Page 6 of Ruthless Bratva King

He doesn’t look at us right away. He glances down, wrinkling his nose at the puddle of puke, and scans the street with sharp, calculating eyes. He sees the cop’s rapidly retreating back and smiles coldly.

His gaze turns my way, and everything else blurs into the background. His dark eyes bore into mine, unreadable and unyielding.

I swallow hard, trying to muster some courage. I notice a few flecks of red on his shirt. It looks a lot like drops of blood.

“What did you do to him?” I ask as he walks down the steps.

He walks over to his SUV, ignoring my question. I could follow him, shout, anything, but my feet are rooted to the ground, frozen bysomething. Fear, certainly, but there’s more, like I’m trying to resist being drawn closer and getting trapped in his orbit.

Dmitri opens the driver’s door, pausing to glance across the roof at me. That sledgehammer gaze slams me again, forcing the sir from my lungs.

“If you hear from your family,” he says when he reaches me, “you callme.”

He ducks his head, and within seconds, he’s gone, the car purring as he pulls away.

5

ELENA

Veronica’s apartment smells better than mine, like lavender and vanilla. She tosses her keys onto the counter and immediately heads to the kitchen, muttering about needing a drink.

I collapse onto her overstuffed couch, my head spinning. I pull out the business card Dmitri gave me, staring at the stark simplicity of the letters.

Just his name. Dmitri.And his number.

“You gonna call it?” Veronica asks.

I look up to see her leaning against the kitchen doorway, a bottle of wine in one hand and two glasses in the other.

“No,” I reply too fast.

She raises an eyebrow. “Not even curious?”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” I mutter, setting the card on the coffee table.

“Yeah, but satisfaction brought it a Russian hottie with abs of steel.” She plops down beside me, filling both glasses to the brim. “Come on, Elena. You can’t tell me you’re not at least alittlecurious to know more.”

I glare at her. “What part of ‘he might be the Bratva King’ isn’t sinking in for you? If he wants to track down my family, I doubt it’s to start a knitting group.”

I sink further into the couch as she pours the drinks, the weight of everything pressing down on me. “Maybe the cops are right. Maybe I’m better off not knowing.”

“That’s bullshit,” she says sharply, surprising me.

I blink at her. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. Bullshit. You’re not the kind of person who just walks away from something like this.”

I look away, her words cutting deeper than I want to admit.

She sighs, passing me a glass of wine. “You’re allowed to be scared. Hell, I’m scared too, and it isn’t even happening tome. But you can’t bury your head in the sand and hope it goes away. That guy knows something. Call him and get some answers.”

Before I can lose my nerve, I dig out my phone and punch in the number. “You’re going to get me killed,” I mutter to myself.

It rings twice before a voice answers. Low, smooth, and unmistakably his.

“Tomorrow. Ten a.m. There’s a coffee shop on the corner of Fifth and Pine. Come alone.”

The line is dead before I get a chance to say a word.

---