Page 15 of Pas de Trois
I don’t know whether I’m livid or hurt or heartbroken. Probably all three. He took my future from me. He has well and truly stolen my life and this ring is a symbol of my slavery. He tied me to his family. Forever.
“Am I,” my voice cracks, “am I a Mikhailov?”
“Yes. Since our wedding.”
There’s a page behind the marriage certificate proving that it’s true. He had my name legally changed—legal in the sense that he paid off corrupt officials, no doubt.
My name is Anya Mikhailov.
I drop the jewelry box and dig my fingers into my hair at the scalp. “No. No, no, no. I’m not. I can’t be. I won’t be.”
“You’re the last Mikhailov,” Nikolai says and I scream.
I scream and I sob and I don’t stop until I hear Ezra softly say my name.
“Anya. There…there might be more.”
I turn my head to look at him, my vision blurred by the tears that form a sheen across my eyes. “More? What more could there be?”
“I lied,” Nikolai breathes out hard. “On Vigo’s contract of sale…I lied.”
“You lied?” My eyebrows lift, my hands fall hard onto my lap, and I nearly laugh. “Shocking.”
“Tell her,” Nikolai says to Ezra, panting, suffering.
Good.
Let the bastard suffer.
Ezra closes his eyes for a beat. He doesn’t look at me when he speaks. “Nikolai wrote in the contract that you were infertile. That you couldn’t get pregnant.”
“He what?”
“He lied to Vigo. The last birth control shot Nikolai had the doctor give you was three months before he sold you. You’ve been…” Ezra hesitates. “You’ve been off birth control for the past six months. The last shot would’ve worn off just before Vigo took you.”
My nervous systems stutters and every muscle in my body freezes. I’m stuck in place for what feels like hours, though I know it’s only moments. Suddenly I feel trapped inside my mind because what I’ve just heard is outrageous.
Absurd.
Laughable, really, though it’s not funny at all.
I blink and my eyelids linger shut for beats longer than normal. When I open them again, I look down at Nikolai, my mouth open wide in misunderstanding and confusion.
When I speak, my words are measured, slow, so there is no possible way they can be misunderstood. “Did you want me to get pregnant with that monster’s child? Is that what you wanted, Nikolai? Tell me. Tell me!” I shout.
“I wanted to punish you, rabynya.”
I slap him.
Then I slap him again.
I punch his shoulder, his chest, his stomach, and he groans in pain when I do.
“I’m sorry,” he grunts. “I’m sorry, Anya. It was a mistake. I tried to make it right.”
“Oh, you tried? Tried how?” I laugh. “Tell me, Nikolai, how did you try to make it right?”
“At the Leblancs’.”
