Page 39 of Brutal Bratva King

All day, I do my best to stay busy, expecting him to arrive home any minute, but the hours roll by and there is no sign of Rodion.

Dinner comes and goes, and I sit in the kitchen and eat alone, getting more and more agitated about how he is treating me. What kind of life is this?

When he gets home, he is going to get an earful about this. I am going to tell him exactly what I think of him.

I won’t let him treat me like this and if he tries to pull some shit like this again by telling the guards not to let me leave the property—I will call my brothers.

I sigh.

I won’t call my brothers. That will be too embarrassing for me. I don’t want them to have to fix things for me anymore. I want to have control over my own life and my own choices. But Rodion has taken that away from me just when I was getting it back.

It gets later and later and I’m starting to feel exhausted. I have an internal conflict drifting back and forth in my mind. One side of my thoughts is telling me to just go to bed and deal with it in the morning—and the other side of me is too angry to sleepand determined to let him have it as soon as he walks through that door.

The angry side wins and I am now waiting in the living room.

The TV is on, but the sound is off. I’m listening to his car. Besides, it’s not like I could focus on some stupid show anyway. Not with the way I’m feeling right now.

A chime carries through from the entrance foyer ,letting me know that the front gate has opened. I jump to my feet. That asshole is home.

Marching straight for the front door, I quickly run through everything I want to say to him.

Standing with my arms folded across my chest, I wait with a look of thunder painted on my face.

The front door pushes open and he walks in with his head down.

“Where the hell were you? What right do you have to lock me up in this house and not let me leave—am I your prisoner? Do you think you—,“ I gasp in fright when he lifts his head, and his eyes lock with mine.

He stares at me, looking exhausted, a blank expression on his face.

My mouth drops open.

“Can we talk about this tomorrow?” he huffs in annoyance.

“What happened to your face?” I stammer.

He has bruises growing next to his eye, his jaw is cut, and bleeding and his lip is turning a light shade of purple.

I run towards him and press my hands against his chest as I stand on my tiptoes to try and get a closer look. He turns his face away from me, then moves around me, trying to walk past me.

“What happened, Rodion? Did someone attack you?”

“Just leave it alone, Anya. I’m going to bed,” he snaps angrily.

“You arenot. Not looking likethat.”

I grab his arm and drag him into the downstairs bathroom. He complains all the way there, muttering about how he’s fine and I need to leave him the hell alone. But that isn’t happening.

I know there is a first aid kit in this cupboard because I found it when I was exploring over the past week or two.

I haul it out and push Rodion back so that he is forced to sit on the closed lid of the toilet.

“For fuck's sake, Anya, can you just leave it alone?”

“Stop being a child. I’m going to clean you up. If you go to bed like this you’ll get blood all over the bedding and you’ll probably end up with an infection.”

The comments fly back and forth between us and eventually, I give up talking altogether. I just start wiping his cuts and bruises with disinfectant and letting him complain and mutter about it to his heart’s content. There is no point in arguing with someone who isn’t even hearing a word you’re trying to say.

Once the wounds are disinfected and I’ve cleaned the dried blood away, I turn to find the medical tape so that I can try and close the cuts, but behind me Rodion stands up.

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