Page 2 of Ivory Oath

In a different room from the one Iakov had me in at first. With different chains around my wrists than the ones Iakov had me in at first.

Goosebumps race up and down my arms like my body knows something my brain doesn’t yet want to accept.

But… no, it was a dream. Because what happened was impossible. Physically and spiritually impossible.

As I reach into my back pocket, I’m already berating myself for being so ridiculous. Even as my hand closes around a small plastic stick wedged deep into the denim, I don’t believe it.

It isn’t until I pull the pregnancy test free and hold it in front of me that my resolve starts to crack. Because even I can’t be in denial about the two bright pink lines in the test window. There’s nothing imaginary about those.

It wasn’t a dream.

It really happened.

Which means…

A key slides into the lock of my door and I have just enough time to wedge the pregnancy test between my mattress and the wall before my door bangs open and the impossible becomes impossible to deny.

“Trofim,” I rasp.

“Good morning, darling.” My ex-fiancé closes the door behind him, twisting his head one way and then the other like a snake trying to decide how to consume an especially large meal. “I thought you might be awake. How did you sleep?”

Oh, God. It was all real.

I’m pregnant.

Mikhail exiled me and kept Dante.

Trofim found me.

A million terrifying realities settle in all at once, but one thought is louder than the rest.

“You’re dead,” I blurt. “I killed you.”

He smiles and it’s like an ice-cold finger dragging down my spine. Any time I have had a nightmare about Trofim, it’s been of that moment. The way he wheezed when I drove the blade into his chest. The blood coating my hands as I fled.

Trofim walks closer and I slam back against the wall. I curl into myself, getting as far from him as I can manage. But it isn’t enough. He pinches my trembling chin and forces my eyes to his. “You think that little poke was enough to kill me? You’ll have to try harder than that.”

I could barely stab him the first time. I knew Dante’s life depended on it, but I could only manage to stab him once before I had to leave.

When I didn’t hear anything about him after that, I assumed…

I jerk my face away. “If you survived, why are you just coming back now?”

I’d argue that there never would have been a good time for Trofim to surprise me by magically coming back from the dead, but I’m not sure he could have picked a worse time.

“Because I was waiting for you,” he croons. “My baby brother surprised me; I’ll give him that. He caught me off-guard and took the Bratva from me. Then my father sided with him overnight without any pushback.”

“Because Mikhail was the better choice,” I hiss.

In an instant, Trofim is on the bed in front of me, his nose pressed to mine. “If he’s so great, where is Mikhail now? He saved you once. Do you think he’ll do it again?”

No. No, I don’t.

“Mikhail broke tradition and protocol. He stole everything from me and no one did anything to stop him. I wasn’t going to come back empty-handed. I needed to have my wife and a strong alliance in my back pocket to reclaim what is rightfully mine. But someone,” he chides, leaning back to tap the end of my nose, “disappeared. Until recently, that is. And now that you’re back, so am I.”

I shake my head. “If you’re doing this to get to my father, you’re out of luck. I spoke to him and he isn’t going to help me. He doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

Unfortunately, that wasn’t a dream, either. My own father would rather get revenge by sitting back and letting me be killed than save his own daughter.

---