Page 83 of Bratva Knight

“You know the first time he asked me to watch something with him, he was so nervous that he practically pissed his pants?” he said, ignoring my question.

“I didn’t know that.”

“And then when I said yes?” he gave a mirthless laugh. “You’d think I just offered him a million bucks or something, he was so excited. It was like no one had ever sat down and watched a movie with him before.”

Based on what I’d heard about the kid’s life, I wouldn’t be all that surprised if it was true.

“He was such a little shit when he first got here. Disrespectful. Resentful. Bad attitude. You know what I do to people like that?”

“You beat it out of them.” I knew that from personal experience.

“That shit was never going to work on Dayton, though. That kid had been beaten down his entire life. Once I figured that out, figured out what he actually wanted, his whole attitude changed.”

“And what was that?”

His eyes moved to me and held. “He just wanted someone to give a shit about him.”

I tilted my head to the side, studying him closely. “What was it about him, Zander? You’ve seen plenty of kids with heart-breaking stories like his before. Why didthis oneaffect you so much?”

He looked down, watching his finger move in a slow circle on the armrest. “I think part of it was the fact that he reminded meso muchof Lukyan during his teenage years. But unlike Lukyan, he had this shyness about him that just had this way of breaking down your barriers. I felt…sorry for him. All he wanted was a family. Someone to care for him. I thought—”

“You could be that for him?”

He didn’t respond but I had a feeling I was right on the money. My brother had a big heart. A big,guardedheart, but big nonetheless. If you managed to somehow get past it, he’d care for you until the day he died.

Silence descended upon us. I wasn’t sure what else to say. I knew this would have been hard for him to voice, so I decided a distraction would be best. I pushed play on the remote.

Aleksandr immediately sighed. “Nikolai—”

“Shut up, I’m trying to watch.”

“You’ve missed nearly the whole first season. You’ll have no idea what’s going on.”

I kicked my feet up onto the coffee table and crossed them at the ankles. “I guess you’ll just have to explain it to me then.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Nikolai Volkov

“Forthethousandthtime,I don’t know where your fucking dagger is. I haven’t touched it,” Illayana growled, glaring at Lukyan from across the kitchen table.

“It was in my room last night before I went to bed. I wake up this morning and it’smysteriouslydisappeared. You trying to tell me you had absolutely nothing to do with that? Huh?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you, you long-necked freak,” she hissed.

Lukyan gasped in outrage, hand flying to his throat. “Ido not have a long neck!”

I took another spoonful of my cereal, listening to my siblings bicker like a bunch of…well, for lack of a better word, idiots. They’d been going at it since they woke up this morning, and hadn’t stopped once. It was like they’d never left.

Apparently, Lukyan’s favourite dagger had gone missing, and he blamed Illayana for it. A likely culprit, considering she used to do this shit a lot when they were kids; taking his stuff and hiding it somewhere in the house. But she was swearing left and right that she hadn’t done it, and I was inclined to believe her.

Usually, she’d boast and taunt him about it.“Nah, nah, na-nah-nah, you’ll never find it.”Or something to that effect. The fact that she wasn’t doing that right now made me think she wasn’t responsible.

“I didn’t do it,” Illayana snarled.

“No one else could have!” Lukyan aggressively shoved some toast into his mouth and ripped off a piece. “Unless someone climbed up the side of the house, snuck through my window, crept across my room while I was asleep, swiped it from my bedside table and then snuck back out—allwithout waking me up. Is that what you’re saying happened?”

“It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if someone went to all that trouble to fuck with you, considering how annoying you are,” she hissed.

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