Page 96 of The Bratva Betrayal

I don’t cry or flinch as I watch the satisfaction curdle when he realizes he still hasn’t broken me.

I stand straight to meet his drunken, lust-filled state through the sting and the throbbing settling into my cheekbone and eye socket. I know what it will look like tomorrow.

A masterpiece of purple and black.

A public mark.

“You see?” Misha pants, his rhythm becoming frantic, nearing his end. Lena chants something, a broken stream of, “Yes, yes, yes!” He grins, a savage, triumphant smile. “This is the reality you live in now. My reality. You don’t get to opt out.”

After a final, brutal thrust, he stills, burying himself deep inside her as he comes, and a low groan tears from his chest. He holds there for a moment, both of them trembling, before he pulls out.

He lets Lena slide to the floor in a satisfied heap of limbs and rumpled silk.

He tucks himself away, steps over the brunette like she’s something he’s already forgotten, and crosses toward me.

He stops close enough that I can smell everything on him — liquor, perfume, and the sour edge of contempt.

His thumb presses gently against my cheekbone.

I hold firm. Not because I’m not repulsed, but because pulling away is the last thing I’m going to give this prick.

“That’s going to bruise beautifully.” And the admiration in his voice is suddenly the most disgusting thing about this night. “Tomorrow, when people ask, you’ll tell them you walked into a door.” His thumb presses harder, and I remain still. “And you’ll smile when you say it. Because you’re going to marry me, Cady. This is your yes.”

He drops his hand and steps back.

“Clean this up,” he demands.

Then he turns and they both walk out while I stand in the quiet of my kitchen, one hand gripping the countertop.

The eye will be bad by morning; I can tell by the way it’s throbbing.

I think about who’s going to see it.

I think about Artem.

I think about the “wrong brother” comments, the storage closet, and the way he looked at me.

I press two fingers gently to my cheekbone and feel the heat underneath.

Tomorrow, I decide, will be a very different kind of day.

If I know anything, it’s that my brothers are going to kill Misha Makarov for this.

For me.

22

Cady

The shower helps.

Not with the eye, which has graduated to a spectacular purple, but with the rest of it.

I stand under the water until the temperature drops and my shoulders come down from somewhere around my ears, and then I get out, wrap a towel around myself, and call the front desk.

I tell them I need my locks and the elevator key code changed tonight.

I hang up and stand at the bathroom counter, looking at my reflection. By tomorrow afternoon, it’ll be the kind of bruise that makes people go quiet when they see it.