I stepped back, chest heaving, rain dripping from my hair. She slumped against the headstone, hair soaked, lips swollen,her torn dress barely clinging to her paint-streaked skin. Beautiful. Mine. I pulled my shirt back on, the fabric sticking to my bloodied back, while she scrambled to cover herself, her trousers muddy, her bra lost to the grave.
“You belong to me,” I said, my voice low, final, as I cupped her face, smearing mud across her cheek.
She looked up, eyes blazing even in defeat, and for a moment, I saw the girl who’d run, but also the woman who’d stay. “You’re a monster,” she whispered, but her hand lingered on my chest, betraying her.
“And you’re my queen,” I said, kissing her once, soft, a promise of more to come.
I stepped back, breathing hard. She looked up at me, hair soaked, lips swollen. Beautiful even in fury.
“You’ll never run again,” I said.
She didn’t answer. But the fight in her eyes told me this wasn’t over.
Good.
I turned toward Nikolai, who waited by the edge of the hill.
“Lock the Rojas estate,” I ordered. “No one in. No one out.”
Then I looked at Luna.
“She’s coming with me.”
She didn’t move. But she didn’t resist when I took her hand either. That was enough for now. I led her down the hill, her veil trailing in the mud behind us.
The grave stayed behind. Empty. Just like the boy in it.
LUNA
Rain lashed down as Misha dragged me through the mud. His grip iron around my wrist. My heels sank into the mud, but I didn’t complain. What was pain anymore?
I didn’t look back at Yuri’s grave. Couldn’t. Not with Misha beside me, soaked, silent, lethal.
The storm echoed the chaos still trembling through my body. He’d claimed me there. On a headstone.
My first time, not in a bed, not with tenderness, but against cold, unforgiving granite. Rain in my hair. Dirt on my knees. His mouth at my ear, calling me queen while branding me from the inside out.
I should’ve screamed. Should’ve fought harder. Should’ve felt sick with shame. And maybe I did. The guilt burrowed in, sharp and suffocating. I’d let Misha fuck me on Yuri’s grave.
But that wasn’t all I felt. Not even close.
Even now, with mud caked on my thighs and the taste of ash in my mouth, my body burned. His touch had been brutal, possessive, feral, and yet it had awakened something buried so deep I didn’t recognize myself anymore.
His soldiers flanked us like shadows, weapons hidden but ready. My family’s land, my life, now answered to him.
My father had sold me to save himself. I’d run. Misha came to collect. And now here I was, humiliated, furious, and still burning with the heat he’d left on my skin.
At the convoy, I ripped my wrist free. “I want to see Gabriela. Before you take me back.”
Misha looked at me, cold, unreadable. Then: “You don’t make demands.”
“I’m not asking,” I snapped, “She’s my sister. You’ve taken everything else, give me this.” My voice cracked, but I held his gaze, my defiance burning through the rain, through the shame, through the memory of his lips on mine.
He studied me for a long moment, the rain dripping from his lashes, his expression unyielding. Then he nodded, a single, curt gesture, and turned to Nikolai, the scarred brute who’d beentrailing us. “Bring the sister to the compound,” he ordered, his voice carrying over the storm. “Now.”
I climbed into the SUV, my body trembling as I slid across the leather seat, Misha following close behind. The door slammed shut, sealing us in a cocoon of silence, the rain a muted drumbeat against the tinted windows.
I pressed myself against the far side, as far from him as I could get, my hands clenched in my lap, my heart pounding. I didn’t look at him, but I felt him, his presence, his heat, his obsession, like a blade pressed to my spine, just as it had been that first day at the gas station. He’d won this round, but I’d make him bleed for it. I swore I would.
