It’s gone as quickly as it came.
Leander’s voice booms beside me. “Sasha, meet my daughter, Ariel. Your fiancée.”
Fiancée. It’s just a word, theoretically speaking. In reality, it’s a guillotine blade hurtling toward my throat.
Run, screams every survival instinct I’ve honed since childhood. But my feet are rooted to the marble floor, my lungs refusing to cooperate. The room wobbles. Memories crash over me in waves.
Twelve years old, hiding in a closet while Baba’s enemies ransacked our apartment, their laughter sharp as gunfire.
Seventeen, stuffing my birth certificate into a backpack, stealing cash from his safe, slipping out the fire escape while he roared my name downstairs.
Twenty-two, scrubbing fake IDs until “Ariana Makris” was buried under layers of ink, becoming Ariel Ward—a
