Page 113 of Shattered Altar (Makarova Bratva Duet)

“Is this where you grew up?”

“More or less. We moved here when I was young. I shot my first gun at that tree back there.”

“I should’ve known that would be a fond memory for you,” I mutter. “We had very different childhoods.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

He gives me a subtle glance there that suggests there’s more to those words than he’s letting on. It wouldn’t be right to call it sorrowful, but it’s something along those lines. Somber, maybe. Melancholy.

“You didn’t mind it?” I ask in a quieter, less bitchy voice. “Being trained like a soldier instead of being allowed to be a child?”

“Why would I have minded?”

I raise my eyebrows. “You never missed, shoot, I don’t know… kicking around a ball in the garden with your dad?”

“What good would that do me now?”

“Never mind,” I say with a shudder. “Question retracted.”

He leans against the refrigerator and folds his arms across his chest. “Not all of us have cookie-cutter upbringings, Olivia. Some of us are built for different things.”

“That sounds like something you should address with a therapist, not with me,” I retort. “But surely you did something normal. College?”

“No.”

“A job?”

“The Bratva is my job.”

“Yes, God, you say that enough, I get it. But did you ever work at, like, a Burger King?”

He snorts. “Absolutely not.”

“What about a normal dating life?” I ask, encouraged by the fact that he’s actually answering my questions. “How did you meet girls?”

“In clubs and bars like everyone else.” He leans forward and adds, “And they were women. Not girls. The kind of women who knew exactly who they were and what they wanted from life.”

Playing the comparison game doesn’t end with any winners, but I can’t stop myself. I find myself wondering about his first time, his first love. Did he even have a first love? Is he even capable of such a thing?

“I can see all those questions filtering through your head, you know,” he remarks, breaking my concentration.

“Oh, so you’re a mind reader now?”

“It’s my job to know things that people don’t want to tell me,” he says simply. “But with you, I can’t exactly take the credit.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not very good at hiding how you feel.”

I flinch back defensively and put down the fork in my hand. “I hate that you think you know me.”

“But I do, kiska. I know you better than you know yourself.”

“One day,” I say, looking him in the eye, “one day, I’m going to do something unpredictable. I’m going to prove you wrong.”

He smiles that deadly, sexy smile of his. “I look forward to it.”

When he pushes himself upright, I actually feel the disappointment swell in my gut like something physical. Why on earth does he make me feel like I’m losing something every time he walks away from me?

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