Page 18 of The Bratva's Hunted Bride
“Are we going to your house?” I try again. Getting a straight answer out of this man is all but impossible.
His jaw tightens, but to my surprise, he answers. “One of them.”
“But not the one I was just at,” I fill in the rest for him.
As we continue to drive, the houses become scarcer and the trees become denser. We bump over an old railroad crossing. He doesn’t slow, even when there’s not another car in sight. There’s nothing but old, crumbling barns and fields out here.
“Are you taking me out here to kill me where no one can hear me scream?” I’m only half joking, and my fingers find the door handle. If he tries anything, I’d rather take my chances jumping out of the car.
He gives me a wry look. “After I went through all that trouble to save you? No.”
We slow and pull suddenly onto a nearly hidden driveway. Branches scrape the windows. The drive is long and potholed, bouncing us side to side as we make our way down it. The house up ahead is a far cry from the mansion he’d taken me to before, small, dark, nearly overtaken by the trees and bushes surrounding it.
My legs feel as stable as gummy bears when I go to step out of the car, nearly buckling underneath me. Timofey is there, wrapping one arm around my waist to stabilize me, leaving a bloody smear across my shirt. I swallow another wave of bile.
“You killed them,” I whisper. “Like it was nothing. Just—”
I inhale and squeeze my eyes shut, but the image of Timofey stabbing that man haunts me in the dark.
He tightens his grip, using one hand to push back a branch that’s hanging over the stairs into the house. “They were going to hurt you.”
The porch creaks beneath my feet. Despite the overgrown landscaping, the house itself is almost charming on closer inspection, and the blooming vine that has taken over the railing smells like citrus.
“What is this place?” I ask, spinning around to take it in. The furnishings are simple and rustic, but clean. I expected dust and cobwebs, but someone obviously takes care of the place.
He flips on the lights. “A getaway of sorts. A hideout. A place no one but me knows about.”
“Not even your family?”
“No.”
If I thought my chances of escaping him were bleak before, they just got a whole lot more dismal.
“Here,” he says, pouring me a glass of water. “Drink this and sit down. You’re white as a sheet.”
My emotions twist in my gut: anger, fear, despair. It’s a nasty, churning thing that makes me want to lash out, to knock the glass from his hand just to see it shatter on the floor. He saved me, sure, but I was only in that situation because of him. If I hadn’t been fleeing from his house, I wouldn’t have been on that street at that moment.
But he’d saved me. He’d put his life in danger to do so. There’s something dark and twisted that surges through my veins when I look at him, but it isn’t as simple as hate. It’s something more complicated than that. Something I’m afraid to examine.
“Because some of us have normal human emotions,” I snap at him. I feel like I’ve entered some other dimension where violence is normal for everyone but me. Is this the world my brothers inhabit every day? “Don’t you feel anything about what you just did?”
His head tilts to one side as he considers. “I feel pleased that I killed them before they could hurt you. Displeased that I could not kill them before they touched you. I would’ve carvedtheir hands off for their audacity, but there wasn’t time. I’m sorry.”
My mouth drops open. He’s a monster. But… a protective one? He seems genuinely upset that the men had managed to grab me, and it’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen from him.
“Don’t apologize for that,” I sigh. “I don’t want you to do that for me.”
“But I would, Talia. I’d do that and more for you.”
He holds out the glass and I gasp. “Your arm! You’re bleeding.”
It’s no small wound either, but a huge gash extending over half the length of his forearm, still oozing blood. Some of it drips onto the floor. He glances down at the cut and shrugs like it’s nothing.
“I’ll live,” he says. “I’ve got a first aid kit around here somewhere.”
“You need to sit down,” I say, taking the cup from him and pointing at the sofa. “You’re covered in blood. We need to close that wound somehow.”
He looks like he’s about to argue, but then, to my surprise, listens. I find the first aid kit in the kitchen and return, pulling out the roll of gauze and some antibacterial wipes.
