Page 40 of Captive Prize

My mother used to tell me the story while running her fingers through my hair as I fell asleep.

She’d say I was the product of two fierce nations. When opposites collided with enough intensity, they broke down to the bone—and what was left was something new. Something stronger.

I was supposed to be that something.

I had her wit. His strategic mind. Her warm skin and eyes. His height. His strength.

The stubbornness? They both claimed I got that from the other.

They planned everything for me—elite schools, top universities. I was their hope. The bridge between empires.

When her father found out she’d fallen for a Russian criminal, she was cut off.

My father’s mother disowned him when he refused to return to Moscow and serve the family.

They didn’t care.

They chose each other.

And for the first ten years of my life, I believed I’d find that kind of love, too.

Then she died.

A car crash. Maybe an accident. Maybe a hit. I never got the chance to find out.

My father packed up our small London apartment and took me to live with his mother in Rublyovka.

That week changed everything.

I learned the tiny place we had in London was a step down for my father. He’d walked away from wealth and power for my mother.

But what that apartment lacked in square footage, it made up for in warmth.

My grandmother was a bitter, ice-hearted woman.

She barely looked at me. Called me a mongrel. A mutt.

I thought maybe she didn’t realize I spoke Russian fluently.

I found out quickly she just didn’t give a damn.

My father stayed for a week. Then he left. Back to London. I never saw him again.

A month later, my grandmother sneered and told me he was dead. Suicide. Claimed it was because he didn’t love me.

But I knew the truth.

He didn’t die because he stopped loving me.

He died because he couldn’t stop loving her.

And I couldn’t die because I couldn’t leave this world without carrying a piece of her with me.

I went from dreaming of a love like theirs to praying I’d never find it.

Now, I was the only Ivanov without that kind of love. And I hoped the beast never found me.

As I always did when making my mother’s recipes, I let the aroma carry me back. To her arms around me. To the way she laughed in her red and yellow dresses. To the way my father would dance with her in the kitchen.

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