Page 37 of Broken Sins (Volkov Bratva 3)

I was halfway across the tile when I heard a shocked giggle. Immediately, instinctively, I dropped into a fighting stance. Right foot back and offset for balance, fists up, head on a swivel as I scanned the surroundings. This wing of the house was typically unoccupied if my training or my brothers’ was not underway. The awnings cast shadows around the perimeter, but my eyesight was perfect. I could see through the darkness.

I looked, looked, looked—there.

A young girl stood shyly in one corner. She was covering her mouth up as she giggled again. Her hair was dark like the wine my father drank at dinners, but her skin was so pale as to be almost translucent. Her eyes, too, shimmered in the light of the setting sun that reflected off the surface of the pool. So green. Like a meadow. But with flecks of coffee-colored amber mixed in.

“Who are you?” I called out. “Is this a test?” It wouldn’t be the first time that Antoni had sent someone unassuming to probe my awareness and ability to respond to a threat at a moment’s notice.

The girl just giggled. I saw now that she was a little older than I had thought at first. Right around my age, if I had to guess. Her breasts were just budding beneath her white T-shirt, and I could see the beginnings of a womanly curve to the thighs exposed beneath the hem of her jean shorts.

I glanced down at myself, realized she was seeing me naked, and—to my surprise—I blushed. I took the last few steps to the towel rack hurriedly to grab one and wrap it around my waist. I was still dripping water from the pool, down the bridge of my nose and puddling at my feet.

The girl kept staring.

“What do you want?” I said. It was silent back here, and with the walls of the castle surrounding us on three sides, my voice echoed louder than I had intended. I winced, lowered my voice, and said again, “What do you want?”

Again, she said nothing, just stared at me with a soft smile playing on the corners of her lips.

I crossed the distance between us warily, one step at a time, like I was trying to sneak up on a wild deer. She stayed still for now, but she looked like she might flee at any moment, so I moved carefully. I stopped a dozen steps away.

“What do you want?” I said for the third time.

“Nothing,” she answered. I saw her eyes trace down my body, from my tousled black hair to the v-line where my abs disappeared beneath the towel. I was well-muscled for thirteen, courtesy of the extensive training my father and Antoni put me through.

“Then who are you?”

In response, she pointed to the pool shed at the far end of the courtyard. The door was slightly ajar, and when I held my breath and listened close, I could hear the clink of tools on machinery and the muffled cursing of a man at work.

“My father is fixing the pool,” she explained. “I had to come with him today. Since it’s not a school day. What school do you go to?”

I blinked. It was a strange question. “I go to school here.”

“Here?” Her nose wrinkled. “What does that mean?”

I pointed to the castle behind me. “Here. At home.”

“You go to school the same place you live? That’s weird.”

“No, it’s not. I have to learn special things. So I can be—” I was going to say,“so I can be don one day,”but I stopped myself short, remembering my father’s lessons. I didn’t know who I was talking to, so it was best not to blab needlessly. But for some reason, I wanted to impress this girl.

She was beautiful. So … untarnished. In comparison to the scars and bruises crisscrossing my young body, she looked like she hadn’t been touched by a single soul since the day she was born.

“What kind of things do you learn?”

“Fighting. Tactics. Business. Like, numbers and accounting and stuff.”

She wrinkled her brow like she pitied me. “What about like, art?”

I scoffed. “What use is art?”

“I like art.” She shrugged. “It’s fun.”

“I don’t have time for fun.”

“That’s sad.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. It hadn’t ever occurred to me before to have an opinion about what I was learning or why. It was just the way things were. The way things had to be. Why question it? That would be like questioning gravity or the pattern of the sun rising and setting. Didn’t do anybody any good, because it couldn’t possibly be changed.

We both turned our heads at the same time when we heard the door to the pool shed thump closed. A man emerged. He was in his mid-forties, medium height, a bit portly around the middle and starting to go bald in the center of his scalp. He had a bag of tools in one hand and was wiping at his face with a filthy, oil-stained rag in the other. The rag kept him from seeing us until he was almost all of the way around the pool, headed in our direction.

---