my sister stole my fiancé so I married the devil Chapter 08

I bought the test in a pharmacy in the valley town with Nikolai

standing at the end of the aisle, pretending to read a magazine about

boats.

I took it in a service-station bathroom with a cracked mirror and a

flickering light.

Ninety seconds.

Two lines.

I gripped the edge of the sink until my knuckles went white, and I laughed, once, out loud, at the sheer scale of the joke.

I was married to the father of my child, and he was three doors down

the hall hunting for me, and my sister was wearing my mother’s perfume and telling him she was me.

Tell him now. Blood tests exist. A child is proof.

And then, right behind it, in Sienna’s voice: He’ll think you trapped him. He’ll think the maid’s bastard opened her legs for a stranger and pinned the outcome on an Alpha to save her neck.

And under that, in my father’s: I solve problems, Ivy.

There was one more thing.

If Damien Volkov ever decided I’d deceived him, he wouldn’t just erase me. He would erase everyone connected to me.

Including a woman in a quiet house in the north valley who had spent nineteen years paying for one drunken night that wasn’t her fault.

So I needed my mother out first.

I asked to see her.

Damien said yes without looking up from his desk.

“Take four men,” he said. “Any trouble, you use my name.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve read your file.” He turned a page. “You visited her nine times in nineteen years and each time your father made you pay for it. It’s a two-hour drive. Go.”

The quiet house was clean, pale, and terrible. My mother sat in the sun room by the window with her hands in her lap.

She was forty-three and looked sixty.

“Ivy?” She stood too fast, swayed, and I caught her, and she put her hands on my face like she was checking I was real. “Oh, my girl. My beautiful-” Then she saw the yellowing bruise on my cheek and her whole face changed. “He hit you again.”

“It doesn’t matter.” I was crying. “Mama, I’m getting you out. I’m married now. To a man with power. I can-”

“Married.” She gripped my wrists. “To who?”

“Damien Volkov.”

My mother went white.

“Listen to me.” She pulled me down onto the bench, glancing at the door. “Two weeks ago your father came here. First time in six years. He wanted my old marriage record, our church papers, everything with the Sinclair name on it.”

“Why?”

“Because your father is in debt to Sergei Bratva,” she whispered, “and Bratva has been moving girls through Sinclair land for two years with your father’s blessing, and Volkov has been burning those routes to the ground. Ivy-” She squeezed my hands hard enough to hurt. “Two nights ago. Thursday. Did anyone come for you?”

The lake. Rope. Flashlights. That’s the one. The Sinclair girl nobody

wants.

“Yes,” I said hoarsely,

“Then hear me.” My mother’s eyes were wet and absolutely clear. “Your father didn’t lose you at that lake by accident. He sent your there. A debt was owed and you were what he had. And when it went

wrong-when a Volkov walked out of those trees-he found a better

price. Not a van. A treaty.”

The room spun.

“He sold me twice,” I said.

“He sold you twice.”

I stood up. I walked to the window. Outside, four Volkov men in black leaned against a car that cost more than this entire building.

“Mama,” I said. “If I told you I was pregnant-”

The door opened.

“Mrs. Volkov.” Nikolai’s voice was careful, and something in it made every hair on my arms stand up. “We need to go. Now.”

“What’s happened?”

“Alpha’s orders. He’s found the men from the lake.” Nikolai held the door. “All four. He’s got them in the basement at the estate, and he wants you standing there when he asks them what the girl looked

like.”