Page 97 of Bratva Baby

The world locks instead of tilting and I have to take a moment to stabilize myself. “You killed my father.”

Maks has the audacity to chuckle. “He had a weak heart.”

“Don’t.”

“Fine.” Maks steps closer and drops his voice, though there’s no softness in it. “He was given something that made a weak heart look like the answer. No public mess. My father mourned because he’s a sentimental old fool who can’t see beyond family ties, you cried—but you were young. It didn’t matter. After a while, the house kept moving.”

For a second, I can’t breathe.

I see my father at the dining table, tired eyes on the papers beside his plate. I see him pressing a gun into my hand. I hear him telling me to run if the numbers ever got ahead of the house. He knew. He knew enough to prepare me, and I hated him for it because I thought fear had eaten too much of his life.

It had been a countdown.

“You bastard,” I say, and my voice shakes.

Maks tilts his head. “I’ll take that.”

I move before he expects it and slap him hard enough to turn his face.

One of his men steps forward, but Maks lifts a hand and stops him. Slowly, he turns back to me. A red mark grows across his cheek. “That was stupid.”

“It felt earned.”

His eyes go dead. “You are still his daughter. Always confusing courage with timing.”

“I learned timing from him. Courage came later.”

He lunges.

I see it half a second before he reaches me. His hand shoots for my throat, and I twist back, but he catches the front of Anton’s coat and yanks hard. The folder falls between us. My shoulder hits the side of the repair shed, and pain flashes down my arm as he crowds in, one gloved hand locking around the scarf at my neck.

The drive.

My body reacts before thought. I grab his wrist with both hands and drive my knee up. He shifts enough that I catch his thigh instead of where I aimed, but he grunts and loosens his grip for one second. I use it to shove at his chest and turn my body sideways, keeping the scarf pinned under my hand.

“Careful,” I snap. “You tear that, and you lose what you came for.”

He freezes.

I breathe hard through my nose, my back against the shed, his hand still gripping my coat. His face is inches from mine now, beautiful in the worst way, full of rage he hasn’t decided how to spend.

“You didn’t bring it,” he says.

“Then why are you scared to rip the scarf off?”

His eyes drop to my throat.

Too late, I realize I gave him something real to look at.

His hand moves, even as I pull out my phone as fast as possible and quickly dial the number from before. I let it ring for one second before Maks snatches the device and tosses it away and moves to swipe at me with his hand.

I slap it away and go for the gun at my back, but he catches my wrist and slams it against the shed hard enough to send numbness into my fingers. The gun stays tucked, barely. His other hand comes up fast.

Then his phone rings, loudly enough that the sound cuts through the yard. Maks stops so abruptly, I hear his breath.

The men near the gate turn as the phone rings again.

His eyes stay on mine as he reaches into his coat and pulls it out. For the first time since I walked through the gate, his face changes in a way he can’t hide.