Daughters of Victory


 
 
 
 Dedication
 For MeMommy and Poppy; Auntie Niki and Uncle Simon; Mama and Daddy: You encourage and inspire me, and I love you all so much. Always keep a spot of blue over your head.
 
 
 Contents
 Cover
 Title Page
 Dedication
 Part 1
 Chapter 1
 Svetlana
 Chapter 2
 Chapter 3
 Chapter 4
 Chapter 5
 Chapter 6
 Chapter 7
 Chapter 8
 Chapter 9
 Chapter 10
 Chapter 11
 Chapter 12
 Chapter 13
 Chapter 14
 Mila
 Chapter 15
 Chapter 16
 Chapter 17
 Chapter 18
 Chapter 19
 Chapter 20
 Chapter 21
 Chapter 22
 Chapter 23
 Chapter 24
 Part 2
 Svetlana
 Chapter 25
 Chapter 26
 Chapter 27
 Chapter 28
 Chapter 29
 Chapter 30
 Chapter 31
 Mila
 Chapter 32
 Chapter 33
 Chapter 34
 Chapter 35
 Chapter 36
 Chapter 37
 Chapter 38
 Chapter 39
 Chapter 40
 Chapter 41
 Part 3
 Svetlana
 Chapter 42
 Chapter 43
 Chapter 44
 Mila
 Chapter 45
 Chapter 46
 Chapter 47
 Chapter 48
 Chapter 49
 Chapter 50
 Chapter 51
 Acknowledgments
 P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
 About the Author
 About the Book
 Praise
 Also by Gabriella Saab
 Copyright
 About the Publisher
 
 
 Part 1
 A man’s eyes should be torn out if he can only see the past.
 —JOSEPH STALIN
 
 
 Chapter 1
 Moscow, 30 August 1918
 Svetlana
 All day, I watched, and I waited, consumed by one certainty: The fate of the revolution relied on me and the bullets inside my pistol.
 My grip on the gun remained steady, eyes trained on the crowd below, where the throngs gathered before the Mikhelson Armaments Factory in south Moscow, spilled across the street, seeped into the small square. A hot summer breeze drifted through the open attic window. Its efforts to ruffle my hair and skirt were futile, lost in a battle against the sweat plastering them to my skin. Neither the heat nor the filth deterred me; I had not spent hours hiding in this abandoned building on Pavlovskaya Street for my efforts to come to nothing.
 Salvaging the revolution was never a matter of questioning my own ability. How could it be, when my Browning and I never missed our target? It was a matter of waiting. Waiting for him.
 Stillness settled over the crowd; the same quiet found me inside this squalid attic. Perhaps the multitudes below sensed something monumental was coming. We were united, reverent silence tinged with anticipation—though I imagined our expectations vastly differed.
 He condemned democracy for favoring capitalists and the bourgeoisie; though such claims held truth, he had blinded the working people by promising to free them from a government that had suppressed them. Did they not see that his party, too, would enslave them beneath its oppression, as imperialism had? I saw it. Understood where it led. The people had already overthrown the tsar, and rightly so; now it was up to me to prevent a new dictatorship before it began.
 After he emerged from the factory, he stepped to the waiting podium and delivered his speech with a bravado that nearly made me shoot the bushy mustache and goatee from his face. Instead, as he concluded and a swell of commotion rose into the air, I suppressed the urge to act. Of all my self-appointed revolutionary missions, this was the most vital. Success would come, but not yet. Not until the proper time.
 What would my aristocratic father say if tomorrow’s headlines featured the name of the daughter he had likely spent over a decade trying to forget? Then a girl, now a woman defending every socialist belief he had tried to make her renounce.
 The seconds were purposeful and concentrated, like the barrel of my gun as it shifted centimeter by centimeter, following my target’s passage through the crowd, waiting for the best opening. For the proper time.
 At last, it arrived. And I fired.
 Three shots, each more accurate than the last, flowing from my gun as effortlessly as air from my lungs. One struck his coat, one his chest, one his neck. I was deaf to the screams of the crowd, immune to everything but the bright crimson pouring from the wounds and staining the pavement.
 Another sound pierced through the uproar, that of the door to my hideout banging open. I whirled while someone entered—someone familiar. Someone aiming a revolver at my head.
 It was the only thought I formulated before the crack split the air and the bullet struck.
 I had no time to return fire before a strange, burning sensation spread across my scalp. Blood poured down my face and into my eyes, blinding me until my vision went white. Perhaps the bullet had lodged in my skull, perhaps not—either way, there was no use fighting it. But as my knees gave way and my pistol slipped from my grasp, I sought the windowsill, the wall, anything to keep me on my feet a moment more. I wanted to listen to the screams below, to wipe the blood from my eyes and relish what I had caused. No one could steal this moment from me.
 Even my strongest desires were not enough to make my body comply. As I hit the floor, I lost all strength to rise. If the reason for this bullet was to prevent me from completing my task, it was too late. The screams of the crowd were proof; the bullet intended for me had not met its mark in time to stop me.
 If I were to die, it was for my cause. For the revolution. For Mother Russia.
 My blood surrounded me on this filthy attic floor—almost as filthy as the cell where I’d spent countless nights in the Siberian katorga—while I focused on the clamor drifting through the open window. The slick heat seeping from my scalp took all my energy with it; still, I strained my ears, waiting for someone to proclaim the news of the man’s death. But his followers idolized him too much to pronounce him dead as he was, lying in