Page 13 of Ruthless Bratva King

He scans the room, eyes narrowing as he does so, and neither me nor Veronica move.

What are we supposed to do?It was stupid to come here. Anything could happen now and there’s nothing we could do about it?—

Dmitri takes a step so he can snatch something from the table, and I realize it’s the scrap of paper with the address. He turns on his heel and strides toward the door. He opens it and steps out without another word, closing it behind him.

The spell is broken, and Veronica moves to follow, but there’s a metallic crunching in the lock, followed by a decisive click. Vee rattles the handle and curses.

“Heunpicked the damn lock!” she cries. “Who even knows how to do that? Where are my keys?”

I ignore her and rush to the window, my heart racing. Dmitri emerges after a few moments, heading for his SUV.

Then I notice the parking officer standing by the driver’s side door. The officer is writing him a ticket, looking mighty pleased about it.

Veronica steps up beside me. “What’s going on?”

“Dmitri,” I say. “He’s getting a parking ticket.”

She squints, trying to make sense of the scene. “Well, I guess brooding antiheroes have to follow parking laws too.”

It sure doesn’t look that way. Dmitri is speaking, his stance casual, yet whatever he’s saying has stopped the officer in his tracks, his pen frozen mid-air above the ticket pad.

With a quick, jerky motion, he rips the ticket into shreds, stuffing the pieces into his pocket before running off down the street.

I shake my head. “Apparently not.”

Dmitri doesn’t move right away. He stands there momentarily, his back to us, then tilts his head slightly as if he knows we’re watching.

I hold my breath as he turns his head just enough for his sharp profile to appear. Slowly, deliberately, his gaze rises until it locks with mine through the window.

My chest tightens, my heart thudding painfully. There’s something about the way he looks at me—an intensity that feels like it’s burning into my soul.

Then he turns away and gets into his car.

The engine roars to life, and he pulls away from the curb, disappearing down the street.

11

ELENA

It was hard to know what to do next apart from bail and not come back.

Are we safe anywhere? This Dmitri guy could find us no matter where we were. I can tell; he has that aura. A man who can, and will.

We had no choice but to return to Veronica’s and try to calm down. I can’t think straight, and as for Vee, she’s gone from gung-ho to anxious in the blink of an eye. She’s leafing through my sketchbooks and avoiding the subject for now.

“Please,” I say. “I need your help. Come with me to check out the address from the note. No one else will help me; it’s gotta be you.”

Veronica sprawls out on her couch, tossing one of my old blueprints to me. “You know, Elena,” she says, ignoring my question, “this one could make you famous.”

I add it to the stack of sketches in my lap. “Famous for what? Designing a building that’ll collapse in the first windstorm?”

“Pfft.” She waves me off, sitting upright. “You know that’s not true. This one—” she holds up the blueprint of my library design,complete with its spiral staircase and glass walls—“could’ve been on the cover of Architectural Digest.”

I roll my eyes. “It’s just a draft. And it’s old.”

These designs were part of my application portfolio, the one I never got a chance to submit. I spent months poring over every detail, pouring every ounce of myself into them.

Then my dad got hold of them. Told me all the things wrong with them, how I couldn’t design for shit.

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