Page 3 of Broken Sins (Volkov Bratva 3)

I take a deep breath and swallow past the knot in my throat. It’s over for me now. I am back in the brothers’ possession. Perhaps it was foolish to think I ever had a chance of becoming free again. That shattered hope is stabbing me in the heart right now like shards of glass that once made up a delicate sculpture. I shouldn’t have ever hoped. It will make the ending that much worse.

I look up at Vito. He is not as tall as his younger brothers, but he is the most muscular. He has the same nose that they all do. Strong, straight as an arrow, leading up into a proud forehead. Those eyes—I used to swear they were black all the way through, pupil and iris alike. I don’t know anymore. I don’t know anything anymore. What’s real, what’s fake, what’s a lie, what’s true?

Who the fuck knows?

“We have found you, Milaya Volkov,” he growls in a voice deeper than sound, rasping like a metal edge on stone. “You cannot run anymore.”

I don’t say anything. There’s nothing to say. He’s right—I can’t run anymore.

We stand there and stare at each other for a few long moments. My breath has slowed from short, sharp gasps to a soft inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. He doesn’t blink, doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything else.

Is it insane that I notice his smell? Blood and sweat and cologne all mixed together. It’s as intoxicating as it was the very first time. I must be deranged. My time in their castle drove me mad. Stockholm Syndrome doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Maybe I was wrong about being near the breaking point.

Maybe the truth is that I broke a long, long time ago.

I can sense the others drawing close around me. They step in and join me in a circle of darkness. I am surrounded now by a wall of men. They all have a similar smell. The same blood and sweat as Vito. But each brother bears a unique musk that is entirely his own.

Like a ballerina figurine in a toy box, I do a slow pivot and drink in the sight of them. Even now, I can see that my killers are gorgeous. Sculpted by the hands of angels.

Mateo, the wise one, green-eyed.

Leo, the beautiful, blue-eyed.

Dante, the wild, honey-eyed.

And back to the front, to the beginning, to Vito, the leader, black-eyed.

They’re waiting for me to do something.

I swallow again. It hurts. Christ, everything hurts, from the bottoms of my bleeding feet to the hair on my scalp, the same hair that each of these men has wound their hands through and tugged back on to make me moan and scream and beg in turns.

I didn’t expect the end of my life to hurt this badly.

“Well?” I say with a voice cockier than I truly feel. I haven’t made this easy on them since the night they took me. I don’t plan on starting now. “You found me. Now what?”

“Now,” Dante answers, “we are going to finish what we started.”

Milaya

One Month Earlier

I’m walking underneath the awning of the strip mall on Westwood, right down the road from the Equinox by campus, when I see them.

Crap.

I feel exposed, even though I’m wearing baggy gray sweats over my tight spandex booty shorts and a white tank top over my neon pink sports bra. My hair is pulled back into a no-nonsense ponytail, but I’m still wearing makeup because I had a coffee meeting with a professor on campus this morning to discuss my proposal for an upcoming assignment.

I don’t have long to act. I think about what I should do next.

I’ve got a duffel bag slung over one shoulder that holds all of my gym gear. I rifle through the contents with my free hand real quick, trying to come up with a game plan.

My fingerless padded boxing gloves won’t help much. That’ll just make my punches that much less threatening. At five-foot-four, one hundred and twenty pounds, I’m petite enough already that there are very few people on earth who are scared of my punches as it is.

Jump rope? I could swing it like Indiana Jones’ bullwhip. Or, wait, maybe I can hide behind a pillar until one of the two bald Mafia goon-looking guys who are hunting me down gets too close. Then I’ll jump out to strangle him. It’s not a great plan, but it’s the best I’ve got …

Until my fingers close around the gun my dad gave me before I left for school.

---