Page 1 of Bad Blood

Prologue

She’s mine now…

Before she can get in her car and drive away, I reach for the door and hold it shut.

“I told you to leave me alone.” Billie sneers.

“And I told you we’d only just begun.”

“You need to leave me alone. This is stalking. I have pepper spray for creatures like you.”

I laugh. “Baby, I’m in the Bratva. Do you really think pepper spray is going to stop me from doing whatever I plan to do to you?”

She swallows hard and seethes. “What are you going to do to me?”

“You shouldn’t ask a guy like me questions like that.” I reach out and touch her cheek.

She flinches, turning her face, but the brief contact with her soft skin heats my blood.

“Don’t touch me.”

I lean forward and inhale her, taking in the scent of roses and something feminine.

“Why? I think you would quite like being touched by me.”

Chapter1

Billie

As my mother pulls up in the school’s parking lot, I stare ahead at Raventhorn Academy’s Gothic-style design.

If I didn’t know any better, I could be staring at a mashup of Notre-Dame in Paris and Bran Castle in Romania, rumored to belong to Count Dracula.

It’s beautiful.

Beautiful and exactly the type of building the normal version of myself would appreciate because of my deep-rooted love for art.

But I’m not the normal me today. I haven’t been me in so long, I can’t remember who I am. Today is just the start of another piece-of-shit day in my life in a place I don’t want to be.

Another school. Another start. Another disaster waiting to happen.

Warm hands brush over my arm, cutting into my thoughts. I turn to meet Mom’s worried eyes as she moves her Oakleys to sit on top of her mane of luscious dark locks that Hollywood has christened her signature look.

I have the same long hair, her sea-green eyes, and her petite athletic frame. People are always telling me I’m the spitting image of her, and I hate it.

I don’t want to be anything like her.

“Don’t look so worried. It’ll be fine. Everyone gets nervous when they’re starting at a new school.” She taps my wrist, and the giant-sized diamond in her engagement ring sparkles in the bright morning sun. “I know you’ll settle in quickly.”

I give her a narrowed look. “I don’t want to be here. You know that. So I can’t see how you think I’ll be fine orsettlein. I don’t want to go to this school, and I don’t want to live in New York.”

She presses her lips together and regards me with a hurt look in her eyes I don’t care for. I used to care about her until I realized what kind of person she is.

“We’ve been through this, and we’re not talking about it again.”

“Mom, we didn’t have to leave L.A.”

“Yes, we did. Moving here was for the best. I know you blame me, but what happened wasn’t my fault.” That stern expression I hate fills her face.

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