21. Katerina
KATERINA
Iwake to violence.
Rough hands clamp around my upper arms and rip me out of sleep so fast, my body doesn’t have time to catch up and fight them off.
The world tilts violently as I’m hauled upright, my sheets tangling around my legs like ropes as my body leaves the mattress.
For one disorienting second, my brain refuses to understand what’s happening.
In that blinding moment of confusion, I’m certain I’m still dreaming—that I’m back at the gala, reliving the moment the entire ballroom went silent and the military police dragged me off the stage while I screamed Aleksandr’s name before they shoved me into the car.
But the grip on my arms is real.
Painfully real.
Fingers dig hard into my skin, bruising, rough, and completely devoid of restraint.
Panic explodes in my chest like a live wire when my vision finally adjusts enough to see the multiple men crowding around me inside my room.
They’re dressed head to toe in black tactical gear that absorbs the faint light bleeding from the single lamp I left on over by my desk.
Balaclavas conceal their faces completely, leaving only their eyes visible through narrow slits.
The FSB.
It has to be.
My father’s debts have finally caught up with him in a way he can no longer dismiss as the delusions of his “mentally unstable daughter”.
Someone higher up the chain must have finally decided to look into the claims I’d been screaming about and noticed the classified accounts have been bled dry.
Now they’ve come to collect, and I’m the easiest piece to pick up first.
My stomach drops as one of the men jerks my arms behind my back, forcing my wrists together while another begins stripping the tangled sheets from my legs so I can stand.
I don’t scream.
Instead I twist hard, wrenching one arm free, and lunge for my desk.
My fingers close around the lamp, its base solid, its cord ripped out of the wall in the same motion, and I swing it like a club.
The first blow catches the man on my left square in the side of the helmet.
He staggers back from me, not at all expecting the blow.
I swing again, this time at the one trying to reach for me on my right.
The lamp connects with his forearm. I feel the bone give before he roars and jumps away from me.
Two seconds, maybe three. That’s all I get before they’re on me again.
I kick backward, heel connecting with a shin. Someone lets out a low, guttural curse and drives a knee into the back of my thigh to force my legs to buckle. Then they haul me upright and march me toward the door.
Outside my room, the hallway is in utter chaos.
People are everywhere.
Staff I’ve known since childhood are being herded down the corridor like livestock, shoved along by masked men with rifles slung across their chests. Their voices echo through the house with panic as they plead with confusion, mixing with the heavy thud of boots against the polished floors.
One of the maids who used to braid my hair when I was little shrieks when a masked man rips her phone from her hands. He doesn’t even hesitate before smashing it hard against the wall. Plastic explodes across the floor in a spray of shattered pieces.
“No—please!” she cries.
Another man from the kitchens lunges forward, trying to shield her. He’s grabbed by the back of the shirt and slammed face-first into the wall. Blood blooms instantly along the man’s temple, bright and shocking against the cream surface.
Orders snap through the air in clipped, efficient bursts as the masked men holding me speak into the radios attached to their hips.
“Cleared the west wing.”
“Restraints being made for combatants.”
“Primary target secured.”
Primary target.
Me.
The words send a cold spike of realization through my chest.
They aren’t here for my father. They’re here for me.
They drag me toward the grand staircase.
My pulse explodes into a wild rhythm.
No.
Absolutely not.
My heels skid across the runner as I fight against them with every ounce of strength I have, forcing my body weight backward to keep them from pulling me any further.
There is no way in hell I’m letting government officials take me into custody.
I would rather die than spend the next decade rotting in a concrete cell while my father bargains away whatever scraps of loyalty he has left to save himself again.
I refuse to become the “necessary” sacrifice that finally exposes his crimes while forfeiting my own life in the process.
“Move,” one of the men growls.
I dig my heels harder into the carpet. “Go to hell.”
The man gripping my right arm twists it sharply behind my back. Pain explodes through my shoulder, white-hot and blinding.
“Fuck!” I choke out as my vision speckles.
“Stop it,” he hisses into my ear.
But even as the pain radiates down my arm, I still refuse to take another step. My opportunity to break free finally comes when one of our family’s butlers lunges at us from the left side.
