YULIAN
There’s no time to think. No time to do anything but act.
So I act.
My hands are around Mia before the second gunshot. I drag her behind the stage and cover her body with mine, drawing my gun as I hold her close.
“Stay down,” I snarl.
“What’s happening?” Mia’s voice is laced with panic. “Yulian, talk to me.”
But I can’t. Whatever words are in my heart, they don’t make it past my lips. They just pound on the walls of my skull.
It’s happening again.
I did this.
I put her in danger.
“Nikita!” I bark into my phone. Security tonight was supposed to be perfect—whatever’s going on out there, heads will roll for this. “Nikita, answer me.”
But there’s no answer.
Only silence.
Mia buries her head into my neck, a flimsy protection against the hail of gunfire. I can feel her shaking, terrified, even worse than on the night of Brad’s wedding.
Back then, she had no time to process what was even going on.
Now, she knows perfectly well what this is.
The past overlaps with the present. That hot, blazing guilt I cradled in my chest twenty years ago comes back as roaring fire, ready to burn me alive. I remember my parents’ bodies, my sister’s bloodstained dress, andKira?—
“Oh my God,” Mia gasps suddenly. “Kallie’s out there. I have to get to her! I have to?—”
“No!” I roar. “You will not move from here.”
She stares at me with wide, teary eyes. Like I’ve betrayed her. “She is my friend.”
“She’s not you.”
Mia’s gaze hardens. She struggles against my grip, her eyes darting between me and the crowd. There are bodies on the ground—I recognize one of the recruits from earlier, the blood mark on his forehead as bright as day. Thepakhanin me aches for my soldiers, my brothers, but the man?—
The man only needs Mia to be safe.
It’s precisely the kind of conflict I could never afford. The one I’ve been running from my whole life—the day I’d be asked tochoose.
Duty or love. Love or duty.
What a cruel trap to get caught in.
Mia starts pounding my chest with her free hand. “Let mego!”
I strengthen my grip. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“That’s not for you to decide!”
“YOU’RE MY WIFE!”
