Page 4 of The Bratva's Kidnapped Bride

I had two other brothers, Dimitri and Isidor. Dimitri was three years younger than Mikhail, and though he was just as gruesome and huge as Mikhail, it was not out of complete loyalty. It was safe to say he enjoyed playing the devil on Earth.

Isidor, on the other hand, was a teenage boy in the body of a thirty-five-year-old man who loved to do nothing other than party, drink, and fuck half the women in New York. I didn’t care what he did with his dick in his free time, but my shit of a brother caused more problems for me than the people craving my head on a pile of ammunition.

“Leave her for now.” I turned to where my man’s body lay. His veins must have run out of blood because his forehead was no longer bleeding and I thought if I pointed a torch, I could see his brains. “Clean this shit up first.”

My brother still had his eyes, which were the same cloudless sky blue as mine, fixed curiously on me, as if he wanted to say something but was contemplating it.

“Find out who she is.”

“Adrienne Paolo,” Mikhail said, almost cutting me off. “Dante Paolo’s daughter.”

“Dante’s daughter did not die?”

“No.” Dante, cunning bastard. “He kept her hidden for years. She’s seduced two of our men, lured them into a room, and had them killed. She’s also delivered the time of death of four of them.” He paused. “They call her Morte.”

I shot an angry glance at Mikhail. “You kept all this hidden from me?”

He put on his most indifferent expression. “I wanted to tell you only after I’d gotten all the information about her.”

“There is no time for that.” I clenched my fist on Adrienne’s hair in my hands. The only difference between me and Dante was one thing. I keep those close to me safe while the piece of shit used his only daughter as a weapon, the same way he used his wife to make a baby twenty-one years ago even though he knew it would kill her.

Right! How could I miss the uncanny resemblance between Adrienne and Isabella, with the same white hair and searching gray eyes? She’d not died, she’d grown to be a beautiful woman just like her mama, and she’s her papa’s weapon.

I’d turn that weapon into mine and end the Paolo lineage with it.

“Find her and bring her to me.”

Chapter 3 - Adrienne

Andrei Levov was killable after all, and that was all I needed to know.

He was like every other egotistical man in the mafia world, looking down on women and feeling impenetrable. Too bad his death would also be at the hands of a woman.

That woman would be me.

I reached for my hair and felt my new haircut. I’d probably thank him before I killed him; I’d always hated my long hair because my papa had a weird obsession with it. There were times when he was drunk that he’d call me Isabella. I often wondered if that was my mother’s name. If it was, did he love her? If he did love her, why did he work so hard to make sure I had nothing to remember her by?

Many questions flooded my mind, and so did Andrei’s face. I could imagine how pale his piercing blue eyes would be when I drained the life out of him. How hard would his large frame thud to the ground when his consciousness ceased to exist as my bullet created a hole in his skull?

I’d sworn never to do the dirty work of getting blood on my own hands, but if it meant I’d rid New York of the rule of a horrible tyrant, I’d even have a blood bath.

Ridding New York from the vile ruling of the mafia was not limited to Andrei. My father was just as bad as him, but I couldn’t drive a bullet straight into my own father’s head. I’d think of what to do with him after I used his power to wipe Andrei and his organization out of existence. At least now I knew he wasn’t the immortal mafia boss they made him out to be.

I’d confirmed he was just as killable as every other man.

And at the cost of Ricco’s life.

Ricco had faithfully been by my papa’s side for twenty-seven years, which was approximately six years before I was born, and although he was no better than my papa when it came to the thirst for blood, he’d been the most loyal dog, as my papa had always referred to him as. I’d thought my papa referred to him that way to exert his authority, but I was wrong.

I’d expected my papa to be sad after Ricco’s death. I’d expected him to rage and curse down the whole Bratva family. But he didn’t. He only said okay and dropped the call. Five minutes later, he sent an address and pictures to my phone which he tagged the second job for tonight.

The second job was a six-year-old boy and his mother, the son and the wife of the man I’d just watched die in front of me two hours ago. I heard the mother cry as she called her son’s name.

“Aleksandr!” she squealed in the dark as three of my father’s men dragged her from her white brick-layered bungalow that gave view to a garden of roses and hyacinths. Aleksandr, this was the first time I’d heard the name of anyone before telling them when they’d die.

The gentle night breeze tingled my skin and filled the air with the scent of the flowers, and I closed my eyes, imagining being from a normal world. A world where I was allowed to plant a garden and play with dolls rather than this world where all I learned was how to kill a man with one stab.

I opened my eyes as a heard silent sobs and footsteps. My papa’s men threw the mother and son in front of me, ruining my peace as hyacinths and roses faded into the smell of corpses and shattered brains. It made me nauseous. I hate this life.

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