Page 76 of Broken Sins (Volkov Bratva 3)

“So what do we do next?”

I chuckle quietly. “If I knew, do you think I’d be this drunk?”

I can hear him scowling again. He snatches the flask back from me and drinks deeply once more. He smacks his lips as he drains the last of the alcohol, then hurls the canister into the woods as far as he can. Squirrels skitter away in the underbrush, frightened by the sudden intrusion.

“You bastard. You owe me a flask.”

“Put it on my tab.”

We sit in silence for a while. What else is there to say? I don’t know what Leo did with her and I don’t honestly want to know. Mostly because I don’t want to tell him what I did with her—or, more accurately, what she did with me. It feels intensely private, like that was a moment for us and us alone.

And yet, strangely enough, I don’t feel a shred of jealousy. We’ve never shared women between us before. But for some reason, the thought of Leo fucking Milaya doesn’t stir envy in my chest the way I thought it might. What she and I did on that carpet can’t be replicated. It wasn’t sex, or at least, it wasn’tjustsex. There was more to it—a conversation with our bodies—that could only take place between me and her.

“He will be here soon,” Leo says abruptly after God-knows-how-long has passed.

“I know.”

“What then?”

“Not a fucking clue.”

Quiet resumes. Little woodland creatures dash through the underbrush. An owl hoots. A few bats wing around the gazebo roof overhead.

After a while, the exhaustion has claimed me completely. Rather than inebriate me, the alcohol has just dragged me down towards sleep. I stand and offer Leo a hand to help him to his feet. “Come on, brother,” I tell him. “A man can only torture himself in the darkness for so long.”

He eyes me for a long moment before he accepts my offer and I pull him up.

“You’ve been at it again.”

I hesitate, then nod.

“You can’t beat the devil out of yourself, Dante,” he says. It almost sounds caring.

“Well, I can keep fucking trying, can’t I?” I laugh, but he doesn’t.

“I’m worried for you. You will go too far one day.”

I turn away from him and start down the path. “That’s my problem, isn’t it?”

Leo lunges forward to grab my shoulder and whirl me back around to face him. “Sergio’s death is not your fault, Dante. Neither is Father’s.”

“Fuck Father. Let the old bastard burn in hell.”

“Burn? All his friends are down there. He’s fucking loving the place.”

We laugh together at that. It’s an unexpected moment of lightness in a night that feels so dark, heavy, and cloying. It feels wrong somehow to be laughing, but I laugh anyway, and it feels good to do that. To stand with my brother in the night and feel for just the briefest of moments like I’m not as alone as I might otherwise think.

The moment passes, but its warmth lingers. Sighing, we turn as one and go back up towards the castle, though each of us is still hurtling at breakneck speed towards a grim and uncertain future.

21

Milaya

I wake up shivering.

I don’t know what time it is. It’s still nighttime outside of my window, but the moonlight has disappeared completely. I feel a painful crick in my neck and realize that I must have fallen asleep curled into a little ball on the rug, right where Dante left me. I can still feel the heat he left between my thighs, though it is sticky and dried now. My hips ache and the rug burn on my knees is irritating.

I don’t want to move. As uncomfortable as this position is, I feel like if I can just stay here forever then I can pretend that what just happened didn’t actually happen at all. I can pretend that I didn’t just hold a knife to a man’s throat and then pull him inside of me.

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