Page 10 of Claimed Bratva Virgin

As expected.

From the minute he walked through that door, my gut told me trouble. Maybe I’d been gifted in the womb, but my instincts failed zero to one percent of the time. Rafayel Yezhov was always right.

That groan of his meant more trouble to deal with.

Already riled up and fucking irritated with the Jabril and Italian mafia shit going on, it was a battle suppressing the urgeto whack my dumb cousin across the head with the butt of my gun.

If it wasn’t already clear, I didn’t like the kid very much. When he turned eighteen, he nixed his formal initiation as a Yezhov into the Bratva to pursue his passion for racing.

Racing.

What I thought started out as a raving madness of youthful exuberance turned out to be more than just a fucking joke, and to worsen the matter, ruining his reputation and dragging his name through the fucking soil, his progress chart recorded more losses than wins.

For years, he maintained his distance, focused on his cars and failures, and only came running when there were rough edges to smoothen out.

“What the fuck is it now?”

My anger was direct, like a missile locked in. Before it landed on the target, the entire room felt the catastrophic quake of the explosion.

“I, um….” He shifted under my stare, biting down hard on his lips, and the fear in his eyes gleamed sharper. Knowing he got on my nerves was making it worse for him. “I think now’s a bad time to talk about my shit. I should just go. I should…. I might come back another time, maybe?”

Luckily for him, Tikhon intercepted before I had a chance to throw something across the table with every intention of causing bodily injury to the kid.“Take it from me. Now’s not the best time to play. If you have something to say, say it.”

“Or don’t, and maybe risk losing a finger for wasting three hundred seconds of my fucking time.”

Averting my gaze, Ivan swallowed, gripping the armrest of his chair, and his spine stiffened on the chair. He ran a hand through his hair and cleared his throat. His nerves were all overthe place, visible enough for me to watch his fingers tremble as he stuck them into the pocket of his jacket.

And when he opened his mouth, my expectations were low. I expected something else, anything dumb, to come out of that mouth of his. Anything but what he said.

“There’s this girl—”

“Son of a bitch.”

Tikhon hid a grin before I glared at him.

The kid had managed to run into all sorts of problems on good and bad days, but he’d never come into my office to chat about women, drop-dead gorgeous or nutty as they might have been. I’d never seen him majorly stressed out about one either, so this one had to be special.

Still, the unnecessary suspense was giving me a headache.

My fingers found a ballpen on the desk, and I fondled it, clicking and clicking, while I decided whether or not to wait to hear him finish.

“She’s actually Enzo Colombo’s daughter—Leonora. I’m sure you know her. Bitch enjoys making a name for herself, and apparently, she did a solid round today.”

Tikhon lifted a brow at my finger when the pen stopped clicking, but Ivan kept talking, barely noticing that I wasn’t listening to him.

Apparently, Leonora Colombo had beaten my cousin in one of their racing sprees, victoriously cementing her name in the records of history while wiping his ass in more dirt.

I battled a smile.

Always managing to leave her mark wherever she went. Like she did years ago when she tried to rain on Timur’s parade. That night, her superciliousness fascinated me and, more so, left me highly impressed after she broke her father from Timur’s jail cell.

The audacious brunette with the sharp tongue and daring hazel eyes—of course, I knew her. If she had her way, the whole world probably would, too. She was eager to prove her capabilities of handling her own business, and yet, everything she did showed more evidence that Colombo’s blood ran through her veins—more specifically, his ego and stubbornness.

“…kidnapped her.”

Ivan’s voice shattered whatever bubble I was in, and the smirk melted off my face faster than heated candle wax. I blinked away the confusion, frowned, and sat up a little straighter. If I thought I’d heard part of his statement correctly, it meant—

“You kidnapped LeonoraColombo?”

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