Page 74 of Bratva Butcher

His jaw gaped open.

I internally sighed.Looks like I am surprising all my children today.

“You have this way about you, Lukyan. This fun, devil-may-care attitude towards everything you do thatusedto drive me absolutely mad. Until I realised the reason why it made me so crazy was because I wished I could be a little more like you. I wished I could see the fun side of things. Wished I enjoyed my life the way you do.”

He didn’t move, didn’t speak. His jaw remained open like those stupid clowns at carnivals that you try and throw a ball into to win a prize. I tapped under his chin, and he closed his mouth, still looking at me like I’d grown an extra head or some shit.

“We most likely won’t make it out of this alive, so I want you to know how incredibly smart I think you are. I think you’re so smart, you sometimes get bored because you’re not being challenged enough, and that’s my fault. I should have given you more responsibility. Trusted you more. You have so much potential,moy malen’kiy ogonek, my little light,and one of my biggest regrets in life will be that I never gave you the proper opportunity to show that.”

Lukyan sucked in a breath, his lip quivering. “You haven’t called me that in a long time,” he murmured softly.

Another kick to the gut.

Lukyan in Russian meant “light”, and when he was a toddler, running around the house with a smile that would just light up the entire room, I used to call him that. But he was right. I hadn’t done it in a very long time.

“I love you, Lukyan. So much—”

“Oh my god! I love you, too!” he screamed.

I grunted when he slammed into me with so much force that I stumbled back, his arms coming around to lock me in a tight bear hug. Chuckling softly, I patted him on the back, a smile pulling at my lips.

“Ladies and gentleman, are we ready for the next round of the Til Death Games?!” My spine stiffened at the voice that came blaring from the TVs hanging on the wall.

I pulled back, seeing a man dressed in a tuxedo and holding a microphone displayed on each screen.

Aleksandr, Nikolai and Autumn joined me and Lukyan as the man introduced himself and the events that would be taking place tonight. Tension filled me.

Here we go.

But where is—

“Father!”

I spun around quickly, seeing Illayana running towards us. The huge pressure disappeared completely from my chest at the sight of her.

“Illayana!” I caught her when she jumped into my arms. Overwhelming relief made me exhale a deep breath as I squeezed her tightly.She’s alive. She’s okay. She’s alive.The words chanted in my head over and over again.

When I hadn’t seen her there when we first arrived, I had started to panic. I thought perhaps Talon had done what I feared he would do all along. But she was there. She was alive, and she was okay.

Her brothers swarmed us not even a second later, pestering her with question after question that made her laugh at their fretting.

“I’m fine,” she said, stepping out of my embrace. “Talon didn’t touch me.”Thank fucking God. “That’s not what he wanted me for. He just wanted to fuck with you all. Rile you up for the games. Plus, I told him I’d die before I let any of his men touch me, and he said that would interfere with what he had planned, so he just left me locked up in a room the whole time.”

My gaze sought out the pair of fiery green eyes at my side. Autumn looked up at me, a happy smile on her face. She was right. Talon just took Illayana to fuck with my head, and she’d called it. She was able to see what I had been too distraught to see myself.

For that, I felt indebted to her, more so than I already was.

Before anything else could be said, Talon’s soldiers surrounded us, barking out a command. “You two, against the wall” –he pointed to Autumn and myself– “You four, over near the door,” he said, signalling to my children.

Nobody moved.

“Now!” he demanded, waving his machine gun around like a lunatic.

I couldn’t speak for Autumn, but my children wouldn’t move unlessIgave the order. They were loyal like that. They all looked at me, and I chose to wait a few extra seconds to show that they weren’t moving because he had ordered it, but becauseIhad.

I gave the slightest nod, and they all moved to where the guard indicated.

Autumn and I went to the wall and placed our palms against it, our legs shoulder-width apart. We’d done that dance before, right before our first round of the games. That was when they’d finally remove the collars, and that was something I wasn’t going to fight them on.

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