Page 14 of Bratva and Betrayal: Kirill

I took Sandrine’s virginity. And she might as well have taken mine. Before her, I was only interested in violence and power and the occasional blow job in my club. I had a quick fling with Tamara, but that was a mistake.

Then I met Sandrine, and I knew. I knew the moment I saw her. She was it for me.

The man in the distance says something, and Sandrine turns toward him, giving him her full attention. Her body opens in a way that sends a sharp, immediate spike of heat through my veins when she answers him.

She’s speaking to another man.

I see it in the movement of her lips, in the slight lift of her brows, and then, he makes her laugh. It’s soft and brief. But it’s enough to snap every nerve in my body.

Oh, this motherfucker is going to die.

My hand curls into a fist so hard my knuckles ache. For a second, I consider just crossing the courtyard and gunning him down right here in broad daylight. The vision of him dead is brutally satisfying.

“I hear your molars grinding. You want that man gone, don’t you?” Drago asks, as if he can read my violent mind.

“Yes, but not yet.” I struggle to keep calm.

Sandrine, the brunette, and the dead man move toward an outdoor seating area beside an ice cream parlor. I follow at a distance and stare at the absurd normalcy of Sandrine stepping up to the counter. She points to something on the menu. The server says something back because Sandrine nods that big grin of hers, and I’m ready to crumble to my knees.

The server hands over cups of overflowing ice cream topped with sprinkles. That’s what made her giddy. Red sprinkles. She loves them. I used to drive for hours looking for them when she was…

That memory makes me sick.

The trio take their cups and move to a set of tables beneath wide umbrellas that cast patches of shade across the bricks. Sandrine and the brunette sit on one side, and the man sits on the other. I see the last of her hesitation burn away. Sandrine isn’t struggling. She isn’t searching. She isn’t trying to come back.

She’s comfortable here.

Without me.

Without us.

She’s happy enough to laugh with another man in the sun while I spent five years tearing cities apart looking for her.

“Kirill.” Drago looks up from his phone. “The rehab where this Jessica is registered treats patients for mental disabilities.”

Marlowe Rehab. The sign catches my attention again.

For a fraction of a second, empathy threatens to soften me. To listen. To understand. To find out what happened to her.

Fuck that.

This is no time to be soft. Regardless of why she ended up here, she left me five years ago.

But why did she leave?

Was she struggling mentally even back then? Suffering in ways she didn’t trust me to handle?

Or does she know I’m close? Did the sheer terror of what I would do if I found her make her snap and need psychiatric care?

“Even if she’s here for some kind of mental treatment or anxiety, she knew, Drago,” I say, my jaw aching. “She knew where I was. All this time.”

The Bratva doesn’t hide.

Drago doesn’t answer, doesn’t guess at innocent reasons why Sandrine is in a mental facility. There’s no argument to make, even as I grasp for a reason to forgive what she did. The harsh reality locks into place with a clean, brutal finality.

Her father hid her, and she let him. He gave her a new name, and she took it. She used it, and she stayed away.

On purpose.