Page 133 of Gilded Cage (Kovalyov Bratva 1)

The men stand a little straighter when they see Artem coming.

“Don Kovalyov,” one says to him with a bow as Artem passes by.

Don?!

I suck in my breath as I begin to piece together what’s happened.

Something has happened to his father.

And now Artem has inherited the Bratva throne.

I stare at my husband’s back as he climbs the steps to the jet, but my legs feel cemented to the ground.

“Ma’am?” says one of the men. I don’t even know which one is talking to me. “You have to board.”

My stomach sinks. We had been doing so well. Finding common ground, rediscovering a connection that had sparked the first time we’d met in The Siren months ago.

I’m carrying his child, but I hadn’t realized until just now how much I had been banking on our temporary truce turning into something more permanent.

It’s like my heart is breaking all over again. It freezes me in place.

Suddenly, I feel a shadow fall over me.

I look up. Artem is standing in front of me, glaring down at me with impatience.

“What is wrong with you? We don’t have time for this.”

I stare at his face, trying to find any trace of familiarity in his features, but he looks so different.

And then I realize why: he’s wearing a mask, too.

The cold, hard mask of a Bratva don.

The same one that Cesar had tried wearing every so often.

But it had been different with Cesar. His mask hadn’t fit quite so well. His mask was chipped at the edges, riddled with fissures of doubt and uncertainty.

Artem’s mask is so perfect that I can’t see past it.

“I want to go back to the beach,” I whisper in a voice so low that the wind carries my words away.

“What?” Artem barks.

I flinch at the harshness of his voice. “Never mind,” I mumble. “Nothing.”

He wraps his hand around my arm in a vise grip and tugs me up the steps of the plane himself.

I go silently, suddenly so tired that I’m actually glad for the support.

The moment we’re on the plane, he drops my hand. The doors close behind us.

Artem walks to the furthest end of the plane, leaving me to find a seat at the front. I sit and close my eyes, trying to picture the ocean, trying to imagine the feel of the sand beneath my feet again.

But I can’t.

The images from this morning feel like a daydream. A childish one at that.

At some point, we take off. And at some point, I fall asleep, though I don’t really know how. Maybe my brain and body are just so tired from everything that’s happened. From my life being upended again and again and again. Like all systems are shutting down to protect me.

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