But I keep struggling.
I will not simply lie in the muck and grime of the forest and accept that I’m going to be raped.
“Lie fucking still, you bitch!” he screams at me thunderously.
A smarter woman might have listened. And maybe I might have, if it hadn’t been for the child inside me.
I couldn’t let this happen—for my baby’s sake. He manages to rip at the front of my nightgown. The thin fabric gives way easily. He pulls again, harder, and the tear widens until it’s reached my stomach.
“No… no!”
“I told you to shut the fuck up,” he barks. “Unless you want this to go…”
His threat trails off as his eyes fall to my swollen belly. “You’re pregnant?” he asks in amazement.
His shock is the distraction I need. My free hand grabs a handful of the dark, gritty soil and I fling it hard into his wide-open eyes.
He yells back in shock. Cocking back, I swing my fist straight into his nose as hard as I can.
Something gives way beneath my knuckles. Bone or flesh, I don’t know, but I feel his blood slicking the back of my hand.
The bastard falls back into the dirt, cupping two hands to where I struck him and cursing rapid-fire.
I scramble onto my knees as I root around in the dirt, desperately looking for the gun I’d dropped.
I can feel him at my back, inching closer as he tries to coax his vision clear once more.
Where is it? Where the fuck is it?
And then I see the butt of the weapon glinting out at me from under a ragged leaf.
I lunge for it. My fingers close around the grip just as the man’s hand closes around my ankle.
“I might have gone easy on you, bitch,” I say. “But now I’m gonna fuck that baby right out of you.”
He tugs hard. I lose my position and my head slams against another half-buried rock.
In that moment of disorientation, I see a flash of a woman behind my eyelids.
I’ve never met or seen her before.
But I feel like I know her.
She’s pregnant. She’s terrified. She’s staring death in the face…
She’s staring my brother in the face.
And I feel a kinship with this Marisha I’ve never known and never will know. This woman who was married to my husband, who was carrying his child, just as I am now.
A woman whose last view of the world was my brother’s stormy eyes—just before he murdered her.
And suddenly, I’m furious.
I’m determined.
But most of all, I’m tired.
I’m tired of being a plaything in a world ruled by powerful men who think they can just take what they want.
I’m tired of having to fight them off, shout to be heard, beg to be left alone.
I whip around fast. My hands don’t shake anymore. The gun is steady in my grasp as I turn it on him.
I have the satisfaction of seeing his eyes bulge with fear.
And then I shoot.
This time, pulling the trigger feels like the easiest thing in the world. My hands are steady. My aim is true.
And when the bullet reduces his face to a mess of blood and bone, it’s not disgust or guilt or anger than I feel.
It’s power.
The man’s body hits the ground with a dull, lifeless thump. I sit up a little straighter, the gun still clutched between my hands.
I take a deep breath, staring at the body in front of me, savoring the way he lies there, unmoving.
I remember the way I felt after my first kill. Mischa—the man in Tamara’s apartment I’d stabbed again and again.
That guilt nearly ripped me in half.
This time is different.
I don’t know what that means just yet.
8
Esme
When my legs feel strong enough again, I rise off the ground, taking the gun with me. I turn and walk away from the body, venturing deeper into the woods.
I find my way back to the cabin and then, using that as my starting point, I head off in a different direction.
The moon hangs low in the sky, illuminating my path as I hear the scurrying of forest creatures all around me.
Minutes later, I come across a clearing. This is it. This is the place.
It’s bloody carnage everywhere I look. Crimson stains the ground, but I don’t shy away from it. Instead, I leap right over the sticky puddles and keep moving forward.
Because I see him.
Artem.
He’s lying on his back in the middle of the clearing. Nothing else moves. Nothing makes a sound.
I rush forward and sink to my knees at my husband’s side.
“Oh, God,” I whimper. A sob breaks through my façade of calm. I squeeze his hand between mine and say it again—I don’t know what the hell else to do. “Oh, please, God, no.”
I need him to move. To say something. Just fucking blink, goddammit.
But nothing.
Nothing.
Until…
His finger twitches in my grasp.
“Artem?” I say. “Artem?”
Suddenly, the tiniest of motions—his chest rising and falling slowly. It’s so faint I can barely tell.
But it’s there.
It’s fucking there.
He’s alive.
Gratitude floods back into my body. “Thank God,” I breathe. “Thank fucking God.” I bend forward and kiss his forehead, his cheek, his lips.
“Artem,” I whisper, “can you hear me? Stay with me. Please, just stay with me.”
I shake his shoulders, rubbing my hands against his face and slapping him gently, trying to bring him back to consciousness.
His clothes are absolutely soaked in blood. I look for the wounds. A bullet hole in the bicep, a jagged stab wound just above his hip, and a nasty shot buried in the center of his stomach. Each one worse than the last.
I don’t know much about emergency medicine, but it doesn’t take much to realize the obvious: it doesn’t look good.
I rip a long strip off the raggedy end of my nightgown. That one gets knotted around his bicep. The flow of blood staunches at once.
I repeat the process twice more and press the torn, balled-up fabric into his stomach and ribs. He groans each time. His eyelids flutter, but they don’t open.
I stand up, still clinging
