Page 71 of Scarlet Chains
I don’t hesitate. Stanley is clearly caught off guard and I’m lurching forward, flying through the air the moment Ilona makes her move. This woman. My woman. The amount of courage she has amazes me, even as terror for her safety nearly stops my heart.
The distance between us evaporates in milliseconds. I crash into Stanley with the force of a freight train, my shoulder connecting with his chest and driving him backward. The knife flies from his hand, bouncing across the floor and spinning into the shadows. We hit the ground hard, Stanley’s back slammingagainst the unforgiving surface with a sound like a sack of meat hitting pavement.
And before he can react, before he can reach for another weapon or call for help or even draw breath to scream, I wrap my hands around his throat and use every ounce of strength I possess to snap his neck in one swift, brutal move.
It happens faster than thought, faster than regret, faster than mercy. The sound is exactly what I expect— like a dry twig snapping underfoot on a winter morning. Sharp, final, irrevocable.
There’s a moment of devastating silence, and then a slow, gurgling rattle as he releases a final breath. His lifeless corpse goes still beneath me, his eyes wide and staring at nothing, mouth agape in permanent surprise.
The man who killed Galina, who terrorized Ilona, who threatened to destroy everything I care about— reduced to nothing more than cooling flesh in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
I roll off his body and look up to find Ilona staring down at her ex’s lifeless form, her body rigid with shock. Blood still trickles from the shallow cut on her throat, but she’s alive. She’s breathing. She’s safe.
“Ilona,” I choke out as I shove myself to my feet and move toward her. “Are you okay?” I reach out a hand, desperate to close the distance between us. Desperate to reassure myself that she’s okay.
“Osip.” Her eyes are wide. “Oh… Oh, my God.” Her breath is coming in short, sharp gasps. “Oh, my God, Osip!”
Then, as if her strings have been cut, she passes out.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ilona
Consciousness seeps back into me like water through cracked stone, slow and uneven.
Everything feels distant, muffled— my thoughts like scattered puzzle pieces I can’t quite put together.
The first thing I notice is the ceiling. White ornate crown molding with expensive recessed lighting. My head thumps with a rhythm that makes thinking feel impossible, each throb sending waves of confusion through my already addled mind.
Where am I?
I try to sit up and immediately regret it. The world shifts sideways, nausea rolling through my stomach like a tide. My body feels foreign, disconnected— like I’m swimming up from the bottom of a deep, dark pool where sound and sensation are distorted beyond recognition.
Fragments flash through my memory in jagged pieces that don’t fit together properly: Stanley’s face twisted with rage, the blade at my throat, the sharp burning sting as it cut my flesh. The metallic taste of fear coating my tongue. Osip appearing like an avenging angel, violence unleashing from him with terrifying precision.
Stanley dead on the floor.
The image hits me so hard I gasp, my hand flying to my throat where a phantom blade still seems to press against my windpipe. It really happened. Stanley tried to kill me. And Osip…
Stanley killed Galina.
The words echo in my mind, but they feel unreal, like something from a nightmare I can’t quite shake. Stanley—beautiful, manipulative Stanley— murdered a pregnant woman. Osip’s pregnant wife. The mother of his child.
My vision blurs, the ornate ceiling swimming above me as I try to make sense of memories that feel both vivid and impossible.
Was it real?
It can’t have been real. Maybe it was just a nightmare brought on by stress and trauma and the constant fear that’s been my companion for months.
But the sting in my throat tells a different story. The bruises I can feel forming along my ribs whisper the truth my mind doesn’t want to accept.
A shadow moves in my peripheral vision, and I turn my head slowly, carefully, afraid of triggering another wave of dizziness. My heart stops completely.
He’s sitting in a chair beside what I now realize is a couch that I’m resting on, wearing nothing but a black silk robe that hangs open at the chest, revealing the sculpted lines of his torso. But it’s not his body that makes my breath catch— it’s the mask covering the upper half of his face. Black leather, elegant, familiar in a way that makes my chest tighten with recognition.
The Masked Guy.
For a moment, I’m sure I’ve lost my mind completely. Am I hallucinating? Having some kind of breakdown where my past is bleeding into my present in impossible ways? Because The Masked Guy can’t be here. Not after what just happened. Not sitting perfectly still like a statue carved from marble and shadows.
