Page 17 of Bratva's Mercy
I turned onto the highway leading toward my neighborhood and checked the rearview mirror out of habit. The empty road stretched out behind me.
No black truck.
No tingling feeling down my spine.
No Sergei.
My fingers tightened slightly on the steering wheel, and I narrowed my burning eyes to focus on the road ahead. It had been almost a week since I’d last seen him. If I’d known slapping him was all it would take for him to leave me alone, I would have slapped the hell out of him weeks ago.
His presence had hovered around my life like a shadow—outside the coffee shop, across the street from my house, appearing in hospital corridors with those ridiculous deliveries of coffee and food I never asked for. The nurses had a field day accepting those deliveries on my behalf, but every day I scanned around me and didn’t see him watching me, the stranger it felt.
I checked the side mirror again—nothing. Had he finally decided I wasn’t worth the trouble, or had he simply gotten better at hiding?
The thought made me exhale slowly. His presence had been intrusive. Infuriating. And yet…it had also become routine, like the rhythm of hospital life, and tonight the silence felt off.
I yawned hard. My jaw cracked as I blinked rapidly and shifted in my seat, rolling my shoulders to wake myself up. The road ahead curved gently, the headlights stretching across the dark asphalt.
Another yawn followed. My eyelids felt heavier than they should have.
Just a few more minutes.
My head dipped once.
I jerked upright immediately, heart jumping into my throat as the car drifted slightly toward the shoulder.
“Jesus,” I muttered, gripping the wheel tighter.
Cold air.
I needed cold air.
I rolled the window down an inch, letting the night wind rush inside. The guardrail flashed past in my peripheralvision, and my vision blurred for a split second. The tires hit a bad patch in the road, and the steering wheel wrenched violently in my hands. My foot slammed on the brake, but the car was already sliding sideways toward the barrier.
The impact came with a deafening metallic scream, and glass exploded. The world tilted violently as the car struck the guardrail, metal grinding against asphalt before the vehicle slammed to a brutal stop.
A high-pitched ringing sound filled my ears as the airbag deployed. For several seconds, I couldn’t move. The car had landed with the driver’s door crushed partially against the guardrail. My chest burned where the seatbelt had caught me, and my left arm was pinned awkwardly against the door.
I tried to breathe, but air came out in a shaky gasp. Blood trickled, warm against my temple, as my vision swam in and out of focus.
How long have I been here?
“Leo!”
The voice was distant at first, muffled through twisted metal and shattered glass. The ringing in my ears grew louder.
“Leo!”
Footsteps echoed on asphalt, and the door rattled violently.
“Leo, can you hear me?”
Sergei.
A laugh bubbled up from me, and tears filled my eyes because why the fuck not? Of all the people who could have appeared at this exact moment, of course it had to be the one man I despised most in this world.
Second only to Maxim Morozov.
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