On Keeping Up with the Kardashians last night, Kim Kardashian shared, for the first time, the full story of what happened during the Paris robbery last October. Kim was held at gunpoint and robbed of $10 million worth of jewels.

Kim explains that she had been resting in her hotel room while her sister Kourtney Kardashian and stylist Simone Harouche were still out partying. "What I think happened now after thinking about it so much is that there was probably a group of guys that were following us the entire trip," she said (via E! Online). "I was Snapchatting that I was home and that everyone was going to out, so I think they knew Pascal [Duvier, my bodyguard] was out with Kourtney and that I was there by myself."

"And I was laying in bed, like 'should I wash my face? I'm so tired. I'm in my robe, I need to get up, I need to wash my face' and then 10 minutes later, I was like dozing, dozing, and then I heard pounding up the stairs. I thought it was you and Stephanie [likely Sheppard, Kim's assistant] drunk," Kim said to Kourtney. "I'm calling to them like 'hello, hello, hello,' and there's no answer."

"And then at that moment, when there wasn't an answer, my heart started to get really tense…I knew something wasn't quite right. My door was open like this," Kim said motioning a slight opening with her hands, "and I saw two guys holding another guy down in police uniforms but right outside of my bedroom, five feet away. So I slid off my bed and picked up my phone and I'm like 'I don't know how to call 911 in a different country.' And so I like called Pascal and then the guy came and grabbed the phone from me, threw me on the bed, and I was like 'this is it.'"

Kim realized the guy that was being held down was the hotel concierge because he was handcuffed and holding the key to the room. "What I've heard from talking to [the concierge] afterward is they said, you know, 'Where's the rapper's wife? Let us up to her room!' in French. He ended up being our interpreter because I couldn't understand them, they couldn't understand me."

The men dragged Kim out to the hallway at the top of the stairs. She saw then that they were armed.

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"I was looking at the gun, looking down back at the stairs," she said. "I have a split second in my mind to make this quick decision. Am I going to run down the stairs and either be shot in the back—it makes me so upset to think about it—but either they're going to shoot me in the back or if I make it and they don't, if the elevator doesn't open in time or the stairs are locked, then I'm f*cked! There's no way out."

The men took her back inside the room. Kim pleaded with the concierge to ask them not to kill her. "I have babies. Please, they can't understand me, but tell them I have babies at home," she said. "Please, I have a family. Let me live!"

One of the men put duct tape on Kim's mouth. "And then, he grabs my legs and I wasn't, you know, I had no clothes on under [Kim had been in a robe]. He pulled me toward him at the front of the bed and I thought, 'Okay, this is the moment they're going to rape me,'" she said. "I fully mentally prepped myself—and then he didn't."

The man put tape around her legs too and held the gun up to her head. "I just knew that was the moment," Kim recalled. "They're just totally going to shoot me in the head. I just prayed that Kourtney's going to have a normal life after she sees my dead body on the bed."

That was the moment Kim believed she'd die. Her thoughts, she told her sisters on the show, were "I have a family. I have my kids, my husband, my mom—I'm not going to make it out of here. I know how these things go." They didn't shoot her. They picked her up, put her in the bathtub, and ran out with the jewelry.

Pascal got back minutes later and the family soon followed. After the robbery, the family flew back to the U.S. the next day. Kim would spend the next few months off of social media and out of the spotlight. She gradually returned.

The experience has strengthened her, she wrote on her Instagram after her testimony on KUWTK aired. "I took a tragic horrific experience and did not let it diminish me, rather grew and evolved and allowed the experience to teach me," she wrote. "I can say I've become so much better because of it....thank you for allowing me to share my story tonight."

Kim also posted a tribute the French paparazzi gave her:

From: ELLE US
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Alyssa Bailey
Senior News and Strategy Editor

Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she's not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.