Page 54 of Knocked-up Bratva Bride
“No…no…no!”
He gazed at me, and I stared through him.
“For more than a month, you’ve suffered anyway. Maybe I should let you go. Maybe you’ll disappear. But…I’ll do it anyway.”
“No—”
The shot cracked like ice breaking underfoot. One second, he was breathing. The next, he wasn’t. His body slumped sideways, a streak of crimson painting the concrete floor beneath him.
His eyes, still open, stared into nothing.
I stared back, waiting for the relief that should have come, and instead, I felt anger.
Hot and wild beneath my ribs, coiled like barbed wire. I didn’t feel peace. Just the slow burn of rage that never seemed to die, no matter how many bodies hit the floor.
“Get Roman to clean up this mess,” I said and walked out of the cell, feeling nothing but the fire.
Chapter 18 – Elena
I couldn’t have been more than six, maybe seven, sitting cross-legged on the sun-warmed tile of our little apartment kitchen, my elbows planted on the table like I was about to solve the global economy with a box of crayons and an overactive imagination.
My mom was peeling potatoes at the sink, humming something soft and old in Spanish, a song I never knew the name of but always felt like a lullaby tucked inside a breeze.
After getting married to my father, she barely ever showed her Mexican roots. The rare occasions were times like this in the kitchen, when we made food together.
“Mamá,” I declared, chest puffed out like a pint-sized superhero, “when I grow up, I’m going to be so successful. Like…Beyoncé-successful. But with glasses.”
She chuckled, glancing over her shoulder. “With glasses, ah? That’s the important part?”
“Very important.” I nodded solemnly. “Because I’ll read so many books, my eyes might get tired. But it’s okay. I’ll get the really smart-looking ones with gold rims.”
She laughed again, louder this time, and I believed that sound could melt the frost off any bad day. I loved making her laugh. It felt like winning the lottery. The real one, not the scratch-off kind she kept hidden in the drawer under the phone.
I got up and marched over to her, tugging on the hem of her old T-shirt. “I’m going to build us a big house. Huge. Like, twenty bedrooms—”
“Twenty?” she asked, eyebrows raised.
“Yeah. One for you, one for me, one for each of the books I’ll write, and maybe one for the dog we’ll finally get.”
She wiped her hands on a towel and crouched to my level, her brown eyes soft and warm like cinnamon. “You don’t need to be rich for me to be proud of you, mi amor.”
I shook my head stubbornly. “I know. But I want to. I want to take you on vacations to the Bahamas. Or the Maldives. Or Hawai—wait, is it Hawaii or Hawai’i? Because I want to say it right when I book the trip for us.”
That made her eyes water a little, though she smiled through it, pulling me into one of those hugs that made me feel like the center of the whole universe. “Whatever it’s called, if I’m with you, it’ll be perfect.”
And I meant it, every silly, starry-eyed promise.
I threw myself into school like it was a quest, like each spelling test or math quiz was another step closer to palm trees and beachfront property.
I read everything I could get my hands on—novels, newspapers, the backs of cereal boxes, and even the warranty pamphlet that came with the toaster. Because words were bridges, and I was determined to build one strong enough to carry us out of that cramped kitchen and into every dream I’d ever whispered between its peeling yellow walls.
***
Today is going to be a great day.
I had repeated the mantra over a hundred times already. In the bathroom, after breakfast, on my way to work. I was going to forget all my problems in life and focus on delivering the best pitch ever to the band of investors we were expecting today.
I was going to walk into that room and nail it. And maybe then, I could reconsider taking Robert up on that promotion offer.
