Page 163 of Ivory Ashes

Or was it a lie?

Anatoly doesn’t answer me. Instead he grabs the corner of the blanket and whips it back.

“No!” The cry that comes out of Anatoly is guttural. It’s dripping with enough shock and horror that I don’t need to see anything to know that something is horribly wrong.

The blanket settles at my feet, a bright red stain oozing across the fabric in the center.

No.

I squeeze my eyes closed, too afraid to look.

When Mikhail told me about the moment he found Alyona and Anzhelina dead, I couldn’t imagine how it must have been for him. How the sight of your child, limp and lifeless, must haunt your every second for the rest of your life.

I thought, I wouldn’t survive it.

That’s what I’m positive is about to happen to me when Anatoly backs out of the car… and lays Stella’s limp body over the stain.

I’m mortified by my own relief that it isn’t my son. Then I take in her white skin. Her eyes rolled back in her head.

“Stella…” Anatoly smooths her hair away from her forehead and falls over her body. He presses his ear to her chest, listening for a heartbeat. I don’t need to test it to know she doesn’t have one.

“She’s dead,” I whisper in horror.

Anatoly shakes his head, pumping both of his hands into her chest. Her entire body spasms with the effort, but it’s useless. She’s been gone for a while.

I grab Anatoly’s shoulder. “She’s dead, Nat. She’s gone. We have to?—”

I don’t know what we have to do. Who did this? Why?

“You can’t be gone,” Anatoly moans. He presses his forehead to her body. “Please, baby, come back.”

My heart cracks and shatters for him, but another horror is dawning over me. I look in the car, but it’s empty. Just a bloodstain where Stella was dumped.

“Where’s Dante?” I try to jerk Anatoly away from Stella, but he’s so much stronger than me and lost in his own grief. “Nat, where is he? Where’s Dante?”

“Don’t worry, Viviana. He’s safe.”

The third voice finally snaps Anatoly out of it. He lets Stella go and sits up—just in time to watch as Pyotr raises a gun and shoots him directly in the chest.

Smoke swirls from the gun in Pyotr’s hand as Anatoly topples back over Stella’s body.

I can’t even scream; I’m so shocked, I just stand there. My hands are clapped over my mouth. My heart is a useless, clenching fist in my chest.

Then a shrill scream slices through the air.

Pyotr struggles to keep hold of the small body plastered against his leg, but he manages to grab my boy by the collar and hold him back.

Dante is weeping, lunging for Anatoly’s motionless body on the cement floor. And my heart bleeds. Nothing else matters except getting to my son.

I reach for him, but Pyotr turns the gun on me.

“Don’t move until I tell you to, Viv.” His voice is a cruel sneer. Nothing like the kind, soft-spoken man who was in my room the other night, offering me tales of his own sorrow and promises of freedom.

None of this makes any sense. I have no clue what is happening.

“What are you doing? Why did you—” I look down at Anatoly’s body on the ground and I can’t even say the words.

Why did you kill him?

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