Page 72 of Claimed By Rage

What little air I have in my lungs evaporates, leaving me choking on the bitter taste of betrayal as I imagine the girl I just saved running away from the cute fucking future I had planned for us.

The mental image of the two of us smiling at each other while we joy ride through the city on my bike at sunset before having a private fucking party for two on a blanket beneath the stars pops like a bubble, making me realize just how flimsy it all was to begin with.

Because things likeeasyandhappydon’t belong to men like us. I was fooling myself into thinking things with Celia could be sweet.

We’re men created from shades of gray. I will never be able to meet Celia in her world of light—the two don’t mix.

If I’m going to keep her, I’ll have to drag her into our box of shadows and throw away the key.

Chapter 23

Thanatos

The red trackingdot on my phone stays perfectly still, like it has for the past week. No quick trips to town or fleeing the city boundaries—the bitch has decided to stay, for better or worse.

Unluckily for her, things are about to get really fuckingworse.

I crack every joint in my body before walking up to the tiniest ramshackle house I’ve ever seen. It’s unobtrusive but offensive, the paint peeling on the outside, the flowers and bushes in the front garden long dead, the patches in the roof needing repaired at least two years ago. Whoever owns this place doesn’t give a shit if it falls apart.

How Celia Monrovia can stand living somewhere less than perfect is easy to answer: desperate people break their own rules all the time, and our prima donna princess better be damn near falling apart.

She tried to kill my brother.

I’ll never fucking forgive her.

There are a lot of things I can overlook—being a bitch, okay, a lot of people suck. Being prissyalsosucks, but it’s not a death sentence. Marrying outside the bratva, even, I don’t give two shits about.

It’s the lack of loyalty. The way she leads people on, only to throw them away once she gets bored. I don’t give a fuck why her husband left—only that she didn’t fight to keep him. From what I understand, she collapsed into a puddle of pathetic tears and went crying to my brothers’ club, climbed into their laps, and joy rode them with some S-tier, magic pussy, because they’re bending over backwards to make her love them.

But I know for a fact that a girl willing to run out on a man after he saves her life from a home invasion isn’t worthy of their love. She isn’t worthy of the spit in my mouth. The fact that she gave Rage hope that she wouldchoose himover everything else and then walk away because of ajobhe couldn’t have—and rightly shouldn’t have—refused…

It’s enough to make me want to kill her.

After witnessing the hell Valentina Baranova went through to stay loyal to her men, I know a strong woman when I see one.

And Celia fucking Monrovia?

She isn’t worth shit.

Walking up to the front door of her hideaway and busting the lock in, therefore, is satisfying as hell. I’m not usually the kind of guy who likes to terrify girls—I’ll leave that to my brothers—butthis one…I enjoy every shiver of fear her body makes. The way her wide, doe eyes dilate as the adrenaline kicks in, and she scrambles for the gun resting on the counter behind her.

Bratva lesson number one she clearly failed to learn: keep your gun within arm’s reach.

I’m on her before she can load the first bullet into the chamber. Tearing the gun from her hand and flinging it across the room, I bare down on her hard, pulling her arms behind her back and locking her wrists into handcuffs. She fights—I half expect her not to, so it’s a welcome surprise—kicking and thrashing against me.

“Easy, princess?—”

“Get off me!”

Rage told me not to bruise her. All of my brothers have some kind of fetish for marking her body for themselves. Fine, whatever, I’ll give the man room for what he’s due. I work carefully, then, shoving a gag between her teeth without getting my fingertips chomped off, then tying a rope around her ankles and looping it through her cuffs. It takes a few minutes for her to realize that she’s been bested, and even when she does, she looks like she wants to scream about it.

Her smooth skin glistens with sweat, a delicate flush curving down her neck.

If she weren’t so venomous, I might actually agree with the rest of the bratva that Celia Monrovia isthe pretty one.Everyone knows who she is—and there are a lot of men who would cut off a finger if it meant they could marry someone as pedigreed as her.

But there’s nothing pretty or desirable about a traitorous bitch.

“Don’t worry, I’m not here to kill you.”Much as I’d like to.“My brothers are convinced that you’re worth something, so it’s up to them to realize how little that is. A few weeks with you in a cage might change their minds. Once they realize you’re nothing but flesh and bone instead of some kind of goddess, everything will go back to normal.”

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