Total pages in book: 187
Estimated words: 177397 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 887(@200wpm)___ 710(@250wpm)___ 591(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 177397 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 887(@200wpm)___ 710(@250wpm)___ 591(@300wpm)
He rules them all.
Henry Gottle the Third is the boss of all bosses and the very man I’d hoped would take the bait I dangled in front of him weeks ago. He has the power to dismantle the federation, but at the moment, his expression announces the only head on his chopping block is mine.
Maksim’s deep snarl is picked up by Zakhar’s heart monitor. “We had an agreement.”
“Which I have maintained.” My words are for Maksim, but I keep my eyes on Henry since he is clearly the least unhinged of the two.
Maksim scoffs before he signals for a man I swear I’ve seen before to move forward. He’s dressed in the same riot gear as Maksim’s and Henry’s crews, but he is without a gun. Like Konstantine, he prefers fighting with a keyboard.
Without moving the scope of my gun from Maksim’s head, I peer down at the document the dark-haired man brings up on his tablet before silently cussing. The email Konstantine failed to send weeks ago sits in the outbox of my email server. It was forwarded two days ago, minutes before Zoya uploaded the footage she had unearthed onto the USB she gifted me.
She got Zakhar a heart and broke my promise to him at the same time.
I can handle the fallout of her mistake, but only if the crumble of my demise doesn’t affect our son. “He is a child. You cannot hurt a child. Have a fucking heart.”
“So you admit it?” Maksim shouts, his nostrils flaring. “You admit you ignored my direct order to keep this type of shit out of Myasnikov Private?”
“Yes,” I lie, willing to fall onto the knife for Zoya. I shift my eyes back to Henry, once again confident he is the more stable of the duo. “I didn’t have a choice. My son was going to die.”
“Then you should have given him your heart!” Maksim snarls, returning my focus to him. “You shouldn’t have ordered the murder of an innocent child—”
“He didn’t.”
“No!” I scream when Mikhail enters the operating theater from the entrance the doctors used to escape. He didn’t get here easily. He’s bleeding from an obvious bullet wound in his midsection and his body is housing numerous bruises. But he is standing—just. “Stay out of this, Mikhail. This has nothing to do with you.”
Blood smears his teeth when he gives me a look as if to say, She’s my sister, so she’s my responsibility, before he throws himself into the fire without the slightest bit of coverage to protect him from an inferno hot enough to melt his skin off his bones. “I sent the email. It was me.”
“He’s lying,” I deny, moving half of the lights dotting up his chest back to me.
He’s pissed, and I hear it in his tone. “What reason do I have to lie, Andrik?”
“Because you’re trying to protect her like you think you failed to do twenty-eight years ago.” His silence speaks volumes. He’s also willing to fall on the knife for Zoya. I just refuse to let him. “You didn’t fail her, Mikhail. Your father did. If you want to blame anyone, blame him.”
“Zoya is my baby sister! It was my job to protect her.”
“Zoya?” Maksim stammers out, his confusion as paramount as his anger. “What has she got to do with this?”
“Nothing,” I snap out before glaring at Mikhail in silent warning to keep his fucking mouth shut. Henry is here to take down the federation. That automatically drags Zoya into the mess because she is a Dokovic as my father announced.
I am the one missing the royal blood the federation was desperately seeking to reestablish when they stole Zoya’s eggs.
My father didn’t lie when he said my mother fooled them all. She had them so convinced that I was a Dokovic, by the time my true birthright was exposed, the public had already fallen in love with the idea of me being their future president.
My family’s reign would have toppled if the secret ever got out, so the federation buried the evidence before putting in plays to eventually smooth out the kink my existence caused.
Aleena’s prime fertility record made her their first pick, but just like Stasy, her age went against her. She suffered numerous miscarriages before news of Zoya’s egg donation reached someone high up in the federation.
Aleena carried that surrogacy without incident.
Zakhar was stripped from her seconds after birth and given to his grandmother to raise. The parts between his birth and his introduction to my life were above Dr. Leverington’s pay grade.
I will get answers, but it will take time.
Time I don’t have if the raised voices outside the operating theater are anything to go by.
Law enforcement has arrived, and they don’t seem as willing to seek answers as Henry is.
“Bring them with us.”
When one of Henry’s goons approaches me, I shift the direction of my gun to his head. “Do not touch my son.”