Page 1 of Stalked & Bred by the BRATVA
Sarah
I keep my head down when I walk through the halls. It’s not obedience exactly, more like self-preservation. The men who live and work in this mansion are sharp around the edges, rough and powerful, and far too big for someone like me to make eye contact with.
Besides, it’s not like anyone notices me.
That’s the lie I tell myself every day. It helps me keep my spine straight and my hands steady when I change sheets or scrub floors. It makes it easier to breathe when I pass the massive dining hall, where Maksim Vasiliev sits at the head of the table like some kind of dark god, his brothers scattered around him like wolves in suits.
I’ve been here a month now. Long enough for the bruises to fade from my arms, though the ones on my ribs still bloom with pain if I move the wrong way. My brother sent me here to be punished, to work for the Bratva as if it’s some hellish penance for the embarrassment I brought on our family. I never even knew what I’d done wrong. Just woke up to a suitcase at my feet and the back of his hand splitting my lip.
The Vasiliev mansion was supposed to break me. He said I’d be run ragged, used, chewed up. But instead…
Instead, it’s quiet. Sometimes too quiet.
I sweep and mop and dust. I iron expensive shirts and press linens that smell like cedarwood and smoke. No one yells. No one touches. No one hurts me.
But someone watches.
I feel it. Like a second pulse. Like eyes pressed between my shoulder blades.
It started on my third night. I was polishing the brass railing on the staircase when I felt it. A tug in the air, the kind of tension that makes your skin prickle. I looked over my shoulder so fast I gave myself a crick in the nec, but no one was there.
Since then, it’s been happening more often. When I’m bent over making a bed. When I’m drying dishes alone in the kitchen. When I’m in the garden in the early mornings, picking herbs for the chef.
The air thickens, my hands go clammy, I tell myself it’s paranoia.
I tell myself I’m just tired.
But I don’t sleep well here, and tonight is no different.
By the time I finish my duties and make it back to the narrow little room tucked at the back of the servant’s wing, my feet are sore and my hands smell faintly of bleach. The door is silent when I push it open, and I immediately notice something is off.
Nothing dramatic. Nothing anyone else would notice. But I do.
My perfume is out of place.
It’s a tiny little bottle of designer perfume I brought with me. A free sample that was being gifted at Christmas time. I always keep it to the right of the sink, tucked behind the soap dish. Now it’s centered. Neatly aligned. Like someone was in here. Like someone touched it.
The fine hairs on my arms rise. I swallow hard and glance over my shoulder, as if whoever moved it might still be standing behind me.
There’s no one.
Still, I close the door quietly and press the lock until it clicks.
I go to the chest of drawers. The third one down holds my nightwear. Threadbare t-shirts and faded cotton shorts. I pull it open with the same tired rhythm I do every night, only this time, I freeze.
Lying on top of my clothes is a silk nightgown.
Sapphire blue and as soft as water. And definitely not mine.
My stomach twists into a knot.
I reach out and touch it, the fabric pooling like liquid between my fingers. It’s beautiful. Too beautiful. Too expensive for a girl like me. The lace trim is delicate. The tag still attached declaring not only is it new, but it cost an eye-watering sum of money. There’s no note. No explanation. There must have been a mistake.
I glance around the room again, even though I know no one’s here.
My heart won’t stop racing, as I push the delicate fabric aside and pull out my trusty old tee and move into the bathroom to change.
Someone’s been in my room. Someone moved my perfume. Someone put that nightgown in my drawer.
