Page 68 of Claimed By the Pakhan

“He would.”

“No, sweetheart, he would not, which is why you kept the information to yourself for an entire month. It was fun watching you, seeing the cogs turn in your head as you weighed up the pros and cons. Ultimately, you were afraid of your husband.”

“But you still planned to kill me.”

“Your love for him outweighed the fear. I knew you had made a decision to tell him.”

“Mind reader as well as a fucking traitor.”

“I don’t need to read minds,” says Luka, suddenly leaning forward. “These two little lines between your brows tell me all I need to know.” He ghosts his fingers over my face, my bones turning to ice.

I shake him off, rising from the table, the chair legs screeching on the floor as I get the fuck away from this psycho.

“You’re a brave woman, Fia, confronting me all alone without your husband around to protect you.” Luka arches a brow at me pointedly. “You may love your husband, but the fear will never disappear. Growing up in an abusive household taunts you that way. You either carry the fear through the rest of your life, or you become the monster.”

Hatred courses through my veins as I stare at the person I trusted more than Emil.

“We attract what we know,” taunts Luka. “I understand why you fell in love with him, considering the circumstances.” His lip twitches, another smirk cutting across his face like an open wound.

Cold, hard dread fills my stomach. He knows something I don’t.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Your relationship derived from abuse, Fia.”

“You’re lying.”

“You were snooping around the docks, close to exposing Emil’s Bratva. He had to take action. To prevent you from opening yourmouth, ruining everything for him, one of his men kidnapped you.”

A tear pricks my eye, but I refuse to let it fall.

“Emil kept you in his house. You were given two choices: drop the investigation and never speak about it again, or die.”

Dread fills my entire body, tightening my throat, rendering me speechless.

“You were trapped here in Emil’s house for five days, but you defied him as soon as you were released, digging deeper, searching for more answers. You came across cold case reports of people going missing, connecting puzzle pieces, discovering that Emil was not just a Bratva leader, but a serial killer, murdering innocents to prevent them from getting too close.” Luka’s black hole eyes gape, becoming wider.

I feel inclined to take his words with a pinch of salt, but all his points can be backed up by facts. I saw the nonchalant way Emil held that knife when I left the bathroom. He brushes off killing like most people would brush off a small mistake, continuing with their day, never looking back.

“You were different to Emil, which made no fucking sense to me,” continues Emil. “I advised him to kill you several times.”

“Fabulous.”

“Can you blame me, when you stuck your nose into our business multiple times? You were in our business the deepest. You analyzed shipping reports like they were pieces of literature, desperate to find the hidden meaning. Nobody had ever dug their nose into our business that much before and lived to tell the tale.”

Sounds like I really do have a thirst for answers, even if I pay the price with my life.

“Emil watched you at work, since you were always the last one to leave the office. He studied you the same, intense way you studied those reports, like you were a puzzle forhimto solve.” Luka shakes his head, scoffing. “It was really fucking weird, Fia, and so out of character for him.”

I keep staring at Luka, waiting for him to cut out the bullshit and help jog my memory already.

“You were his main priority, always taking precedence over Bratva operations. He would turn a blind eye to the docks, so I was always standing in for him, cleaning up after his mess, apologizing on his behalf.”

I squint, backtracking a few sentences. “Emil neglected his work at the Bratva to stalk me?” I narrow my eyes, remembering Chloe’s words, how I was apparently looking over my shoulder constantly, fearing for my life. “How long was he stalking me for?”

“A good few months,” says Luka. “The pattern of you running away, him stalking and bringing you back repeated several times until you became curious. You would stay at his place for a while, getting to know one another. Emil was interested in you, which is why he refused to kill you. He was infatuated, obsessed, and you started to become more a part of his business overtime. You discovered enemies. You realized that the Bratva network was more complex than you thought.”

“I knew about Alexander?”