Page 33 of Stalked & Bred by the BRATVA
“I do not hit men like you,” I say. “I erase them.”
He tries to pull back. He can’t. My thumb presses into the hinge of his jaw until his eyes water. I imagine all the ways Icould make his bones sing. I taste copper in my mouth from clenching my teeth.
“I should kill you,” I say. “For the bruise on her ribs. For the split lip. For the night you locked her in a room and took her phone so she could not call anyone. For making her think pain was the price of being alive. I should end you and drop you in a river and tell no one.”
He has stopped fighting. Now he is listening. Men like him always listen when the wind changes.
“But she wouldn’t want that,” I finish.
He blinks. Confusion replaced by a sneer. “She always was soft.”
The punch lands before the thought is finished. I do not hit his nose. I hit the muscle at the side of his jaw so the shock rings in his teeth. He folds around the pain, palms up, breath gone.
“That is the last time you speak about her character,” I say. “You will leave a note at the front desk that says you checked out early. You will take the bus to the airport with the ticket I have already purchased. You will disappear into a country that does not speak your language. Every month, a small transfer will arrive to a card in a name that is not yours. If you try to find her, the money ends. If you so much as stand on a street two neighborhoods from mine, your heart stops beating between one step and the next.”
He groans and rolls to his side. He looks at the envelope like it might bite him.
“There is no catch,” I say. “Only the reality that your usefulness as a lesson is over.”
“What lesson?” he whispers.
“That she belongs to me now. Not to you. Not to fear. Not to the past you built for her.”
He stares at the floor. The anger leaks out of him the way heat leaks out of old windows. He nods once. It is not contrition. It is instinct. Predators know when they have met something higher on the chain.
I take a step back so he can breathe without shaking. I look around the room one more time, confirming there is nothing here that ties him to her except his bad memory.
At the door, I pause.
“If you pray,” I say without turning, “thank whatever you pray to that she is better than I am.”
I leave him to his empty bed and dead roaches and unearned second chance.
The sun is higher when I step back into the street. I want to wash the room off my skin. I want to scrub the shape of his face out of my hands. Instead I drive back with the same quiet that carried me away. At a red light I text Aleksei a single word. Done. My phone buzzes with a check mark and a promise to keep eyes on any airport footage.
By the time I pull through the gates of the estate, the worst of the heat has evaporated. The house looks like it always does in the early afternoon. Clean windows. Order in the stone. The smell of lemon oil in the hall.
Sarah is in my room when I open the door. She has moved the coffee to the dresser and she is staring at herself in the mirror. Her hair is loose around her shoulders. Her mouth has that soft curve I do not see on anyone else. There is a scrap of blue silk between her fingers, held like a talisman.
She sees me in the reflection. Her eyes change. Something inside my ribs unlocks.
“I did not plan to leave the house today,” I say.
“I know.”
I cross the distance and stop behind her. I don’t touch her yet. I let her choose.
Her gaze drops to my hands. She leans back so her shoulder presses into my chest.
“What happened?” she asks.
“Something necessary,” I say. “He is gone. You won’t see him again.”
Her fingers tighten on the silk. She doesn’t ask for proof, or about what I did. She closes her eyes and takes one slow breath like her lungs just learned there is air for her too.
“Thank you,” she says.
I bend and put my mouth to the place where her neck meets her shoulder. The taste is warm and clean. The taste is home.
