Page 37 of Bratva Bride

Lukyan spoke to Adrian in Russian."Oni planiruyut ubit' nas i zabrat' Ileana. prigotov'sya".They plan to kill us and take Illayana. Get ready.

All at once the men sprang forward, attacking. I didn't have time to think about anything else but the situation in front of me. I could only hope that Adrian and Lorenzo could hold their own. I couldn't worry about the other five men behind me as well as the five in front of me.

Four men jumped for Lukyan, while the man who spoke walked slowly towards me, taking his sweet fucking time. They thought I wasn't a threat, that much was painfully obvious. The fact they stuck four on Lukyan and only one on me clearly showed that. Well, they'd see soon enough.

Gunshots rang through the small alleyway and sounds of fighting reached my ears, but I blocked it out. Blocked it all out and focused on the fucker who thought he could take me down. I didn’t have the time or luxury to screw around. Lukyan had four guys coming at him, I needed to get rid of this guy quickly so I could help him. Knowing Lukyan, he’d take all four of them head on without using his gun, because the fucker liked to fight with his hands. It wouldn’t be the first time. He only used his gun in dire circumstances. He was a knife man.

The second the man stepped within my reach, I attacked. I struck my hand out, delivering a solid palm strike to his nose. His head whipped back and I heard his nose break, but I didn't give him a chance to retaliate. I swiftly followed with a punch to his sternum, a blow to his kidneys, a kick to the kneecap and finished off with a solid uppercut. All in under five seconds.

He grunted as I delivered each blow, pain rippling through his body. Without losing momentum, I dealt him a solid roundhouse kick right in the chest, sending his body flying back and sprawling to the ground. The sound of more gunshots came from all around me but I didn't have time to stop and look. I needed to finish off my opponent before he recovered.

He was lying on the ground, eyes closed, groaning in pain. I nudged him with my heel and his eyes shot open.

"Quien es la puta ahora?"Who's the whore now?I said in Spanish, my lips curving into a smile.

Before he could respond, I picked up my foot and drove my spiked heel deep into his throat. He choked, a painful gurgling sound slipping past his lips as blood poured out of his mouth. Blood spurted out everywhere as I pulled my heel out. His hands wrapped around his throat, his eyes wide open with fear. I wish I could have stayed to watch the life drain from his eyes but there wasn't time.

I turned and ran to Lukyan. He had already taken out one of those fuckers, leaving three left. He was holding off two of them, blocking their attacks while the third was circling him, trying to find an opening to attack. I pulled a knife out and jumped onto his back, wrapping my legs tightly around his torso. Before he could react, I pulled his head back and used the blade in my hand to cut his throat swiftly.

As his body fell, I leapt forward, flipping in the air, and landed solidly on my feet. I turned around just in time to see Lukyan drive his knife deep into a man's heart. He kicked his body, pulling the knife free at the same time. The last man remaining ran forward, trying to catch Lukyan off guard.

Not on my fucking watch.

I threw my knife hard, aiming for the fucker. It flew through the air and struck him in the head, directly between his eyes. Knife throwing was one of my best skills.

We both immediately moved to help Adrian and Lorenzo. They had each taken down one man, leaving three left. They were both covered in blood, holding a knife in each hand. The ground was littered with guns, obviously having been knocked aside during the fight. Lukyan jumped to help Adrian, who was squaring off with two men while I moved to Lorenzo.

The man was distracted, his focus stuck firmly on Lorenzo. He didn't even see me coming. I dealt a swift kick to his legs, bringing him to his knees. I quickly pulled another blade from my waist and drove it deep into his back, severing his spinal cord. He screamed in agony as I twisted the knife deeper and deeper, until it couldn't go any further. I kicked him in the back and he fell to the ground face first.

I went to move onto the next when I realised there was no one left. Adrian and Lukyan stood side by side, breathing heavily, blood dripping from the knives in their hands. Bodies were lying everywhere, pools of blood beginning to form.

A painful groan came from behind me. Lukyan's eyes snapped to where the sound was coming from and he moved swiftly to the man’s side. He picked up the back of his head and was about to slit his throat open before I spoke.

"Wait," I said, breathless.

"Why?" Lukyan growled, looking at me, the rage from the fight still burning in his eyes.

"Don't you think Father is going to want to speak with him?"

A sinister smile spread across his face as he pulled my knife from the man's back and flipped him over. The man groaned again, his face contorted in pain. Lukyan gripped his chin roughly, forcing the man to look at him.

"You're going to wish I had killed you. My father will have no mercy," Lukyan spat.

ChapterEleven

Arturo De Luca

The sound of my office door opening made me look up from the screen I was glaring at, filled with so many numbers it was giving me a fucking headache. Vincenzo was standing directly in front of me, his dark hair styled neatly for once and wearing a light grey suit with a black tie.

"What do you want?” I asked, looking back to the iPad in front of me. I didn’t have the time to talk right now, not unless it was important.

As Underboss, I oversaw all our Capos, making sure they were doing their job and keeping our soldiers in line. There was a certain hierarchy to the Cosa Nostra. My father, as Don, was in charge of everyone and everything but he delegated certain tasks to others. Vin was our enforcer, responsible for dealing out punishments to those who deserved it - and he was usually brutal about it. I not only dealt with our Capos and lower rank soldiers, but also kept the books for our businesses, making sure everything matched up.

We owned several different companies as well as a few small-time businesses, which all required monitoring on a daily basis. We also had our not-so-legal enterprises. We owned the drug trade here in New York. If you wanted a little something, it came from us. Coke, meth, heroin, weed. You name it, we had it. And we were theonlyones to sell it.

If we caught anyone else selling shit in our territory, we made an example out of them, making sure it was crystal fucking clear what happened when you sold in our territory. Right now, I was sifting through our accounts, running the numbers on our latest drop. Something wasn’t adding up. We were missing money and I had no idea why. Over $50,000 just poof, gone…into thin fucking air.

Vin took a seat, leaning his big body back into the chair and kicked his boots up onto my desk. "You don't look so good, big brother. Tired?" he smirked.

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