Page 27 of Forced Marriage Vows

“Safe from who? You’re the asshole who broke into her home,” Anthony retorts. “From where I’m standing, you’re the one she needs to be protected from.”

“And what about your father?” Mikhail questions. “You don’t think I was keeping her safe from him.”

I suck in a sharp breath. “I don’t need protection from my father.”

Both of them ignore me, however. Anthony is still fuming, but he doesn’t correct Mikhail.

“You know I’m right, Ant. If I had let her be, if he had gotten to her first, you know what he could have done. There are endless possibilities, the most likely one being that he’d have given her over to the highest bidder—whoever could provide him with enough power to take back control.”

My jaw tightens. “Would you stop talking about me like I’m not here?” I snap, stepping toward the two men. Mikhail looks over, icy blue eyes meeting mine. “And stop talking about my father like that. He’s not like you. He would never do that to me,” I add assuredly.

“There’s that naivety again,solnyshko,” Mikhail murmurs.

Anthony glances between us, narrowing his eyes.

“Fuck your plans and fuck Igor’s plans. All that matters to me right now is that I’m taking my little sister and getting her out of this city. If the rest of you want to go to hell, that’s fine by me.”

“She’s not going anywhere,” Mikhail says, his stance making it clear he means business.

“I swear to God, Mikhail?—”

“No. I don’t give a fuck what you’re thinking right now. She’ll be better protected with me.”

“I’d be more inclined to believe that if you weren’t acting out of your own self-interest. You don’t just want to protect her, you want to force her into a marriage. How the fuck is that okay?”

“Better me than a man she doesn’t know,” Mikhail replies.

“She doesn’t know who the fuck you are either, asshat. And I’m not going to let you do this to her.” Anthony’s jaw clenches. “She’s leaving with me.”

“No. She’s not.”

Both men fall silent and the tension in the room increases. I’m standing between them, feeling suffocated as they glare at each other.

“You’re better than this, Mikhail.”

“We both know I’m really not,” he returns. “So what’s your master plan, Ant? You didn’t come here without one, did you? Exactly how do you plan to get your sister out of my clutches.”

I see Anthony’s fists clench a moment before he reaches behind him and pulls out a gun. A strangled gasp escapes me at the sight.

“What the fuck, Ant?” I breathe.

“Get behind me, Anastasia,” my brother orders.

“No. Put the gun away. This isn’t you!”

Mikhail, for his part, looks completely unbothered by the sight of the gun in my brother’s hand.

“Relax, sweetheart. He’s not going to use it. I doubt he even knows how,” he says to me.

Anthony arches an eyebrow, his gaze a challenge. Then he’s pulling the trigger, carefully aimed at Mikhail’s face. I scream just as the gun goes off, narrowly missing Mikhail by a couple of inches. The bullet whizzes past him, embedding itself into the wall.

“Wanna say that again?” Anthony questions.

This is wrong. So, so wrong. My brother isn’t like this—he hates violence of any kind. He left the Bratva because he refused to be responsible for taking a human life. That man wouldn’t be standing in front of his best friend holding a gun to his face.

“You got lessons,” Mikhail says, amused.

There’s not a hint of genuine fear in his voice—he could be talking about why the sky is blue for all the lack of actual concern on his face. The man is definitely a sociopath.

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