Page 52 of The Bratva’s Captive Flame

I head to my armory that only four men have the code to, and after tonight, I'm thinking three is too many. I can count on two fingers the men I trust—myself and my right hand. I key the code in and the lock releases, but when I step inside, Mishka's already there, sitting on the bench with a rag and his sidearm field-stripped in front of him, cleaning it anxiously.

"Couldn't sleep either?" he asks, not looking up.

"No." I cross to the far rack and start pulling what I need, clips first, then the spare rounds, stacking them on the bench beside his pistol. "I just got off with Sebastian. He's given me his blessing to handle it however I see fit, which means I'm gonna need you in this with me."

Knowing he has my back makes this easier. If I were entirely alone, I might be tempted to purge every motherfucker who ever set foot on my property.

"However you see fit." Mishka finally looks up at me, and there's a grim understanding in his face. He's been with me long enough to know what those words mean coming from our Pakhan. "All of them?"

"Every man who had the access. There's no other way, Brother." I thumb rounds into a clip, one after another. Just having something distracting to do with my hands keeps my mind from going to places too dark to come back from. "It'll be the two of us running it together."

I sense him tensing. "And the new guy?" When he pauses his work and looks up at me, I realize he's questioning Sergei too. The problem is the hits and the betrayal started before Sergei came here.

"We vet him too…" Nothing in my life has prepared me for this. Doubting my own men has never been a thing that crossed my mind.

Mishka grunts and goes back to reassembling his weapon, sliding the parts together. "And if it turns out to be Sergei or he's involved?"

It needles at my conscience because that thought shouldn't be crossing my mind, but how can I not question it? He let someone walk right into my property and plant a bomb in my SUV. If he's not the leader, there's still a chance he's following someone within my ranks who pulled him aside before he remembered he's supposed to be loyal to me.

"Then I'll deal with Sergei." I have to stay objective and keep my emotions out of this. "But I'm not going to decide a man's guilty because I'm angry. We find the proof first, and then we act on it, and not the other way around."

He nods at that, and we work in silence for a while, loading weapons. After a while of the monotonous rhythm, I begin to relax. Time has a way of helping the steam dissipate and I find myself thinking about things besides this situation. My mind drifts and it lands on her.

Underneath all of it, beneath the bomb and the leak and the whole rotten mess of the family tree I'm about to set fire to, the thing that's actually driving me is a woman asleep in my bed. Somewhere tonight, a man I trusted tried to kill me. If they'd taken me, they'd have come for her next. There's no doubt in my mind. And the thought of what Solano's men would do to Octavio Cruz's daughter to make a point puts a cold weight in my chest.

I have spent weeks pretending that I didn't need or want her, that she's nothing more than an asset or leverage, and worst of all, that she's a complication. All of it has been a coward's way of not saying the simple truth, that somewhere between pulling her out of that crate and watching her wash my blood away, she became the one thing in this world I'm not willing to lose.

And when this is finished, when the snakes are burned out of my house and there's nothing left to threaten her, I'm going to make her my wife. Because I want her to wear my last name so proudly, no man on earth would dare think of touching her.

It's confirmation enough that I love her.

"Let's go find our traitor," I tell Mishka, and he stands. When his weapons are holstered, we head for the door. We have snakes to root out and predators to kill. And we have to do it before they threaten the woman I love any further.

27

ISABELA

It's late and I've given up on sleep. Demin hasn't come to bed and I've been tossing and turning for at least an hour. After what happened earlier today with the bomb in his SUV, I know I'll never sleep unless he's lying next to me and I can feel his heart beating. So I get up to go find him. Someday, I'll settle into this nonsense of him staying up late and worrying the hell out of me, but for now, I just need to feel him in bed next to me.

Mishka isn't by his door, nor is Bart, so when I slip out, I shut it behind me and creep into the darkness. Usually, when Demin stays up late, it's because he has men in his office meeting with them or he's out doing something violent. Tonight, the house is quiet, but I know he's home. I can see his replacement SUV on the driveway.

But as I round the corner toward his study, a door I've walked past a hundred times swings open, and before I understand what's happening, a hand has closed around my arm and dragged me half off my feet into the blackness of an empty room. The grip crushes my arm, and when I drag in a breath to scream, a second hand seals over my mouth. Then Sergei's voice settles against my ear, dusting my cheek in heat.

"Don't." He's quiet and it's terrifying. "Not a sound. You scream and I'll snap your neck right here and carry you out over my shoulder. Trust me, you don't want that."

I bite him hard and get a good chunk of skin between my teeth. I taste the blood erupt onto my tongue and a bit of his flesh come loose into my mouth, but he doesn't so much as flinch. He holds me there with an iron grip until I'm suffocating, his thumb and forefinger pinching my nose shut. I thrash and kick, moaning and groaning as loudly as I can, but it isn't long before the fight drains out of me and my own jaw gives up before his hand does.

"There it is," he murmurs, trying to calm me down. "Now we're going to walk out the side door together, nice and easy, like a man escorting a lady to see her father. Anyone asks, that's where we're going. Do you understand me?"

"Fuck you… I'm not going anywhere with⁠—"

I never get to finish the sentence because his hand wraps around my throat and squeezes hard. It feels like he's crushing my windpipe, making it impossible to make a sound or even breathe.

"You fucking do what I say or I kill you, slut. Do you understand?" Sergei isn't messing around. He really will kill me, and now my body thrums with adrenaline and I can't stop shaking. "Now walk."

He keeps one hand locked on my arm and the other at the back of my neck as he forces me into the dim hallway. It's so quiet if I scream, I know someone will hear me, but I fear the immediate response he'll give more than the inevitable end he has in mind for me. So I remain quiet.

He takes me out a service door I've never used, across a yard of gravel that cuts into my bare feet. There's a car waiting against the far wall with the engine running and no driver in it. The whole way across that gravel, I keep waiting for someone to step out and stop this—a guard on a smoke break, Danya at a window—anyone. But with every step that no one comes, the truth of what's happening sinks in deeper.