Page 68 of Crowned

I fall on the second man at my feet and stab him in the guts, over and over again, my other hand covers his mouth so his screams don’t draw the guards.

Strong hands grab my shoulders and yank me off him, and I fall onto my back. I presume it’s the guards, and I anticipate the blows of their batons as they beat me into submission.

Instead, I wipe the blood from my eyes and find myself gazing up at Pushka’s cold face. He offers a hand to help me to my feet and I take it.

Without needing to discuss it, we walk quickly away from the five bodies before any of the guards can find the scene.

“Why do you keep following me?” he asks.

“Who wants you dead so badly?”

Pushka takes his T-shirt off and wipes away the blood on his hands and face. I do the same thing.

“Everyone,” Pushka replies.

If I hadn’t been watching him all this time, I’d think he was bragging. “Then why don’t you just let them kill you?”

Death at the end of a blade. If I didn’t burn for revenge, I might let that happen to me.

Pushka’s pale blue eyes are burning. “All my life I have lived for someone else. I am not going to die for someone else. When I get out of here, I am going to live for me. These scum are not taking that from me, too.”

I see something in him that I’ve never felt before. Pride. This Pushka is a proud and stubborn man, and he’s being crushed to death in this fucking hellhole.

“I’ll make you a deal, Pushka. I’ll watch your back in here. From now on, your enemies are my enemies.”

Pushka considers me. “You are a good fighter. But what do you get out of this?”

I turn my hands over, staring at the blood under my fingernails. For the last hour, I haven’t heard one painful scream or baby’s cry echoing through my mind.

I get the sweet release of fucking forgetting.

12

Lilia

Monsters.

They come in every shape and size. Rich and poor. Pretty and ugly. I learned this lesson long ago, but it’s still a shock to discover that the respectable, well-spoken people who have complimented your dress and eaten the food you cooked them are really demons straight out of hell.

For all these months, I felt sorry for the terrifying way Mr. and Mrs. Lugovskaya died. Kirill hunted them through their apartment and stabbed them to death. Mrs. Lugovskaya heard her husband’s dying screams, and I remember thinking that it was probably the worst sound she’d ever heard in her life.

But this woman listened to her daughter scream for help in the agony of labor, knowing that Katya could die or the baby could die, and she did nothing.

Nothing.

I don’t realize I’m shaking with anger until someone touches my shoulder. It’s Elyah, his expression creased with concern.

“Perhaps you should not have told her that story,” he murmurs to Kirill.

I brush him away because I’m sitting down on the sofa. I’m not going to faint again, though my heart aches for Katya. I glance down at my belly, my baby, and hug it tight. Angry tears plop onto the fabric of my T-shirt.

“Are you crying for me, Lilia Aranova?”

I’m crying for Katya and the child, innocent people who deserved to live a full life instead of die at the hands of a couple of cold-hearted monsters. I’m crying for sixteen-year-old Kirill, who might have turned out so differently if he’d been given the chance to protect Katya and the baby. Instead, he was sent to prison and emerged a killer.

Kirill’s voice has been flat and unemotional throughout his whole tale. He walks slowly toward me, his eyes dark and gleaming beneath his curls.

I wipe my face and gaze up at him. “I’m crying for everyone who deserves my tears, and yes, that means you, too.”

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