The movement is so sudden that for half a second, the men holding me don’t react.
He’s been working in this house longer than I’ve been alive.
A mountain of a man with shoulders like a linebacker and a mustache that has never once been trimmed differently in the twenty-two years I’ve known him.
Tonight his face is red with fury as he barrels straight toward us.
He slams straight into the man on my left with the force of a battering ram, sending both of them both crashing into the wall. The masked man stumbles hard, rifle clattering against the paneling as he’s grappled.
It’s all the opening I need.
I give one last desperate wrench of my arm and drive my elbow backward as hard as I can. The point of it slams straight into the solar plexus of the man at my right. Air whooshes out of him in a strangled gasp, then he doubles over instantly.
I rip my arm free and run.
The staircase blurs beneath my feet as I bolt down it two steps at a time, my bare feet slipping slightly as adrenaline roars through my veins.
I don’t know where I’m going. I only know I have to move. There’s nowhere in this house that can keep me hidden forever now that they know for certain I’m here. But standing by and doing nothing still means being dragged out of this place in handcuffs, and that is absolutely not happening.
I reach the bottom of the staircase and skid into the foyer just as another group of masked men storms through the front hallway.
Shit.
I dive sideways without thinking, slipping behind a pocket doorway that leads into one of the old, unused sitting rooms. My back presses against the wall until I’m practically flat inside the narrow space.
The men rush past without noticing me, their boots thunderous across the floor, their radios crackling.
For a moment I simply stand there, breathing hard.
Think.
Think.
Then the answer hits me. The underground tunnel. The one I told Aleksandr about.
My teeth gnaw hard at the inside of my cheek as distant sounds of fighting echo somewhere deeper in the house.
It’ll be nearly impossible to get down to the basement without someone seeing me and grabbing me again.
The main staircase that leads to the basement is right past the back entry where it’s no doubt crawling with men.
But… I have to try.
Once I’m inside the tunnel, I’ll have a clear shot at getting out of here.
Even the FSB won’t know where I’ve gone.
Not unless they’ve done far more research than I think they have.
Judging by how quickly they descended on the house after the gala, I doubt they’ve had time to dig through decades-old property archives looking for forgotten blueprints.
Not with the bureaucratic nightmare it would take to approve an operation like this in the first place.
They’re moving too fast, which means they’re operating on incomplete information.
If I stall and get caught, I’ll be wasting the only advantage I have left.
Pushing away from the wall, I tilt my head just enough to peer around the corner. For a moment, I hold my breath and listen.
Nothing.
Good.
I slip out from behind the doorway and dart down the opposite direction from where I’d come, moving as quickly and quietly as I can manage.
My bare feet barely make a sound against the carpet runners as I hug the walls, slipping through pools of shadow between the dim hallway lamps.
My heart is still pounding hard enough to shake my body, but I force my breathing to slow.
Panicking will only get me caught.
The deeper I push into the estate, the quieter everything becomes. The shouting fades behind me, muffled by thick walls and distance until it almost feels unreal.
For a fleeting second, the quiet almost convinces me the chaos is over. That maybe they’ve decided whatever orders were given to get me isn’t worth the trouble they’re running into trying and are already on their way out.
The moment I slip through the service door into the kitchens, I stop dead in my tracks.
The room looks like a bomb went off.
Everything has been ransacked. Cabinet doors hang open at crooked angles, their contents spilled across the tile floor.
Pots and pans are scattered everywhere. A tray of shattered glass glitters under the fluorescent lights like a bed of knives.
The massive butcher block island has been overturned completely, its thick wooden slab lying on its side.
The only silver lining in the destruction is what isn’t here—there are no dark red stains marring the floors. No bodies. For now it seems the FSB are subduing my father’s staff with non-lethal methods.
A small mercy I didn’t think I’d be grateful for.
I glance quickly toward the back hall that leads to the cellar stairs, finding it empty.
If the basement is still clear, I might actually make it to the tunnel.
I step carefully through the wreckage, avoiding broken glass and the slick patches of spilled liquid on the tile floor to keep from slipping.