She ran to her father as the front door splintered and cracked around the lock and swung open. Four or five men dressed in black from head to toe stormed in, along with rifles and curses and a blast of snow and frigid air.
“What are you— Papa!”
She never reached him. One of the men grabbed her around the neck and shoved her back into the kitchen. “Stay back!”
Tasiya twisted to see around the man blocking the archway with his gun. Though her father struggled, Anton was no match for the three men who dragged him outside into the snow. “Papa!”
Not waiting to ask questions, Tasiya pulled the lid from the coffeepot, grabbed the handle and whirled around to sling the steaming liquid into the man’s face. Even with a stocking mask on, the scalding coffee did the trick. He screamed in pain, lifted his hands to his face.
She scooted past him and dashed out the door in her slippered feet. “Where are you taking him? Papa!”
She leaped down the front steps and saw to her horror they weren’t taking Anton anywhere. Instead, two of the men pushed her father down onto his knees in the middle of the street. The third man pulled a gun from his belt and placed the barrel against her father’s forehead.
“No! Don’t!”
Tasiya ran straight into the nightmarish scene. Snowflakes bit into her cheeks, and cold soaked into her feet. She shoved the gun aside and hugged her father’s head to her breast.
“Don’t hurt him!”
“Tasiya, no—”
“What do they want?”
“Isn’t this a pretty picture?”
Tasiya recognized that voice. Smooth and arrogant, used to having its own way. She spun around as the fifth man approached, not dressed in black like the others, but wearing a finely cut suit and expensive wool coat. Keeping her hands on her father’s shoulders, she stared at the familiar face in shock. But she didn’t for one minute think this man would help.
“Minister Mostek.” Her employer. Her father’s supervisor. The man with the beautiful wife and three children and roving eye. “Why are you doing this?” she demanded. “What do you want?”
“Justice.” He trailed the tip of one leather-gloved finger along her jaw and Tasiya flinched. His smile never reached those cold, beady eyes. “Your father has stolen from me.”
“It was so little,” Anton protested. “I only took enough—”
With a nod from Mostek, one of the so-called soldiers of the kingdom rammed the butt of his gun into her father’s temple. Tasiya sank to her knees as he fell, cradling his bleeding head in her arms.
“Your bonus,” she murmured. Not a reward for a job well done. But funds stolen from the coffers of men who would terrorize their own country in the name of order and line their own pockets while citizens starved. “Let him go,” Tasiya pleaded, looking up at Mostek. “He’s an old man. He’s no threat to you. He was only trying to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. You cannot punish a man for trying to survive.”
Dimitri Mostek cared so little for her father’s plight that he’d pulled a tiny cell phone from his pocket and placed a call. “We have him,” he reported, his greedy eyes dropping to the beaded tips of her breasts, made rigid by the wintry air seeping through her blouse. “We will execute him and set an example for others like him who would put themselves before our cause.”
Execute?
“No!” Tasiya bolted to her feet, not knowing where to place herself with three guns all aimed at her father. “Minister…Dimitri…please.”
His black eyes glistened as she used his given name. He’d asked her to do that before. In the pantry one morning where he’d trapped her unloading groceries. In his son’s bedroom when she’d been changing the sheets. One time he’d held on to her paycheck until she’d said his name. Each time she’d reminded him she was there to work, to perform menial tasks for his family, nothing more. But to save her father…
“Take me instead.” Bold words for a woman of no value.
“Tasiya, no.” Her father’s weak voice whispered from the ground at her feet.
Mostek held up his hand. The guns lowered. “You would be killed in your father’s place?”
The man she’d burned inside the apartment came charging down the steps. “You bitch!”
Tasiya whirled around and gasped at the raised hand swinging toward her face.
“No!” Mostek grabbed the man by the collar and shoved him into a snowbank. “Stand down.”
“But she—”
“I said no.” Mostek’s deep, articulate order silenced the man. “No one touches her but me.”
The man in the snow, nursing his scalded cheek and humilated pride, had shed his stocking cap. But it wasn’t enough damage to keep Tasiya from recognizing the chief of security in Mostek’s office. Her heart raced at the discovery. She glanced all around her. Did she know all these masked men?
Dimitri shrugged, straightened his coat and faced her with a smile that oozed a repugnant brand of charm. “So, Anastasiya. You would sacrifice yourself for your father?”
He seemed to doubt her loyalty to the only family she’d ever known, the only person she’d ever loved. “If it will spare his life.”
Tasiya’s deep breaths clouded the air around her as she waited for a response. She lowered her eyes, sensing Mostek’s traditional beliefs that a woman shouldn’t be allowed to address anyone, especially a man, above her station.
“Such a waste of beauty.” She detected the same lustful hunger that had repulsed her when he’d offered to set her up as his mistress that day in the pantry.
“Yes. I’m here.” Mostek’s voice sharpened. He was talking into the phone now, though she could feel his gaze on her. “Anton’s daughter has offered herself to me as a gift in exchange for his life. I would like to accept.”
“No.” Anton tugged at her skirt. He wavered as he pulled himself to a sitting position and clung to her arm. “She cooks and cleans for you, but she will not be your whore.”
Mostek flicked his hand and the guns went up again. “Then you will die.”
“Papa…”
Mostek spun away, arguing with the man on the phone. “I have been your loyal servant, carried out every secret…”
“These are very dangerous people, Tasiya.” Anton reached for her hand. “I knew the risks when I embezzled their money.”
She knelt beside him. “But the punishment does not fit the crime.”
“These are terrorists, my love. They do not care who they hurt, only that their cause endures and is triumphant.”
“And what is their cause?” A long-suppressed anger blended with her fear. “Who benefits from their so-called patriotism?”
“Do not question them.”
Tasiya cupped her father’s swollen face between her hands. She unbuttoned the cuff of her white cotton blouse and dabbed at the blood collecting in his eye. “You are a good man who has been loyal to king and country as long as I have known you. And how do they repay you? With threats and violence.” She blinked back the tears that stung her own eyes. “You are all I have in this world. I will not let them hurt you.”
“Tasiya—”
“It is done.” Mostek stuffed his phone into his pocket as he hooked his hand beneath her elbow and pulled her to her feet. Away from her father. “The arrangements have been made.”
“What