24. Mikhail #2
We finally reach the back corner near the emergency exit, and I let go of his wrist, turning to face him. “I can’t do this. I don’t—”
The words won’t come out right, my throat too tight to get air in. The panic attack is already settling in, familiar and suffocating.
“What’s wrong? Everything’s going well. Yulian said the pla—”
Before he can finish, I turn around and grasp onto the back of a chair, panting for air. My knuckles go white gripping the metal.
“Mikhail, breathe.” His hand comes to rest on my back. “Just breathe. In through your nose.”
I try. It doesn’t work. My lungs won’t expand, the air stuck somewhere in my throat.
“Look at me,” he says. “Misha, look at me. Our plan is solid, he will die. Just hold out longer.”
I force myself to turn, and his hazel eyes lock onto mine.
“Breathe with me,” he says. “In.”
“He wants me to marry someone,” I blurt out.
“What?” His eyes go wide. “Who?”
“That O’Shea girl, the one that just turned eighteen. I’m going to pass out in front of everyone.” The words tumble out too fast, and I can’t catch my breath.
“You can’t,” he says, and I don’t know if he means I can’t marry her or I can’t pass out.
His hands reach out for me, but he stops himself, pulling back to make sure no one sees him touching me.
“We can figure something out. He didn’t say right now, so we have some time to find a way out. Right?”
“Nyet, Danya. He said next week. He wants me to meet her tonight and then marry her.”
He takes a step back, then another, then turns around and looks over to where our father stands across the room.
He is watching us, his brows pulled together, our mother next to him looking worried.
He looks like he wants to murder me for walking away from him, then barks something at her and she nods, walking off somewhere.
“I’m going to snap,” I say, my hands shaking. “I can feel it. I’m going to do something bad.”
“No, listen.” Daniil turns back to me, his voice urgent. “We just pretend for tonight, and then we leave. We’ll figure it out, go somewhere they can’t find us. I don’t care where, just away from here.”
“You would do that?”
“I would do anything for you. We can run away together. I love you. I’m not letting you marry her.”
Sucking in a breath, I nod. I can pretend.
I can pretend for tonight and smile at people I don’t give a fuck about. I’ve done it my whole life. We can run off together, we can go be us somewhere he won’t find us. We can be free to be together. I’ll think of that whenever something happens tonight, hold onto it like a lifeline.
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay,” he echoes. His hand brushes against mine for just a second before he pulls away.
“Excuse me.”
A girl with strawberry blonde hair in a red dress approaches us.
Tommy O’Shea stands behind her, and my father is right there too, gripping his glass so tight his knuckles have gone white.
He shoots me that look, the one that says don’t you dare embarrass me, and I force myself to straighten up even though my legs feel unsteady.
“My dad wanted me to come talk to you.” She clears her throat, her cheeks flushing pink. “This is so awkward, but he said we’re supposed to marry tomorrow.”
Tomorrow?
The word registers slowly, like my brain can’t quite process what she just said.
“Tomorrow?” I stare at her, waiting for her to laugh or say she’s joking.
“Yes.” She fidgets with the strap of her dress. “He wants us to marry tomorrow instead of a week from now. Says there’s no point waiting when the agreement’s already made. Everything’s been arranged.”
Fuck.
The air gets sucked straight out of my lungs, and I can’t pull it back in.
Daniil looks at me in panic, his hazel eyes going wide, and he opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, but nothing comes out.
He stares down at the floor instead, his jaw clenching so hard I can see the muscle jumping beneath his skin.
Tomorrow. Not next week. Tomorrow.
Something inside me explodes.
“Yeah, I’m not doing that,” I blurt, and my voice comes out louder than I meant it to. Heads start turning our direction. “Run off to your father and tell him the arranged marriage bullshit isn’t working out. I’m not marrying you. I’m in love with someone else, and you’re not him.”
The words hang in the air, and everything stops. The music keeps playing, but every conversation around us dies. People stop mid-sentence and turn to stare.
What did I just do?
I just fucked up.
So badly.
My heart is racing, pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat.
One slip. One moment where my mouth moved faster than my brain.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
My father’s glass shatters in his hand.
Glancing over, he’s staring at me with an expression I’ve never seen before, something beyond fury. Blood drips onto the floor in steady drops. My mother reaches for his arm, but he shoves her away so hard she stumbles backward into someone behind her, nearly falling.
