Page 38 of Bratva Butcher

Autumn put her hands up, palms facing me in a show of surrender, indicating she wasn’t planning on pushing any further.

Good.

My mother was a…sore subject. One I never liked to discuss.

Like most marriages in the Bratva, my parents’ was one of convenience. It wasn’t about love, trust or building a connection with another person. It had been arranged for the sole purpose of building an alliance, gaining power and producing an heir for my father’s empire. Sergei kept his slew of mistresses, and my mother allowed it. She allowed everything, never once standing up for herself.

It wasn’t her fault. Sergei held all the power. All the money. All the influence. He crushed her beneath his strong-willed personality. She never stood a chance.

He never laid a hand on her in violence, but then again, he didn’t need to. He was an expert in emotional abuse. Making someone feel less than, like they were nothing.Nothingwithout him and what he could provide.

When I was twelve, she hung herself by turning the sheet on her bed into a noose and hanging it from the chandelier in her bedroom.

I never blamed her. She hung on for as long as she could, tied to a man who only cared about using her as an incubator, and in the end, Sergei won.

Sergei always won.

“It was the end of junior year,” I continued like nothing happened. I was good at compartmentalising, so moving the pain I felt towards my mother out of my mind was easy. “Parents swarmed the halls, stayed with their children in their dormitories. Attended classes alongside them. The ones who bothered to show up, that is. Talon’s father was one of them. He didn’t stay the whole weekend. Just showed up for a few hours to make it seem like he was a good parent who cared about his child and then left. During that small window when he was actually present, however, there was an incident. One of the fathers of another student got in my face. The reason was so bleak and unimportant that I can’t even remember it now, but it took zero effort for me to put him on his ass. He was nothing more than a weak man in a five-thousand-dollar suit. Talon’s father was there. He saw it, and the look he gave me was a look Talon had been trying to get from him his whole life. Like he was completely and utterly impressed. I don’t think he’d ever seen a sixteen-year-old put a man three times his age and size down like it was effortless. Because in truth, that’s what it was.”

She shook her head, chuckling under her breath. “ I don’t think I’ve ever met someone so cocky.”

“Sure you have. Just look in the mirror.”

“Touche, Butcher.”At least she can admit it. “What happened next?”

“Talon’s father, Stuart, gave me his card and told me he could use someone with my skills, and that if I ever wanted a job, to call him. He then turned to his son, looked down his nose at him with disgust in his eyes and said to him, in front of all the other students, ’If you were more like him, you wouldn’t be such a fucking disappointment,’ and walked out without looking back.”

Autumn winced. “Ouch. Brutal.”

“Hardly,” I scoffed. “That was nothing compared to the shit my father used to spout at me.”

“Yeah, but saying that in a room full of your peers? That must have embarrassed the shit out of Talon.”

I nodded. “It did. Teenagers in general can be real assholes. But elite school teenagers? They’re even worse. They laughed. Pointed. Teased. Talon ended up running out of the room crying, which didn’t help his case. Like I said, teenagers are assholes. He was ridiculed for the rest of the year because of it. If Talon had any spine, he would have let all that shit just roll off his back. But he’d spent his whole adolescence trying to impress his father, make him proud. So, when he came in, showing that tomeinstead ofhim, embarrassing him in front of all his friends—”

“He turned on you,” Autumn finished.

“More or less. He tried to get me under his thumb first. Break my will. Control me. When that didn’t work, he decided to just try and get rid of me instead.”

“Seems a bit extreme, don’t you think? All that because his father called him a disappointment in front of his classmates?”

There was more to it than that. For Talon, anyway. For him, it was a slap in the face. He’d done everything he could growing up to impress his father, but nothing was ever good enough for the man. In some way, I could relate to that. It was why we’d becomesuch close friends to begin with; we’d bonded over the fact that we both had asshole parental figures.

I stretched out my body, raising my arms up over my head. “For a man like Talon, no. All he ever wanted was his father’s love and affection. To make him proud. For Stuart to give that so freely to someone else—someone he didn’t even know, a friend of his, no less— broke something in him. Made him jealous. Resentful. Full of hatred and rage.”

The funny thing about opening up—sharing pieces of yourself, your past—was that once you started, it was hard to stop. That particular part of my life was something I hadn’t spoken about since before Yekaterina died. Even my children, the people I was closest to in the world, knew nothing about Talon or the past we shared. It was one of the reasons I held such little hope for a rescue. They had no idea who Talon was. No idea I was in his grasp. And I highly doubted Dominik would tell them.

However, Mikhail would know the instant he received his invitation to the games.

Ifhe received an invitation, that was.

Out of the two of us, Talon hated me more. He didn’t like Mikhail because he’d chosen to side with me instead of him. He didn’t hold the same hatred towards him as he did me. He might not want to risk Mikhail attempting some sort of rescue mission the moment he found out I was in his grasp.

Then again, Talon’s massive ego might rear its ugly head—a scenario far more likely—and make it impossible for him not to brag to Mikhail about the newest fighter in his games.

“I think I understand now.” Autumn nodded. “Talon’s going to do everything he can to make you suffer because, in his mind, you took the validation from his father that he felt was entitled to him. In his mind, it’s easier to blame you than his dickhead of a father, and he’s had forty years for those feelings to grow and fester, for his rage to build and build. Killing you won’t everbe enough. He wants to embarrass you like you did him. Make a spectacle of your death, a grand show to show the world he got the last laugh.”

I said nothing. There was no need. Everything she’d said was correct.

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