Page 48 of Bratva Sacrifice

Now, I wish I had. “You were shouting,” I say, and I hear the uncertain squeak in my voice.

“You want I should shout at you instead?” he asks, and at least there’s the tiniest thread of amusement in his voice that relieves the strained pinch of my shoulders just a bit.

I shake my head. “I thought something was wrong,” I say, and my shoulders roll in a shrug.

“Something is wrong,” he says, and the palm of his right hand slaps the surface of the table. The sound makes me jump, makes my heart race. His fingers find the gun, and there’s a heavy, metallic slide as he pulls it off the table into his hand. The sound rasps across my nerves like a bow across the strings of a violin.

A shiver slips down my spine. I swipe my tongue across my suddenly-dry lips. “Alyosha…”

“These men,” he hisses near my ear, though it’s loud enough to be heard by everyone in the room, “they think I am stupid. Weak.”

“No,” one of them says in an odd, shrill yelp, jolting in his seat. “No, boss—”

“Shut your fucking mouth, Ivan!” Alexei roars, and even I flinch from it. Probably if his hand hadn’t been clutching the nape of my neck, I would have scrambled off his lap on sheer self-preservation instinct.

The silence that falls in the wake of his shout is intense, seething. Alexei continues, with a shrug, “They watch you,” he says simply. “The day you walk through my house naked. They watch you like it is their right to do this. Like they do not care if I see this.” His arm extends, effortlessly aiming the gun at the one he called Ivan. “They watch you with lust in their eyes, and they think this is no problem. They covet something that belongs to me, and they think I am too stupid to notice, too weak to protect what is mine.”

I’m shaking, suddenly, and I don’t know how to stop. There’s a knot in the pit of my stomach; a sour taste in my mouth. Goosebumps break out on my arms, and my throat works desperately. “Alyosha.” My voice is hoarse and dry. “Please.”

“This is not only disobedience, Katya,” he says, and his fingers knead the tense muscles of my neck. “This is contempt. There must be a punishment. A warning to all who think they can fuck with me, that I am so weak I would tolerate this.” The words settle over the room and the tension escalates as silence falls again. Alexei rubs his chin against the top of my head and heaves a sigh. His hand—and the gun—lower. “But I don’t want you to see this,” he says.

My breath shudders from my lungs on a heartfelt sigh. My shoulders wilt in abject relief.

“This is why I tell you to stay upstairs,” he says in a gritty growl. “Turn your head, koshechka.”

His hand leaves my neck, splays across the side of my face. His palm covers my ear; his fingers push my cheek, turning my head against his chest. My breath backs up into my lungs.

I hear, “No, no—!”

And then there’s the jarring report of a gunshot, muffled only by Alexei’s hand over my ear. I feel something warm and wet splatter across me. A shrill scream tears itself from my lungs, high and piercing. I shake violently, uncontrollably, as sobs collect in my throat.

The thud of a body hitting the floor makes me jerk. There are flecks of red all across my shirt, my arms, my legs. My stomach roils as I realize I’m covered in blood. A dead man’s blood. It’s on my face, in my hair.

There’s still one man left sitting at the table. He’s babbling frantically in Russian, and words I don’t understand fill my ears. Alexei snaps out something that makes him fall silent once again.

I don’t want to bear witness to another death tonight. I don’t want more blood on me. The coppery tang of it already fills my nose.

“Please.” It tastes sour as it travels up my bile-coated throat. It’s more a whimper than a word. My trembling fingers stretch out to touch Alexei’s arm, already lifted again. My nails bite into his forearm in desperation, struggling to gain his attention. “Please, don’t. Please.”

His arm is so steady, gun already aimed at its next target. The fingers of his left hand stroke my cheek, smearing the blood on my face. “Katya, this is not your fault,” he soothes. “This is a punishment he has earned.”

“You don’t have to kill him.” I hiccough, and a jagged sob slices my throat on its way up. “I don’t want you to kill him. Please.” Tears burn my eyes. Nausea churns my stomach.

For long, fraught moments, the only sound is my gasping breaths. And then, at last, Alexei sighs again. Slowly—so slowly, with a rueful shake of his head—he lowers the gun back to the table. “Remember this, Piotr,” he says. In English, for my benefit, I think. “You owe your pathetic fucking life to Catalina. If not for her, you would be dead already.”

Piotr begins to babble again in Russian, and I still don’t understand, but the tone is clear enough. Grateful; apologetic. Supplicating and sycophantic.

Alexei’s voice snaps out above it all. “She forgives,” he says sharply. “I do this, and you don’t learn from your mistake.” He gives a nonchalant shrug. “Maybe you make more mistakes. Maybe you mistake her softness for my weakness. I don’t kill you not because she asks me not to do this. Only because she will blame herself for your actions. Still, you must pay for them.”

I don’t know what he means. But Piotr does, and a vicious tremor shakes him. The relief falls away from his face as fear overtakes him. He pales considerably.

“So remember, Piotr,” Alexei says. “You don’t learn this lesson I endeavor to teach you? Next time, Catalina does not have to know.” He jerks his chin and addresses Anatoli. “Put him in the pit.”

Chapter Twenty Three

Alexei

Katya breathes in short little pants as Anatoli ushers a trembling Piotr out of the room at the point of his gun. The side of her face is smeared with Ivan’s blood. She cannot stop shivering. Her teeth chatter with it, like the night Anatoli drugged her.