He crosses the floor toward me in fast strides, blood trailing behind him, and punches me so hard across the face that my vision goes white for a second. I taste copper, and my knees almost give out, but I catch myself against the wall.
“What did you just say?” he says in rapid Russian. “What have you done?”
He shoves me hard and lands another punch before I can react, his fist connecting with my jaw and sending pain exploding through my skull.
My hands come up instinctively, and I swing at him, but he’s faster, more trained, and he blocks it without effort.
His bloodied hand wraps around my throat, and he slams me back against the wall hard enough that the air gets knocked out of me, his grip is so tight, black spots dance at the edges of my vision.
“What do you mean by him?” he spits the words directly into my face, his breath hot and his fingers digging into the sides of my throat.
“I hope for your sake I heard that wrong, Mikhail. I hope you misspoke in your panic because if you are telling me what I think you are telling me,” he screams into my face.
His fingers press harder, and my windpipe closes completely. I can’t breathe at all now, my hands clawing uselessly at his wrist.
His brown eyes burn into mine with a fury I’ve never seen before, and this deep, desperate part of me, the child that has always longed for his approval, is still there and stops me from fighting back.
Something I’ve never gotten from him, not once in twenty-four years.
The hope that he’ll one day change, just even a tiny bit, even though I know that day will never come and I’ll never be good enough for him.
I shove him away from me, but he comes back at me so fast I barely register the movement. He pulls out a knife and presses it against my stomach, hidden between our bodies where nobody else can see it. My eyes dart to Daniil for a second, and he’s clutching onto a chair, frozen in place.
“You are marrying her tomorrow,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper. “And you’re going to tell me right now that I misheard you.”
“You didn’t,” I say back in Russian.
His brown eyes fill with fury and something else, disgust mixed with disbelief, like he can’t comprehend that I came from him.
“You’re going to follow me and pretend everything is fine,” he grits out. “If you don’t, I will kill you and whoever you love. Do you understand me?”
I nod, my throat still aching from where his hand was wrapped around it. My eyes dart toward Daniil, and he’s still frozen by that chair, his knuckles white from gripping it so hard.
My father grabs me and positions me in front of him, pressing the knife into my back under my jacket where nobody can see it.
The tip digs in just enough that I can feel it through my shirt, a constant threat with every breath.
From this angle I can still see Daniil’s face drain of color as he realizes what’s happening.
Father walks me past the sea of people, and everyone stares at us.
Daniil lunges forward, trying to get to me, but two guards catch him before he makes it three steps. He fights against their grip, twisting and pulling, his face desperate.
“M—” tears out of him, broken and panicked. He’s stuttering, trying to force the rest out, his mouth forming the shape of my name over and over. “M—M—Mikhail.” The word finally breaks through in front of all these people, and the shock of it makes me freeze.
Our father barks at them to stop him, and one of the guards punches him hard in the stomach, and he doubles over, gasping. The other one wrenches his arms behind his back while he’s trying to breathe.
“Stop,” I try to say, but the knife digs deeper into my back.
He’s still struggling against them, trying to get free even though he can barely breathe. His hazel eyes are wild, terrified, locked on me as Father pushes me further away.
My mother’s face is pale, her hand pressed to her mouth.
Yulian is halfway out of his seat at the bar, frozen like he doesn’t know whether to move or stay. Alexei has appeared from somewhere, his expression dark and unreadable, watching the guards hold Daniil.
My father spots a door leading to a stairwell and shoves me toward it.
The door swings shut behind us, cutting off the music and the stares, and he’s on me before I can react. He slams me up against the concrete wall and brings the knife up to my throat, the blade cold against my skin.
“It’s wrong. Against everything we are supposed to be,” he spits out. “How could you?” His voice rises, echoing in the stairwell. “It was one thing to let Alexei go when he pulled this stunt, but I never expected something so unnatural to come from you. You were supposed to be better than this.”
He pulls the knife back and his fist connects with my face, and pain explodes across my cheekbone. Wincing, I try to pull away, but his hand locks onto my shirt and slams me back against the wall, keeping me exactly where he wants me. The knife returns to my throat.
“I raised you,” he snaps. “Taught you everything. And this is what you do with it?”
“I didn’t—”