Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 100716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Not looking up from a bank of monitors, Easton nods.
I hold out my hand in offer to Maksim. I don’t do touch. I can’t stand it from anyone but Mara, but since his assistance will help her as much as it will me, I push aside my neurosis and man up as I should have decades ago.
Maksim accepts my offer of a handshake, his lips tugging at one side. “Still think you should take my advice. Marry her and then fess up. It worked for me.”
I laugh like I haven’t given his advice some serious consideration over the past few days. The only reason I haven’t taken it is because it is the easy way out, the cheat’s way. I’ve skirted my obligations for almost thirty years. It is time to be the man Mara deserves.
I just wish I didn’t have to give her up to achieve that.
43
MARA
Bulbs flash and reporters shout when Darius pulls our blacked-out SUV to the curb at the front of the Chrysler building.
“Go down the side. We can enter via the service entrance.”
He nods his approval of Riley’s suggestion before slowly maneuvering us through a swarm of paparazzi striving to capture the arrival of Ark’s guests.
Regretfully, over half a dozen follow us down the alleyway.
I cuss softly when Darius says, “They recognize the tags.”
“I’ll distract them.”
I try to stop Riley from exiting, panicked about the questions she could face, but she slips out before I can.
As expected, the press swarms her like bees at a hive. Mercifully, they question her about her connection to Wilfred Iwona and her prediction about her brother’s impending engagement more than her personal life.
The hard-hitting questions don’t come until after Tillie and I have slipped out the back of the SUV and snuck through the heavily guarded side entrance door.
“Stay with Riley,” I order Darius, bossing him around as if he works for me.
He follows my command without protest. “Yes, ma’am.”
With the party occurring in the ballroom in the left half of the building, our walk to the elevator is relatively quiet. We encounter only one person, and she seems to know me better than Arkadiy.
My pulse thumps in my ears when the middle-aged woman we just bypassed asks, “Miskaela, is that you?”
After tugging Tillie under my arm, I continue for the elevator, my steps more a jog.
“I haven’t seen you in years,” my accoster continues, incapable of backing down even with me making it obvious I am not who she thinks I am.
Miskaela died years ago.
I am now Mara, a woman who will do anything to protect her child.
As I struggle to breathe through my panic, the stranger continues her trip down memory lane while I jab at the elevator call button, praying for it to hurry up. “What was it? Your twelfth birthday party, right? You had the jumping castle and a magician. All the children in the street were in awe.”
“You had a jumping castle for your twelfth birthday?” Tillie whispers, doubling the output of my heart. “I thought you said you didn’t have any parties when you were a child.”
With my cover blown and the thudding steps of my haggler announcing she will follow us to the end of Earth if it is the only way she will get answers, I lower my eyes to Tillie and murmur, “I said I didn’t have any memorable parties. That’s different from not having one.”
Dr. Babkin’s grooming commenced at my tenth birthday party. My father blocked the only exit of his office two short years later.
I hit Tillie with a pleading look for us to leave our conversation until we’re not under scrutiny of someone who could irreparably scar her before I spin to face the voice surfacing the skeletons of my past faster than I forced Ark’s out of their hiding spot last week.
My scold is nowhere near as burning when I recognize the kind eyes of the lady approaching us. Mrs. Bombae was the neighborhood grandmother. If it wasn’t for her guidance and understanding, I doubt I would have ever had the courage to pack my bags and run.
I confessed to her before anyone else that I thought I might have been pregnant, and although the next person I told handed me a ton of repercussions I could have never anticipated, Mrs. Bombae was not at fault for that. She thought my parents were the good Christian people her and her husband were.
No one could have predicted how evil their blood runs.
My voice rattles with nerves when I say, “Mrs. Bombae… H-hello.”
She smiles, pleased I remember her, before her glistening eyes lower to Tillie. “Hello, dear. Who do we have here?”
“This is Matilda.” I tug Tillie in close like we’re not almost the same height before finalizing my introduction. “My-my daughter.”
“Daughter?” Shock registers but she is quick to mask it with delight. “How lovely. She looks just like you, Miskaela.” She bobs down to meet Tillie eye-to-eye like she did when I was her age. “Do you think you might play soccer like your mother? Did she tell you how she was almost scouted by a famous team all the way from Australia?”