Page 77 of Wicked Heiress

No.

No.

No.

But I couldn't stop the thoughts.

The blood on the floor. There was so much blood pooling around my dead uncle. And as I stared at the crimson glistening on the marble floor, my brain transported me to another place.

Men stormed through the front door, rushing into the house with weapons. A red dot shone on my father's forehead. He grabbed the gun at his waistband and raised it to defend himself as the men shot at him. But the bullet grazed his arm and went straight into my mother's chest. She tumbled to the marble floor, her blood seeping through the white blouse and onto my cheek. Blood pooled around her body, which was painfully still.

She looked so pretty.

Like one of my dolls.

"Mommy," I cried, touching the blood blooming on her chest. "Mommy, wake up!"

My mother didn’t move.

Her chest stopped rising and falling, and her arms lay flat at her sides. I felt something wet on my face and dabbed at it with my finger, screaming when I saw blood on my hand.

One gunman knocked my dad to the ground, forcing him to submit, while another man lifted me off the floor.

“Papa, no. Help me!"

"Katarina," he bit out as his eyes met mine, ignoring the man holding him down. “Papa will find you. I will never stop looking for you, kisa."

Chapter Forty-Three

COLE

Grace had a dead look in her eyes as if she went someplace else in her mind and wasn’t here with us anymore. She sat between my legs with her head resting on my chest. But mentally, she was not okay.

I did this to her.

If I hadn’t contacted Viktor, her uncle wouldn’t have come to my house. Drake masked our location, but Maverick was one of the best black hat hackers in the world. I told Viktor I wouldn’t let him see Grace until he provided concrete evidence to help us with Fitzy—anything to prove why he’d made Grace his heir. Viktor had information on Fitzy and his dirty deeds, and until we had something to nail the old man to the wall, I wasn’t letting Grace near Viktor Romanov.

And now…

She wasn’t Grace.

That girl was gone.

Her eyelids fluttered as she looked up at Rhys. She stared like he was a stranger. Did she even recognize him?

Tears leaked from her eyes and dripped down her cheeks. Rhys bent down in front of her on one knee and swiped away her tears. She opened her mouth for the first time in over twenty minutes and whispered words in a foreign language.

Rhys looked at me and shook his head. “Why is she speaking Russian?”

“Because it’s the language Katerina spoke.”

Grace hadn’t spoken Russian since she was a little girl. The fact she even remembered more than a few words surprised me.

Which meant she wasn’t Grace.

She was Katarina.

Drake hunched down beside me. “I called Dr. Beck. He’s on his way.”

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