Page 37 of Guarded Rebellion

A deep breath of relief rushed out of me.

The dot blinked clearly, showing that she wasn’t far from me. She was on campus. She’s snuck out to come here. “What’s in this area?” I abandoned all thoughts of following and spying on the Petrov men, running in the direction where Eva had gone without my supervision.

You little brat. You stubborn, insistent brat.

Rurik ran with me. “I think the frat houses are that way.”

“Fuck.” A frat house? It seemed the minx had gotten it in her mind to rebel and push back even more, risking it to go to one of the famed parties there. In other words, the orgies when drugswere exchanged freely. Many men and women in the Baranov Family were users. With the wealth they had, the loopholes to do whatever they wanted as rulers of the criminal world, it wasn’t surprising that many Mafia members did drugs. Eva very well could be one of them, too, but not on my watch.

We ran, sprinting the last leg of the journey there. Before we reached the loud, lit-up mansion, I texted a driver to have a car as close as possible.

Inside, we pushed through the crowds. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t hear. Sounds and too many bodies in a small space threatened to distract me, but I didn’t panic. Keeping a level head was the only way to infiltrate this scene, like a fucking war zone. All the details didn’t matter. I didn’t care who I pushed aside, what I knocked over, and if I trespassed in anyone’s personal space.

I was on a mission to retrieve Eva. Not because it was my job to keep her safe, but because Iwantedher safe. I wanted her whole and well.

Scanning the faces in the crowds wasn’t easy, not with all the lights flashing in what appeared to be a makeshift dance area. I cut through the mass, searching for her expressive face. For a glimpse of her long brown locks. Of her glittering blue eyes.

But she wasn’t out here. Rurik yelled out that he was checking the rooms toward the east end of the house, and I focused on combing through every group of drunk or high partiers in every room and hallway I reached.

I kicked open doors. I surprised couples fucking in corners.

At the last door off the hallway from the kitchen where kegs lined the table and coke waited in parallel streaks on the counter, I found her.

Or I found him, the bastard who would cease to live.

I burst into the room just long enough to see him lower his hand and pull at her clothes. Her bare legs kicked as she bucked to get him off her, but her resistance didn’t work.

I did. I moved like a lethal machine, intent on killing this asshole for daring to touch her.

“Lev!” Her shout gave him a warning. Jerking his head back, he opened his mouth to yell.

“Fuck off. I’m not done with her yet.”

As far as I was concerned, he’d never have a chance to start, either. Gripping the back of his head, twining my fingers in his hair, I fastened a fist and used that as purchase to wrench him off her. Before he could fully roll into a crash of a landing against the door that had swung shut from my violent entrance, I was on him.

I held him in place to pummel my fist on his face. I kept him on the ground to kick and knee up into his body. Grunts left me, but his groans of pain and pleas for mercy goaded me to hit harder. To strike him faster. To render him so completely ruined with pain claiming his every cell that he’d never think about looking at a woman again.

Not Eva, at least.

I stood straight after what felt like an hour of vengeance delivered by my brutal attack. Panting to catch my breath, my chest heaving for air, I stared down at the man I’d reduced to a crumpled mess on the floor in a matter of a minute.

“Lev.”

I turned, narrowing my eyes at Eva as she smoothed her dress back down. Her throat strained with the struggle to swallow, but she maintained eye contact with me all the while. Her cool-blue gaze froze me, and all at once, I tried to decipher the emotions clashing on her face. Fear. Anger. Worry. Gratitude?

“Come on,” I ordered gruffly, too swayed by this need to punish her, to cherish her, to hold her at the same time I’d admonish her. I stepped over an unconscious woman on the floor, solely focused on reachingthiswoman, the troublemaker who defied and tempted me like no other ever had. And like no other ever would.

The second I wrapped my fingers around her wrist, I tugged her onto her feet. A squeak left her lips, and she stumbled. Colliding into my back, she kept her balance, but just barely. With how quickly I hauled her out of there, she was challenged to keep up.

I didn’t release her once, letting my anger and fury stream through my veins as I led her out of the house. Then all the way to the car. Only when she was seated in the passenger seat did I let her go. Slamming the door shut didn’t appease this dark anger controlling me. Speeding through the silence the whole way back to the apartment didn’t calm me, either.

Her presence was a catalyst to driving me insane because each time I thought back to the stark rage and fear that I felt when I saw another man touching her, I recalled the agony of tears on her cheeks.

She broke the ice as soon as we walked into the apartment. “Lev, I’m?—”

“No,” I roared. “No. I don’t want to fucking hear it.”

She pressed her lips together as I slammed the door.

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