They Sold Me. The Devil Married Me Chapter 11

They Sold Me. The Devil Married Me Chapter 11

Nikolai wanted to lock me in a tower. I watched him fight it in real time.

“You’re not going Thursday

“I’m going Thursday.” I put both hands flat on his chest. “With your men. With a different car, a different route, a different hour. But I am going to my daughter’s appointment, because if I let that man decide where I’m allowed to exist, then I’m back in my mother’s dining room forever, wearing gray, smiling. I’m done being managed by fear. Yours included.”

He stared at me for a long moment.

“Nine years ago,” he said finally, “I was certain I couldn’t have possibly imagined you better than you were.”

His jaw tightened. “Three cars. And I ride with you the whole way.”

Thursday. 9:40 a.m. New route, new car, two chase vehicles, His hand around mine the entire drive, his

thumb moving across my knuckles, his eyes never leaving the mirrors.

We never reached Fifth.

The delivery truck ran the light at Concord – not into us, across us, sealing the intersection. And the gray sedan came out of the parking structure on our right like something launched instead of driven.

I remember fragments.

Nikolai shouting my name. His seatbelt already off – when had he taken it off – his whole body twisting across the seat, his arms caging my head and my belly, wrenching me under him so his back was to the

impact.

Then the world going sideways in a shriek of metal. Glass turning into bright snow. Three gunshots

somewhere very far away.

Then stillness. The engine ticking. Someone’s horn jammed on.

“Nikolai,” My voice worked. My arms worked. My baby – I could feel my own heartbeat, feel everything, he’d taken all of it, he’d wrapped himself around us and taken every single piece of it. “Nikolai. Look at me.”

He was slumped against the crushed door, and the side of his white shirt was going red with a speed that made the world shrink down to a pinhole.

His eyes found mine. Unfocused: Then focused-scanning me, checking me head to foot – and even Bleeding out, the first thing out of his mouth was:

“The baby. You’re-?”

“We’re fine, we’re fine, you idiot, you took your seatbelt off-”

“Faster that way.” One corner of his mouth moved. “Did the math.”

“Don’t you dare joke. Don’t you dare-” I had my hands inside his shirt, finding the wound, pressing down with everything I had, nine years of training coming back like it had never left. “HELP! SOMEBODY HELP

ME!”

His men were already ripping the door open. Sirens somewhere, coming, not fast enough. His blood was on my wrists and my dress and my mouth, and his hand in mine was getting softer, and every wall I’d rebuilt since that ballroom came down at once- not breaking this time.

Opening.

“Hey. Hey. Stay with me.” I pressed my forehead against his. “You listen to me, Nikolai Varga. Nobody dies

on my floor. Do you hear me? Nobody dies on my floor. You stay till morning. You don’t get to give me those

words and then leave, that is not how this-”

“Elena.” A whisper. His eyes were closing.

“Please-”

“Worth it,” he breathed. “Nine years. All of it. Worth-”

His hand went loose in mine.

The paramedics tore him away from me, and the last thing I saw before the doors shut was his blood

soaking through the blanket they’d wrapped him in, and then I was standing alone in the middle of Concord

Avenue on broken glass, red to the elbows, screaming his name.