Page 17 of His Stolen Bride

He answers anyway. “It’s leverage,” he says. “Men trade leverage. Your father didn’t have money, so he traded you.”

My stomach turns. I keep going because stopping means crying. “And the other man,” I say. “If he thinks he has a claim, what does he do? He comes to you. He comes to me. He tries to take me.”

Mikhail’s eyes sharpen. “He won’t take you.”

That possessiveness hits hard, a mix of threat and something else that makes my pulse trip. It isn’t comforting, not really, but it fills the room. “You don’t know that,” I say, my voice growing thin with rising panic. “You don’t even know his name.”

A beat of silence.

Mikhail’s voice drops. “If he tries, he dies.”

I hold his gaze. “And if he already shot your brother?”

The words hang between us.

Mikhail doesn’t move, but something in his face shifts. “Is that what you think?” he asks. “That this unknown man killed Sergei?”

“I don’t know what to think,” I say, and that part is true. “I know Sergei walked into my life and died in front of me. Then you took me and married me to make a point. If there’s another man involved, that changes everything.”

Mikhail’s eyes narrow. “It changes the list of suspects.”

I take a slow breath. “If you don’t know who he is, then maybe I do.”

His gaze locks. “Do you?”

“I don’t know yet,” I say carefully, and I watch him react to the honesty. “But I can think. I can remember. My father took calls he wouldn’t take in front of me. He met men who didn’t come inside. He had friends he didn’t name.”

Mikhail’s head tilts slightly, like he’s listening now in a different way.

I keep going, because momentum matters. “If you want the name, you need me more awake than scared. You need me to talk.”

His eyes drop to my mouth again, then back up. “You talk anyway,” he says. “Fear or no fear.”

“Not well,” I reply. “And not fast.”

For a second, I think he’s going to snap at me.

Instead, he steps back half a pace, and the loss of his heat feels strange, like my body noticed before my brain did.

“What do you want?” he asks.

There it is. The negotiation. The part where I get a sliver of room.

“I want to call my mother,” I say immediately.

Mikhail’s eyes harden. “No.”

My chest tightens. “You promised she’d be safe.”

“She's safe.”

“Then let me hear her voice,” I push, and my voice rises on the last words. I rein it in fast. “Ten minutes. Guards on the line. Whatever you need.”

Mikhail stares at me in silence.

Then he says, “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow is not a guarantee,” I say, and I hate that desperation is there, but I can’t stop it. “Everything in my life has turned into tomorrow. My father kept saying tomorrow. Now he’s dead.”