Page 2 of Captured By the Masked BRATVA
The crowd thickens around the stage, but I know how to move through people who would rather not see me coming. A narrow corridor opens along the side of the ballroom; she takes it, probably looking for air. I follow.
The noise dulls with each step. Gilded doors, dark wood, the faint smell of roses from the arrangements near the exit. She walks with her head slightly bowed, one hand lifting the hem of her dress so it doesn’t drag. I catch up just before the last door and watch.
She bursts into the night air, dragging lungs full of it into her open mouth as though she is drowning. Then she stands, still and silent. Finally, just as the cold begins to bite, her shoulders drop a fraction and the rage swells up inside me.
My fingers close around her wrist. Warm skin, a startled breath. She turns, green eyes wide behind her silver mask.
“You shouldn’t have played that,” I say.
The words sound calm, but inside everything is breaking loose again. The music, the memory, the ghost of my brother’s voice calling my name from a lifetime ago.
She doesn’t pull away. The pulse beneath my fingers beats quick and thin, like a frightened bird. Her skin is softer than I imagined, warmer than I have any right to notice. I came here prepared for hatred, for the cold satisfaction of retribution, but the woman standing in front of me is not the one I pictured.
Up close, she’s smaller than I expected, delicate in a way that has nothing to do with weakness. The light from the terrace lamps spills across her face, catching on the edge of her mask. Her eyes are soft. Not defiant, but wide and lost. For a moment I forget what I meant to say next.
She looks like she’s already been living with ghosts.
The wind lifts a strand of her golden-brown hair and carries the faintest trace of perfume. Something floral and clean. It twists the knife. I wanted to see arrogance, guilt, a reflection of everything I’ve hated these past months. Instead I see sorrow written into every line of her body. She looks as if she’s been trying to disappear for a very long time.
My grip loosens a fraction, though I don’t let go. The part of me that still remembers Lev’s laughter demands I hate her harder, crush the softness before it spreads. But the longer I look, the harder it is to hold on to rage. She has Lev’s quiet about her, the same way of holding pain like a secret no one deserves to hear.
“What do you want from me?” she whispers.
The question trembles in the space between us. I don’t answer. I can’t. I tell myself I’m studying her, searching for evidence, weighing how best to make her pay. But what I’m really doing is memorising the tremor in her throat, the shape of her mouth, the way her eyes glint with unshed tears.
It feels wrong, this pull. Wrong and unstoppable.
I tighten my hold again, less to restrain her than to keep myself from doing something worse. Her pulse beats against my thumb. The music from inside reaches us in faint echoes, soft and steady.
I think of Lev. Of how he would look at me if he saw what I’m doing.
But when I look at her again, I know that whatever this is, I have to ignore it. I came here for one reason.
I came here to take revenge.
Elena
He doesn’t release me when the silence stretches. The heat of his hand seeps into my skin, and I realise with irony how no one has ever touched me with purpose. And now they have and it’s fury that beats from him, not lust or desire. The air between us vibrates with something I don’t understand, but I don’t fight. I don’t even ask him again about what he wants.
He turns, guiding me back into the hotel with a grip that brooks no argument. People still drift through the corridors, masked and laughing, but they don’t look at us. I could scream, twist away, make a scene, but the thought never solidifies. Instead I walk where he leads, the sound of our steps echoing in time, like a slow procession to a place I’ve already been.
I’m not afraid. I left fear behind the night Lev died. Whatever happens now feels like a continuation of that loss, the world finally catching up to what has already broken inside me.
The elevator doors close, sealing us into mirrored quiet. He stands close enough that I can see the reflection of his eyes, blue, storm-dark and unreadable. The longer I look, the more something stirs in the back of my mind, an old familiarity I can’t name.
When the elevator stops, he takes me down a hallway lined with gilt doors. At the end, he opens one with a keycard and draws me inside. The suite is all plush carpet and glass,impersonal, expensive. The city glitters beyond the windows like a sea of false stars.
He finally lets go of my wrist. I rub the place where his fingers had been, the skin pink from the pressure.
“You don’t recognise me,” he says. His voice has softened, but it carries the same gravity as before.
I shake my head. “Should I?”
He studies me for a long moment, then steps into the light. “I share his eyes.”
The words fall heavy and sure. My breath catches. Dark blue eyes. The memory slams into me all at once, Lev’s laughter, the way he’d gesture when he spoke about his family, the older brother who never smiled for photographs.
The man in front of me is Lev’s brother.
