Page 32 of Stalked & Bred by the BRATVA
Then Aleksei’s message arrived.
Motel. Room number. Balance owed. A blurry still of Thom’s face when he checked in last night. The urge that tears through me is simple and clean. Find him. End him. Put him in the ground so the past can stop clawing at the edges of her psyche.
But I see Sarah in my head as I stand in the doorway to the hall. The new softness in her mouth. The steadiness in her eyes. If I kill him, that softness will harden. She will look at me and see blood that she cannot wash away. She would forgive me. I know she would. But I do not want forgiveness from her. I want trust.
I am not used to letting anyone live.
I pick up my keys anyway.
I leave a note on her pillow that only says back soon. I ignore the way my chest tightens when I pull the bedroom door closed. The car waits in the gravel, black and quiet. The morning is pale and cold. I drive without the radio, without thought, letting anger set the pace.
The motel looks like it is giving up. Paint peels from the railings. A soda machine hums in the corner as if it is the last heartbeat on the property. The manager behind the plastic window does not meet my eyes. He does not need to. He can feel what I am when I walk past.
Room 207. The number is a dull brass nailed into rotten wood. I knock once. Then I try the handle. It turns.
He is asleep with the curtains open, face buried in a filthy pillow, a half empty bottle of something cheap sweating on the nightstand. There is a roach on the wall above his head. I could end him before he even wakes.
Instead, I walk to the window and draw the curtains shut.
He rolls over, blinking at the darkness and then at me, his mouth opening and closing like a fish discovered on a dock.
“Who the hell are you?”
I sit in the chair by the window and take my time. I take out my phone. I wait until the little lock icon on my screen flashes to confirm the camera is on. Then I look at him.
“I am the man who kept your sister alive when you sent her to be punished.”
He squints, then laughs. It is an ugly sound, too loud for the room.
“You with those Bratva freaks? You the one she’s spreading for?”
I stand. The chair scrapes. I cross the room in two steps and catch his throat in my hand. Not tight enough to kill. Tight enough to teach his body to obey.
“Watch your mouth,” I say.
He wheezes. His hands come up to pry at my wrist. He is not weak, but it does not matter. I could break him with mistakes alone.
I let him go and he slumps back onto the bed, coughing. The roach above him scuttles away into a crack.
“What do you want?” he rasps.
“Your absence,” I say. “Permanently.”
He smirks, tries to sit up straighter, tries to find some version of himself that looks like a man. “You think you can scare me out of my own country?”
I ignore the swagger and open my phone again. A new message from Aleksei waits in the thread. Photos of IOUs. Screenshots of betting slips. A video of a man with a bent nose explaining what will happen to Thom if he does not pay by the end of the week.
I hold up the screen so Thom can see. I watch his pupils track each line. I see the moment fear slides under his skin.
“I paid them,” I say. “You owe no one. You have no local warrants. Your probation is terminated. Consider it a miracle purchased by the man you just insulted.”
“Why would you do that?” His mouth is dry. He licks his lip. “What do you want for it?”
“I want you gone by nightfall. You will take the cash in the envelope on the nightstand and you will leave the country. I don’t care where. If I hear your name in the same breath as hers again, there will be no one to warn you about me.”
He laughs again, but it is thinner now. “And if I don’t? What are you going to do, big man? You going to hit me?”
I step forward and he flinches. That pleases me more than it should. I grab his jaw and force his face up. I make him look into my eyes so he can understand the exact shape of the thing that is speaking to him.
