Page 27 of Broken Sins (Volkov Bratva 3)

Remember who she is. Kill your weaknesses.I tell myself that again and again as I squeeze my fingernails into my palm until I feel the warm trickle of blood. Only then can I breathe easily.

“Put her there,” I tell Dante, gesturing towards a long metal table that rests in the center of the torture room. He carries her over and lays her on the table. I notice he does it gently, carefully, like she is a prized possession and not simply some whore with Russian blood rushing through her veins. That concerns me and I make a note of it. I felt a twinge of weakness. Could Dante feel the same? Dante, who has always been unhinged? Dante, twin to our lost Sergio? Of course not. Dante is cut from a different cloth. He has no capacity for feelings. The man operates on bloodlust alone.

Still, there is an undeniable tenderness to his motions. He even cradles her head to its resting place on the table and tucks a strand of hair back behind her ear.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I snarl.

He says nothing. Doesn’t even look at me, the bastard.

“I asked you a question, Dante.”

Nothing.

As I watch, his finger lingers on the side of her forehead. Slowly, he traces it down the line of her jaw, the swan-like curve of her neck, past her collarbone, circling around to her exposed ribs. It is not sexual—it is more of a tender caress.

This is wrong. Something has broken in him. I march over and snatch his hand away.

“I asked what the fuck you are doing.”

He turns to stare at me balefully. In the low light of the gas lamps surrounding us, his eyes look like petrified amber, with the tiny speck of his pupil captured like some ancient insect in the midst of it. “I lost a brother too, Vito,” he says softly, in a voice I have never heard from him before. “Do not think that you are the only one with something to avenge.”

I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t even know what he means. All I know is that I don’t like it.

“Just don’t touch the fucking girl any more than you have to. Understood?”

He looks at me, then down to the Volkov girl, then back to me. “What is she to you?” he asks suddenly.

His tone irks me. “She is a pawn. What does it matter?”

He just nods in response, like he heard more in my reply than I intended to share. A moment later, the light shifts, and all the strange shadows I thought I saw in him seem to vanish at once. He is the old Dante again, full of sharp, unexpected edges. Wild. Feral. Reckless. A crazed smile splits his lips. “Just a pawn. As it should be.” I watch his finger trail along Milaya’s leather-clad hip. “Perhaps we ought to fuck her then? Break her in, yeah?”

Inexplicably, rage blossoms in me. Roaring wordlessly, I grab him by the throat, turn, and hurl him up against the wall. My face is mere inches from his as I hiss, “Do not lay a finger on her. Do you hear me? Not a single goddamn finger.”

I’m breathing heavily. He just laughs, a bitter sound. It sounds like the broken-glass laugh of our father. That sends a chill racing down my spine. But I don’t let Dante know that.

Suddenly, I am aware of a presence behind me. I relinquish my grip on Dante’s neck and turn to see Leo and Mateo standing at the mouth of the stairwell, staring at me with an expectant gaze.

They want me to explain myself. I am the don now and yet here I am, attacking my own brother, my own right-hand man, all because he laid a teasing finger on a girl who ought to mean nothing to me. It looks as wrong as it feels.Allof this looks as wrong as it feels. This wasn’t how things were meant to go. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I can only double down. Retreating would send a bad message, and now is not the time to look weak in front of my brothers. I need to reassure them that I have control of the situation, that everything is going according to plan.

“Noneof you are to lay a finger on her,” I order in the low, acid tone I heard my father use on his lieutenants too many times to count. “Or I will flay you to within an inch of your life. Is that clear?”

No one says a word. My voice echoes around the stones of the room and fades away, until all I can hear is the sound of my own labored breathing. Mateo blinks. Leo cracks his neck.

The walls feel like they’re closing in around me. I want out of this foul room. Growling, I stride towards Mateo and Leo and shove them aside. I resist the temptation to take one last look at Milaya before I sweep up the stairs and she disappears from sight.

* * *

I slam the door to my bedroom and sink to a seat on the floor behind it. The tiny slice in my hand is tenuously scabbed over now. I examine it. The knotted, dried blood is crimson against my pale skin.

Milaya looked so pale. Not like every other female in Los Angeles, all tanned and olive-complected. She was like a dish of cream, untarnished, untouched even by the sun …

“Fuck!” I bellow, open my hand, and slap myself across the face as hard as I can once, twice, three times. The pain is hot and relieving. It brings me back into the present. I jerk upright, snatch the glass decanter of whiskey that I keep on the bar cart in one corner of my quarters, and storm into the bathroom.

My shoes clack on the marble floor as I whirl and face the mirror. I look like a fucking mess. My hair is mussed from the policeman’s cap, my eyes are whirling and wild. I have a sudden and irrepressible urge to be free of this stupid costume. I take a swig of whiskey and slap myself in the face once more, then begin stripping my clothes away. I can’t get them off fast enough. I kick off the shoes, rip the buttons of the shirt wide open and tear it off me, unbuckle my belt and let it fall to the floor. Only when I am completely bared do I feel even the tiniest measure of relief.

I can’t stop thinking about the moment when she first opened the door to the hotel. I froze, like an idiot. I damn near ruined everything right then. I just didn’t expect her to look the way she did …

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