Page 54 of Claimed By the Bratva Brothers

As soon as the door opens, the look on her face has my heart racing.

There is definitely something wrong.

“What are you guys doing here?” she asks, her bright blue eyes wider than ever. She nervously dips her head into the hallway. “Did anyone see you?”

“No, we’re in the clear. Provided you let us in,” I chuckle, trying to break the tension.

Lyric sighs and steps back. We walk in and make ourselves comfortable in the living room. Her laptop is on, lines of code running up the screen while a freshly brewed cup of tea rests beside it. I’m trying to analyze as much as possible before I shift my focus back to her. She’s nervous, that much is obvious.

“Okay, so what’s up?” Lyric asks, anxiously sitting in the armchair closest to the window, as if to keep a certain distance from us.

I don’t like it. Every second that passes adds tension, straining my nerves beyond their reasonable limits. “I could ask you the same thing,” I say, stealing a glance at Ivan and Artur. They’re quiet, watching her like hawks, but I know they see what I see. “We figured you were busy since you haven’t been very responsive lately. Is everything alright?”

“Yeah,” she says, averting her eyes. It’s irritating. “Just busy, like you figured.”

“We could order in,” I say. “Maybe Chinese? You loved Zhang’s menu, didn’t you? The spring rolls were your favorite, if I remember correctly.”

She sighs heavily, finally gathering the nerve to look me in the eyes again. “I don’t think so. I still have work to do,” she says, pointing at her laptop.

“We’ll wait,” Ivan replies. The air thickens between us. I don’t like being lied to, but Ivan, he hates it. The slightest scent of a lie turns him inside out, transforming him into a bloodhound. He won’t let her be until she tells us what’s going on. “Unless you want to skip past the bullshit and tell us what’s really going on.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, her pitch subtly higher than usual.

“Lyric, we’re not idiots. There is clearly something affecting you,” I say, trying to remain as calm and as courteous as possible, even though my blood is starting to boil. “What is it?”

It takes a while for the words to come out but she finally says them.

“I think we need to take a break.”

My stomach feels heavy. Deep down, I think I saw it coming. The situation we’re dealing with was bound to lead us here, no matter how badly we wanted it to turn out differently.

“What is this about?” I ask, mustering every ounce of patience I have left.

Ivan leans back into the sofa, his eyes never leaving her. Artur shifts uncomfortably in his seat but stays quiet.

“A series of events, I guess,” Lyric replies. “Maybe I should’ve told you about it sooner, but I thought I could handle it on my own. I didn’t want to add more pressure to an already boiling pot.”

“What. Is. This. About?” I ask again, adding emphasis to each word.

She gives me a pained look. “Smith approached me outside the library last week. He warned me about you. Kept asking questions about the bail. I lied, obviously. I told him you paid me for an IT project in advance and you asked for that money back to cover Ivan’s bail because your accounts were frozen.”

“That obviously didn’t fly,” Artur mutters.

“No, it didn’t. But he didn’t have any proof against me, either. He had no choice but to leave me alone, for the time being.”

“You definitely should’ve told us about this sooner,” I say.

“That same day, my father asked to see me,” Lyric sighs heavily. “He also warned me about getting involved with you. It was an unpleasant conversation, but I pushed him away, telling him the same lie I told Smith. I’ll stick to it until the end of days, for what it’s worth.”

“With a little bit of luck, you won’t have to,” I try to sway her softly back to us. The mere thought of not having Lyric with us makes me feel unpleasant and uncomfortable things. I wasn’t ready for this, even though an inkling of it had been testing my thoughts since I noticed her distance in our text conversations. “Lyric, we’re close to getting the dirt we need on your father. That’s the first step in our crusade, and we’re almost there.”

“Polina also came to see me again.”

Ivan shakes his head slowly. “It never fucking stops, does it?”

“She was adamant that you and she are about to be married, reminding me that I don’t belong in your world, and that there will be consequences if I don’t back off. I know you don’t want it, but if Polina could track me down so easily, I reckon she can also make me disappear with a simple snap of her fingers, if I keep being an inconvenience to her plan.”

“She wouldn’t dare,” I say. “It would be the death of her.”

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