“Goodbye, my dear,” her father whispered to her mother. Then the men moved him to the courtyard wall.
Mama had been stoic until then, but now a whimper escaped her mouth.
Nadia rushed forward and threw herself before the Chekist’s feet. Her knees hit the ground with a painful jolt. “Please, your grace, please have mercy. My father is old, and he has already lost both his sons. Exile us. Don’t kill us. Please.”
The agent spoke to one of his men. “The exquisite daughter of a baron, prostrate before me, calling me
While Nadia continued to beg, the agents straightened their line and drew their revolvers.
“Aim.” The men pointed their weapons at Nadia’s father.
“Fire.”
The cracks echoed around the courtyard, and the acrid smell of cordite assaulted Nadia’s nostrils. Through tears, she saw Papa fall to the ground. It had been difficult to lose her brothers, but this . . . To witness the moment of death brought the grief to an entirely new level of agony.
Her mother and aunt sobbed.
Nadia was still at the agent’s feet. Papa hadn’t deserved execution, but he had served the tsar. Maybe his death would be enough to assuage the Cheka’s bloodlust. “Please, spare my mother and my aunt. They never worked for the tsar. They’re no danger to your revolution.” She choked back her tears so they wouldn’t muddle her voice.
The man looked through his orders again.
“The entire family is to die.” The agent with dark hair and a lantern jaw wasn’t the man in charge, but his statement sounded like an order. Would he convince his superior to kill the rest of them?
“Please have mercy,” Nadia pleaded. “We’ll leave Russia and never return.”
The leader met her eyes for a moment. “I suppose it’s not really their fault that they were raised in luxury. They’re more ornaments than tools of oppression.”
The other agent snorted. “Anyone with either a brain or a heart should have seen that it was wrong to dance in jewels at the Winter Palace, feasting on caviar and champagne, while those around them wore rags and starved. Besides, even in exile, they might sour opinion against us.”
“You care what the capitalist pigs think?” The agent shoved the orders into his pocket.
“No. But the revolution is new, still vulnerable to economic or diplomatic sanctions.”
Nadia sensed the man in charge was wavering but leaning toward cruelty. “We’ll take a vow of silence if you’ll just let us go.”
The second agent huffed. “You’d trust them?”
The man in charge made a motion with his hands. First Nadia’s mother and then her aunt were dragged to the wall and shot, leaving gaping holes in Nadia’s soul.
She stopped begging after her aunt was shot. It obviously would do no good. One of the agents hauled her to her feet and pushed her toward the wall. She couldn’t obscure her emotions as well as her parents had, but she gritted her teeth and straightened her spine, trying to summon a modicum of courage with which to greet the bullets.
“Wait.” That was the second man again, the one who had argued against mercy.
“Have you something to say, Comrade Kuznetsov?” the lead agent asked.
“A request.”
Nadia pulled at the sash binding her wrists while the Bolsheviks spoke. One tug loosened the tie, and then she pulled a wrist free.
She still hoped she would wake up and realize it was all a horrible nightmare. They were going to escape to Paris. They weren’t supposed to be executed in her aunt’s courtyard. But the wind cut into her face, and the murmur of men’s voices pierced her ears, and the smell of gunpowder bit her nose. This was real. How could this have happened? Her parents and her aunt, dead, shot like traitors or criminals. There were no three people she cared for more than those three lying dead in the courtyard.
Maybe . . . Could any of them still be alive? She went to her knees and crawled toward them. Her father was clearly dead, but her mother or her aunt? No. Neither of their chests moved. The only movement came from the Cheka agents.
She would be next. Would it hurt? The physical pain couldn’t be any worse than the crushing grief she already felt. Time was short. Soon they would stand her up and aim their pistols at her. She would try to die bravely, like Papa. She would show these miserable Bolsheviks what noble blood could bear. But first, she would pay her respects to the bodies.
She closed her father’s eyes, ignoring the ghastly wound to his face. “I’m sorry, Papa. Be waiting for me, please? And have Alexander and Nikolai come see me, won’t you? It will be like before the war—we’ll all be together.”
Mama’s face was unmarred. Nadia pulled her mother’s eyelids down and straightened her arms across her chest. “Poor Mama. You are still beautiful, even in death.” Nadia kissed her mother’s forehead. “I will see you again soon.”