. One wrong move, and we’re dead.
Or so they think.
They want to believe that they’ve trapped me, but they’re forgetting one thing—no one gets the better of Nikolai Volkov.
“How could you do this?” Katarina asks in a barely audible voice, fresh tears streaming down her cheeks. “Why won’t you listen to me?”
“It’s him who’s making you say these things,” her father hisses. “Once he’s gone, you’ll be safe.”
