Page 18 of The Lazarov Bratva

“I said, fuck off.”

She doesn’t move, too distracted by the money, so instead, I do. Pushing up from the pillar, I walk away toward where I parked my car, and Melanie’s heels follow me for a few seconds, then she finally gets the hint.

“Well, how the fuck am I supposed to get home?” she yells after me.

“Don’t care,” I shoot back, not even turning around.

“You drove me here. I don’t even know where here is!”

“I said I don’t care!”

“You’re an asshole!”

“So I’ve heard.”

Reaching my car, I slide inside and immediately turn up the music in an attempt to steady myself. My heart is racing slightly, and there’s an unusual squirming in my gut that I haven’t felt since the last time I ate some sushi that might have been past its use by date.

What is this feeling?

I’m not one to get anxious. I’m usually very direct and calm. It’s not fear. I haven’t felt that since I was a boy facing down a father who spoke using the licks of a belt rather than his words.

By the time I’m back out onto the highway, it clicks in my alcohol-addled mind. It’s anticipation. At some point during my rambling thoughts about Alena and the Kuznetsovs, I came to a decision.

Alena is going to be mine.

One way or another, she is going to belong to me. Making that happen is going to be tough, but even now, racing away from the estate, her presence lingers around me, and when I press my lips together, I can still taste her. It’s as if the pendant I gave her, the one that now sits around her pretty throat instead of in my hand, connects us somehow.

There’s no doubt in my mind either that she feels the same. The way she trembled under my touch and how she walked away from me and Melanie like a baby deer discovering its legs for the first time is all the proof I need.

Her soft lips, smooth skin, orange and cream scent, and the lithe press of her body against mine… I want all of it. I need all of it.

One way or the other, I will save Alena from Mikhail.

She will be mine.

I swear it.

10

ALENA

“Is there anything else I can get for you?”

Katja hovers in the doorway, towels from my shower in hand and her face pinched with worry. She wants to help, I can tell by the way she’s been glued silently to my side ever since the argument in the kitchen, but there’s nothing she can do.

There’s nothing anyone can do.

“Do you want some company? I have some time before cleaning up if you want me to hang out?”

I shake my head, fat tears rolling down my cheek.

“Do you… do you want to talk about it?”

Again, I shake my head.

Katja’s grip on the towels tightens, and she shifts her stance slightly, rocking back and forth as if searching for the next thing she can offer. There isn’t anything. As much as I love her, nothing she can say or do will make any of this okay.

“I’m okay.” My voice pulls painfully, hoarse from crying.

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