Page 71 of Bratva Menace

I believed Lyla when she said it would be the last time leaving the house if I tried anything. I had a better chance of escaping when we were out in town than at the house. Timing was everything. Risking it all for a fleeting chance at escape wasn’t worth it. I had to bide my time and wait for the best opportunity.

“I was thinking, after you’re done, we could take a tour of the town? Show you what it has to offer? It might not seem like much, but it’s actually a really beautiful place.” Something changed in Lyla’s demeanor when she spoke of the town. It intrigued me.

“Do I have a choice?”

She frowned, placing her mug down onto the table. “Of course. I would never want to force you to do something you don’t want to do.”

“Really? Then let me go.”

“This again.” She sighed, rolling her eyes. “How many times do I have to tell you? You don’t want to go. Not really. You like being here with me. With someone who can see you for who you really are and let you be wholly and unequivocally you.”

I was getting a little fucking annoyed with how on point she was. Lyla seemed to know me better than I knew myself. She was right, I did like it.

“I can be that with my family.” Even as the words came out, I didn’t wholeheartedly believe them.

Lyla covered my hand with her own, ripping my gaze from my plate to her. “No, you can’t. Don’t you hate it? Having to always censor what you say? Hold yourself back? I know you love your family, but they don’t know you like I do. They don’t appreciate you like I do.”

It was all getting a little too real for me. If I had any hope of getting away from Lyla, I needed to flip the script. Switch it from me to her. Gaining her trust and then deceiving her was most likely my best option. Tricking her into a false sense of complacency and then running the first chance I got.

I cleared my throat and pulled my hand out from under hers. It left a small ache in my chest, which I actively chose to ignore.

“Why do you like this town so much?”

Her eyes lightened with joy. “I love small towns. The kind of towns where everybody knows everybody. The ones with history. Where it’s safe to walk down the streets at night. Leave your front door unlocked. Let your children play in the front yard without fear of something happening to them. A town where everyone looks out for each other and helps each other out. Where, every month, they hold quirky little town events and town meetings and stuff. I never had that growing up.”

“You said my father dropped you and your brother off at an orphanage?” I wasn’t all that surprised to hear that. Even in a blind rage, one where he was so consumed with vengeance, my father would never hurt a child.

The topic of conversation made me think of the one person in the world I tried my hardest not to think about. It caused too much pain.

I was so young when I lost my mother. Barely thirteen. I could only remember bits and pieces of her. Her smile. Warm and loving. How she would stroke my hair when I was lying in bed, sick as a dog. The beautiful, soft sound of her voice when she sang to me. Over time, I’d forgotten things. Memories of her became harder to visualize, like trying to grasp water in the ocean. Whenever it looked like it would finally gain purchase, it would slip right through my fingers.

But those things? Those were things I’d always remember.

“Yeah,” Lyla answered, running a finger loosely over the rim of her mug. “It was nice, as far as orphanages go. The staff were kind and caring, and didn’t try to pull any funny business, like I’ve heard happens at a lot of other ones.”

My father had a strict no harming children policy. We were all bastards, and could kill without a glimmer of guilt lingering in our veins, but children were to be protected. A lot of other criminal organizations couldn’t say the same. Those were ones we never worked with or supplied weapons to. If there was even a hint of child abuse or exploitation, my father blacklisted them. In some cases, he would even deal with them the way we dealt with all our enemies.

A slow and painful death.

“If I’m being honest, I actually preferred it over my own house.”

That surprised me enough for me to pause, lowering my forkful of cake back down.

“At least at the orphanage, I wasn’t getting beaten nearly every night.” She said it so casually, with a simple shrug of her shoulders, like it wasn’t a big deal.

“You parents beat you?”

“Just my dad.” She tore a piece of pirozhki off—a small, buttery pastry—and popped it into her mouth. “He had grand expectations for his only daughter, and when I fell short of them, he punished me. He wanted an obedient child who would be happy to live the life he curated specifically for them, regardless if they wanted it or not. He wanted me to act a certain way. Be someone I wasn’t. To do what he said when he said it, without commentary. Without hesitation. But fuck, I definitely had something to say about it. I’m not exactly the type to keep my mouth shut. I say it like it is, and he hated that. He’d beat me in places no one could see because of it.”

“Bet you’re glad my father killed him,” I mumbled under my breath, then stiffened. Shit. “Fuck, sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. It just slipped out⁠—”

Lyla burst out laughing. It stunned me into silence. Okay, not exactly the reaction I was expecting.

“Yes, actually,” she admitted freely, and it stunned the shit out of me.

Again.

Lyla just continued to surprise and surprise me. The way she was so unapologetically herself, regardless of how it might have made her look. It was refreshing, to say the least.