Sweet Satisfaction (Purple UGC Winner 2014)

Sweet Satisfaction - Prologue

Prologue

June, 1896

Moscow, Russia

Faster, faster, Natalya urged herself. Every bone in her body was aching with tiredness, but she would not stop now. She had raced all along the River Moskva and past the Khodynka Field where so many people had died in a stampede last month at the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II.

Natalya untangled her curly brown hair from her face. The heels on her black lace-up boots added tension with every thud they made on the shiny floorboards. Everything was splitting, like unstitching a quilt, inside her.

Her father was propped up against a single wooden chair. Her mother was slumped, in his arms, the blood dried on her face that expressed the uttermost pain. Propped up? Natalya questioned herself. That meant dead or unconscious.

Faster than possible, she ran across the empty white room and seized her father's wrist, squeezing desperately. She tried not to scream, as the truth sunk in. No pulse. Her parents were really dead.

Natalya stared, frozen in time. Then, she summoned all her anger, the cruellest, bitterest hate she had ever possessed. Her fingers turned into claws, which were willing to scratch the life out of the man standing in front of her.

She looked up, murderous black eyes filling with shock. The man dropped the heavy gun he was holding. The noise echoed around the room. He wiped his blood-stained hands on his cotton trousers.

His eyes fixed into a long stare with Natalya's. His mouth was unable to form any words, but the resemblance between the man and wife and Natalya was clear.

Natalya clutched her stomach, feeling sick. Then, she threw herself at her parent's murderer, screeching, a hawk, punching, scratching, sobbing, in a wild fit.

Nothing had ever felt as twisted as this. Her teeth clamped together, her tongue tasting blood in her mouth. She was craving, hungry, for answers.

She was beautifully poisonous, and betrayed.