Page 62 of The Bratva’s Monster

I just realized that I’m clasping my hands tight in my lap. “You’re not going to do that, are you?”

He shakes his head.

“What will he do when you tell him that you’re disobeying him?”

He pauses, then pulls up the chair in the corner of the room and sits in front of me. “Before me, there were two main enforcers working under my father,” he says. “One of them I got to know when I was about twelve years old. My father saw the potential for me to get into that part of the family business, so one day, he sent me away with him for the weekend to do some target shooting. To this farmhouse somewhere upstate.”

My mouth has gone dry and I’m closing my hands tight to keep them from shaking, but I’m listening as he tells this story without looking at me. His eyes are on his own hands.

“While we were up at his place,” he continues, “this woman comes to see him. He never introduced me to her, but it was pretty clear that this chick was his girlfriend. He spent about half of that weekend fucking her in various places around the farmhouse.”

He smiles a little, his eyes fixed on some far away memory. “For me, this was a primetime event. I was twelve and bursting with hormones. And I won’t lie to you. Uncle’s girl was pretty hot. So, you can imagine hearing my father’s enforcer give it to some big titty woman in different parts of the farmhouse while I was supposed to be there to learn… Yeah, it was a big deal. I couldn’t wait to get home and tell Alex all about it. Which I did at the first opportunity.”

He pauses and his smile drops. “Alex was more clued into some of the things that were going on around the Bratva since Dad wanted him to follow in his footsteps. When I told my big brother about the big-tit blonde, thinking that it was some dirty secret that should be shared between brothers, he told Dad about it. I was so pissed at him at the time.” He rubs his beard thoughtfully as he pauses. Then he clears his throat and moves on.

“What I found out later was that the blonde was working for the opposition. My father had suspected that something was going on with the enforcer and her and he’d told him to take care of her while we were upstate. He didn’t. At least not how Dad wanted him to.”

I don’t want to ask, but I have to. In the softest voice, I ask him, “What happened to him when he found out?”

“The next week, the cops were finding pieces of him all over Manhattan,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone. “He was one of my father’s closest friends. They came up together under the last Pakhan’s reign. But when he disobeyed my father’s direct order, he had to do what he had to do.”

“He… he didn’t have to kill him.” My voice sounds like I’m being shaken by the shoulders. “Rikki, if he was his friend⁠—”

“Trust no one. That’s the first thing you learn when you become Bratva. Not even your brothers, blood or otherwise. I disobey my brother, I’m proving to him that I cannot be trusted by our own bylaws.”

I nod as the nausea starts to rise again. “He’ll kill you.”

“Yeah. He’s got to, Liz.” He takes a deep breath and sits up. “But that’s why I have to convince him that he’s wrong. It’s the only way we have a chance of getting out of this with our heads, Liz.”

I can’t speak. No words come into my mind to respond with. I’m looking at Alex, sitting there shirtless except for a bloody towel wrapped around his waist, a dozen old scars under the tattoos on his chest. He understands everything that’s at stake and I suspect he always has. He’s a warrior. The family monster. He has no fear about what might come next.

I wish I could say the same.

“You have to stay here where no one knows where you are in the meantime,” he says. “Between Alex and Stefan, I don’t want either of them near you.”

The nausea is starting to subside a little as I look down at my hands. “Okay,” I say softly. “So, what’s next?”

He sighs. “Tomorrow, we’re going to go over everything you need to know to keep yourself safe in my absence. Once we’ve got that down, I’m going to talk to Alex. I’m not going to lie, he’s probably going to be hostile when he sees me. But I’ve got to try.”

He goes to pull away from me and I hold his hands tight. “If it looks too dangerous, pull out. Just… run. Come back here, and we’ll both get out of town.”

He looks away from me and pulls his hands out of my grip. “Get some rest, Liz. We’re going to start early tomorrow.”

“Rikki—”

“This isn’t a debate,” he growls, his eyes verdant with warning. “If you want to get through this, you need to do what I say, when I say it.”

All I can do is nod. He pushes the chair back in the corner and turns it to face the door, and I slide back in bed and lie down.

The last thing that I see before I doze off is him watching the door, gun in his lap.

25

LIZ

Just as he promised, this morning, he spent time showing me how to shoot. We don’t have the luxury of going out to some farmhouse the way I did when I was younger, but he’s giving me the basics.

We’re facing the door and he stands behind me, his hands at his side. His body heat warms my back, the back of my neck, and the top of my head as he towers over me. The gun in my hands is empty. Before he gave it to me, he told me to always treat it like it’s not, so I’ve been holding it so it points toward the floor.