Page 50 of Master

My heart slams against my chest, the rage continuing to swell far beyond what my body can contain. The white-hot fury coursing through me doesn’t care about what was real. The fury just wants to tear everything apart. And for a moment, I let it. Pure anger is the only thing keeping me from completely fucking falling apart. I’ve never been so fucking furious in my entire life. Not just at her, but at myself for being so fucking stupid. So fucking naïve.

Never again… I fucking knew better.

“Why?” I shout—my voice so hoarse it sounds foreign—as I throw another barstool. It clatters across the marble floor, doing nothing to release the tension building inside me. It isn’t enough. None of it is enough.

Nothing will ever be enough to fill the void she just left where my soul once was.

My entire body trembles, and my heart pounds so hard that it’s going to burst from my heaving chest. Anger consumes me, and I don’t know how to stop it. All I want is to make her feel an ounce of this gut-wrenching betrayal, but she is gone. And I’m left with emotions I don’t know how to deal with. I don’t know how to let them go.How to lethergo.

I slam my fist into the marble bar top, the radiating pain of the impact momentarily grounding me. The anger clawing at me and tearing me apart begins to fade. It subsides into something worse. Something much harder to face…

Heartache.

It’s the last thing I want to feel.The one thing I promised myself I’d never experience again.I kick the tattered barstool at my feet and roar as I toss another. I rage and scream, not willing to give into everything else I’m feeling. The club surrounding me is a war zone, and I stand in the middle of the mess I’ve created, shaking my head as my body tires and the anger subsides.

Left with nothing but the pieces of a life I thought I knew, I fall apart. My legs falter beneath me, and I crumble to the floor, as broken as the shattered glass I land in.

“Fuck, Li…” Declan sighs, wrapping his arms around me as he kneels in the glass beside me. My brothers all huddle around me, letting me grieve with only the sounds of my heaving breath in the room. Each of them prepared to pick me up and help me piece my life back together when I’m ready.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

SASHA

One of Ivan’s goons shoves me into the back of the G-Class as Ivan climbs in the other side.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I mutter, my broken heart slamming against my ribs. It didn’t have to happen like that. He didn’t need to hurt Liam like that. But my brother always has had a way of stealing everything good from me.Always.

Ivan would’ve killed Liam—like he killed Viktor—to bring me back home. I knew giving Ivan what he wanted would spare the life of the man I love; I just didn’t realize how hard it would be.Or how much it would hurt.Liam’s face was filled with so much grief and confusion. The weight of seeing my betrayal in his eyes was suffocating.

He trusted me, and I lied to him.

He loved me, and I failed him.

But I hadn’t lied, not like Ivan made it sound. What he did was beyond cruel. It was twisted.

I am the person he thought I was.

“You’re fucking Bratva,malen’kaya printsessa,” Ivan huffs. “Thisis where you belong.”

“That might be, but you didn’t need to make him think that I did this for you.” I shake my head. “You might not have killed him, like Viktor, but you fucking destroyed him.”

“Good.” The elongated word spills from the side of his mouth as he lights a cigarette. He takes a long drag on it and expels the smoke through his nostrils. “That means he’ll want nothing to do with you. You deserve better than being showcased like their little Russian whore.”

“Like what?” I scoff. “Being the Russian whore whose virginity you can auction off to the highest bidder or the one you can marry off like property to make a business arrangement with some disgusting old man.”

“No,malen’kaya printsessa.You give yourself too much credit.” Ivan evilly chuckles. “You lost a lot of fucking value when you gave your fucking virtue toa lowly bodyguard. Now it’d be like selling off one of the well-worn cunts at the club. I’d be lucky to pay off a bet with a used-up slut like you.”

“I loved him,” I exhale, shaking my head and ignoring his insults. “And Viktor was your best fucking friend.”

“Was,” Ivan sternly corrects me. “That was before he thought he had the right to fuck you.”

Who guns down their best friend in cold blood for falling in love with their little sister?

“You’re a fucking psychotic prick,” I snarl.

Ivan grips my face and squeezes my cheeks so hard I almost wince before grumbling, “And you’ve become a mouthy fucking bitch since I saw you last.”

“You’re still the same asshole, though,” I spit, freeing myself from his tight hold.

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