Page 7 of Sins He Taught Me (Bratva Crime Syndicate 3)

The blast knocks me off my feet and sends me tumbling backwards. My head slams onto the cement and I roll to my side as I try to hack the sudden torrents of smoke from my lungs.

Every part of my body screams with pain, especially my knee. I steel myself against the agony as best I can in order to sit up. My muscles rage in protest. Around me, the building crackles with fire, and my ears ring.

The explosion left a tangled heap of metal where the factory once was.

I look down at my leg to see tiny shards of steel sticking from my skin—shrapnel from the detonation. Black smoke billows everywhere, cloaking everything.

Somewhere inside, I can hear Brianne screaming.

The sound turns my stomach. The gunshots weren’t enough of a mercy. They didn’t kill her, not completely. But the fire finishes what the hooded man started.

When her wails suddenly cut short, I know she’s really gone.

Dmitry is still in the building. I try to move, make myself go after them, even though I can already tell it’s useless. As I watch, what’s left of the ceiling collapses with a groaning metallic shriek. There’s no surviving that.

He’s gone, too.

I force myself to stand up even though all I want to do is lie there for the rest of my life.

I can’t lose my brother. Not Dmitry.

I stand and watch, wincing in pain, as the building crumbles to the ground, folding in on itself from the damage.

Suddenly, a black car with tinted windows whips around from behind it, tires screeching. It drives straight for me. I know it’s him. The vigilante. The Justice Killer, they call him.

But what justice is there in what he’s done tonight?

Innocent lives lost. They died in horrible ways. Pain that can never be forgotten.

In what world is that just? In what world is that fair?

I swear one thing as I size up the vehicle barreling towards me, intent on ending my life: tonight will not be my night to die. The Justice Killer has taken all that he will take from me.

Soon enough, I’m coming to take everything from him.

The car is close now. I have one, maybe two seconds to make my move. Left or right? I have to pick.

I fake left, then hurl myself to the right. The car whisks past me, an inch away from turning me into a sack of pulverized bone. I land with a hard thump on the concrete and roll over. I try to look around in time to see the license plate.

Only, there isn’t one.

The car speeds away into the night, leaving me alone for good, with only the sound of shrieking metal and licking flames to fill the silence.

In the distance, I hear the sound of sirens. If I don’t leave now, the police will be here. They’ll ask questions. They’ll dig deeper than just Brianne’s kidnapping. With my background and reputation, I’m a mortal lock for suspect number one. Best not to give them the chance to lock me up.

I force myself over to my motorcycle and throw my injured leg over it, gritting my teeth and hissing. For a moment, I stare at the crackling flames. My baby brother is gone. Dmitry and his wife, two lives taken just like that. Their child left alone, orphaned by a monster.

This vigilante isn’t the fucking hero that the media wants him to be.

He’s a savage.

The problem for him is, so am I.

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