CLAIMED BY THE RUSSIAN TYRANT

15

Alexei swiped his thumb along his lip, licking the blood off it like a man mildly disappointed in a cocktail. Like Anastasia hadn’t just split his face open twice in one day.

Xander moved as usual to restrain herBut Alexei's hand shot up—a silent order and Xander stilled.

“You really have no shame, do you?” Anastasia laughed, wild-eyed, spreading her arms. “You’ll hurt a woman for putting your murderer of a boss in his place? Go on. Kill me. It’s the only language your kind speaks — power over something smaller than you.”

“Careful now.” Alexei said.

Before she could draw another breath, he’d already hooked an arm beneath her knees.

“What do you think you’re doing? Don’t touch me! I’ll claw your eyes out!”

Too late.

He lifted her clean off the gravel.

“You’ve clawed out enough eyes for one day. Now you’ll listen to me.”

Anastasia had several excellent responses to that. Every single one of them died the moment her fist met his shoulder blade instead of forming a sentence.

“Put me down!” She kicked, hit, clawed at whatever part of him she could reach. He didn’t so much as grunt — which was, infuriatingly, worse than if he’d laughed at her. The world tipped upside down as he carried her toward the house, and the last thing she saw before the doors swallowed them was Xander picking up Alexei’s fur coat from the ground and Ambrose, moving to park the car in the driveway.

"Damn you!" she screamed at them of both. "Damn you all!"

Inside, a line of maids, already mid-curtsy for Alexei’s homecoming, froze at the sight of their boss, bloody-shaved faced, carrying a screaming, half-dressed woman over his shoulder like a sack of grain, one broad hand clamped firmly over the curve of her exposed backside.

“Get your filthy hands off me!” Anastasia shrieked, kicking harder.

“Would you rather my workers got an eyeful instead?” He didn’t break stride.

“What are you staring at?” he barked at the maids, who scattered like startled birds — all but one older woman, brave enough to dart forward and drape a cloth over what his hand hadn’t already covered. Anastasia blushed in mortification as she passed, the world a blur of white marble and horrified whispers.

An oak door appeared in front of her vision. Alexei kicked it open, and dumped her on the carpet black unceremoniously.

She scrambled up, chest heaving, dragging her skirt down, trying to assemble what semblance of dignity she had left.

The room they were In was dim, unfamiliar.

"What is this? Are you planning to kidnap me? Sell me off?"

"Don't be ridiculous." Alexei sighed, straightening his cuffs. "I paid for you. You're mine already."

"Ha!" The sound that came out of her had no humor in it at all.

"Sit down."

"Is that woman my sister?"

A pause. Just long enough for the silence to sink into her bones.

"Yes."

Anastasia pressed a hand to her head, willing the room to stop tilting. Seven years. Seven years she'd dialed a number that never connected, and her sister had been here. With her father's enemy.

Alexei stepped away from the door. “Sit down and let me explain—"

She whirled on him. "Let you explain? How I'm your mistress and my long-lost sister is your pregnant wife?"

The words died in her throat as the room finally came into focus around her. The scent in the air. Vanilla. The dark pink upholstery, a wall of framed photographs. Marina's face smiling back at her from every one of them.

This was an office of some sort. Marina’s office. Her space. Her life, built here, without Anastasia in a single frame of it.

"Does she even know who she is?" Her voice cracked. "How she came to be here? Why she doesn't remember me?" She was crying now, and she didn't care. She crossed the room and grabbed fistfuls of Alexei’s shirt. "What did you do to her? Did you torture her until she lost her mind? Huh? Answer me, you monster! I deserve that much! Please!”

Her voice broke on the last word. Her hands slid from his shirt, limp, and she pressed her face into his chest, sobbing, wishing more than anything that she could crack open Alexei’s head and understand his reason for such extreme hatred towards her family.

Alexei didn't speak. He just slid one hand into her hair and held her like she might come apart in his arms. Which she very well might.

Minutes passed. Long enough that Anastasia stopped counting them, stopped doing anything but replaying the night, seven years ago when she'd seen Marina drop from that window into the snow. If only she had screamed. If she had let the guards catch her.

If, if, if—

The solid chest she was leaning on rumbled suddenly as Alexei said. "Maximo-"

"No!" She shoved, turning her back to him. "I won't hear another lie about my father."

"You paint me the monster, and still you won't let me speak."

"What is there to say? That my father sold Marina to you? To pay some debt? Maximovich Holdings was fine seven years ago, when she left. We weren't bankrupt. He hated you then—he hates you still, after everything you did to him-"

The rest of it left her in a rush of air as Alexei slammed her back against the wall, a knee sliding between hers, pinning her. She was suddenly, violently aware of him. The heat, the drum of his heart under his shirt, the blood tracking a slow line down his cheek toward her face.

She swallowed.

"You're wrong about many things, Anastasia." His breath moved against her face in sheer self control, and she flinched as his blood landed on her lips.

His eyes tracked the movement.

"But you are right about one. Your bastard of a father would never have handed your sister to me seven years ago. So no. He didn't give her to me."

"Then you took her." New fury found her voice.

"She was supposed to go to New York. She was

pregnant. She was eloping with her lover, Alex—"

"She was. Yes." Alexei’s face went hard. “Until your father caught him. Forced your sister to sign a marriage affidavit binding her to Andrei Mikhailov- promised her, in exchange, that he wouldn't touch the American. And because she was young, in love and stupid enough to believe him, she signed it. Your father shot Alex thirty-two times in the face. Made her watch every one."

"No." The word barely made it out. "Papa would never-"

"Then he locked her in the mines like an animal." Alexei's voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. "Your mother came with a doctor, and tore the child out of her body.”

“You’re lying!”

“She escaped when an explosion tore through Maximo’s mine. A landslide no one could explain—and stumbled, dazed and bleeding, straight into the Morozov mines instead. My mine. My men found her there, broken and bleeding. She was able to tell us what happened to her before she finally lost her memory along with her mind.”