Page 18 of Chased & Bred by the BRATVA
“Where are you?” Roman asks, his voice edged with something akin to concern. It irritates me.
“Red Rooms. Heading back soon.”
“You going to tell Rachel?” he asks.
I pause.
Not because I don’t want to.
Because I don’t know how.
Because part of me wants to lock her away until this is done and only show her the cleaned-up version of the truth. But that part is losing ground. She’s not a girl who needs to be sheltered.
She’s a woman who ran barefoot into the dark and dared me to catch her.
“I’ll tell her what she needs to know,” I say.
Roman hums. “She’s getting to you.”
“She already got to me.”
He doesn’t respond. Doesn’t need to.
I hang up and glance once more at the photo on my phone. Rachel, barely holding herself up, stepping toward the car.
She could’ve died.
She could’ve vanished and the world wouldn’t have blinked.
But she didn’t. Because fate, luck, God, whatever you want to call it, put her in my fucking woods instead.
And now?
Now I’m going to make damn sure the men who tried to steal her know exactly what it means to take something that doesn’t belong to them.
By the time Aleksei finds them and brings them to me, they’ll be begging for death.
Rachel
A knock on the door steals my thoughts away from the bleak place they went to. I’m thankful when Clara’s flushed but friendly face appears.
“Nikolai said you need a charger? I brought a few different kinds.” She holds up a fist full of wires, the plugs dangling from her hand. “Are you okay?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I offer, but it sounds hollow even to me. “I’m just thinking through things, how different my life turned out to what I imagined when I was growing up.”
“I get that,” Clara says with a light puff of laughter. “Do you want to talk about it?” she offers, and I can’t stop the tears springing to my eyes. She is a stranger and yet she has shown me more kindness than my own friends have for a long time.
“No,” I say, my voice thick with tears. “It doesn’t matter, really, does it? Soon Nikolai will get bored of me and then I’ll return to my empty life and it will be like I was never gone. Never here.”
I plug my phone in and wait for it to turn on.
“I don’t think you understand what it means to be chosen by a Vasiliev,” Clara says more seriously, joining me on the side of the bed. “It certainly doesn’t mean you're confined to the bedroom though. Let me show you around the estate while your phone charges.”
She stands and offers me her hand, the other one immediately finding and stroking her round belly.
“When are you due?” I ask as I stand.
“Two months to go yet,” she says. “It seems as though Maksim makes big babies,” she adds with a laugh. “I’m exhausted carrying this one and he never lets me go far. But the walk will do me good.”
