Page 61 of Bratva Queen

“I want to be a little more creative this time, you know?” Stepan played with the knife as he spoke to the guards, and they chuckled. “Here, how about this.” He placed the tip of the long knife under the guard’s chin, aiming to push upward. “I think this will be interesting.”

He shoved it up and I screamed. The knife pushed through the guard’s mouth, opening his jaw, then continued pushing further up, without a doubt puncturing his brain. Sergio stayed alive for a few moments, choking and writhing, before his whole body sagged with death.

“No,” I sobbed quietly, falling forward to the floor.

“Heartbroken, huh?” Stepan asked, walking over to me with a fresh knife. This one was shorter, with a gleamingly sharp edge on one side. I continued to sob against the floor, but he kneeled down behind me and picked my body up. I cried out in pain and anger, trying to fight him, but he had a tight grip across my chest.

“You know, I would have tortured you as well. That’s how much I fucking hate you,” he spat viciously into my ear. “But I can’t stand another second of your fucking incessant whining and crying and screaming and sobbing! I don’t deserve to have you annoy me anymore, you whorishsuchka.”

I felt the knife slip across my throat. I felt the floor hit my face. And then I felt… nothing.

* * *

“O Bozhe moi…”Misha said.

“Jesus!” Ivan dropped his face into his hands.

Dmitry sat forward with his jawline flexing angrily. And Maxim, he stood up to leave the room for a moment. Of course, out of all my sons, he was the closest to me, not only throughout his childhood but in adulthood as well. This was difficult for him to hear.

“So he did it himself? That doesn’t fucking surprise me,” Dmitry finally said, his voice seething with hatred.

“He told us you’d died in a shootout, that you were collateral damage when Sorokin came after him,” Misha said.

I shook my head. “At that time, he and Sorokin were still friends. I heard that some business deal or betrayal had made them enemies, but it certainly wasn’t my death.”

Chapter24

Aleksei

“Alek!” Lev shouted into the phone.

“What?” I asked, turning the steering wheel with one hand while holding my flip phone to my ear. I’d been out to meet up with some potential guards Stepan wanted me to interview. He said they were bratva blood, cousins of cousins… whatever. They hadn’t shown, so I was already on my way back.

“You’ve got to get here right now!”

“I’m almost there. What’s going on?”

“It’s… it’s Isabel…”

“What? What did he do to her?”

“Just get here!”

I shouted, “What the fuck is going on?” But he’d already put the phone down. I smashed my hand into the steering wheel and sped up, flying up the driveway and screeching to a halt. I couldn’t see the town car Stepan used these days; he must have left. That fucking bastard knew that I would put a stop to whatever it is he did to her! The cunt sent me on a fucking goose chase!

As I crashed through the front door, Lev ran up to me, pointing toward the basement door. “He—he told us to clean up the mess… That you would know what to do, I—I don’t know how to say this, Aleksei!” He stopped me. “It’s bad, Alek… It’s real fucking bad.”

I pushed past him and sped down the steps, where I saw a gaggle of our house guards standing around looking frazzled, some running their fingers through their hair, others staring in silent shock.

First, I saw Sergio, the guard from the garden, tied up in a seat with a long knife tucked through his head from the bottom, gruesomely keeping his mouth wide open. His eyes were still open too, but he was very much dead.

I frantically looked around and saw another body. This one had long black hair spread across the concrete floor, a dark blue dress tied at the waist, and a pool of blood seeped into that silky hair.

“Isabel, Isabel!” I shouted and crashed to my knees beside her.

Lev, not wanting this moment to be entirely public—though I assumed the guards already knew about my “soft spot” for her—ushered them back up the stairs, telling them that I would come up with a plan and call for help. He added that it wasn’t healthy to stay and stare at a comrade in such a condition. God, he was such an intelligent kid.

With shaking hands, I lifted her up, resting her head in the crook of my arm and her back across my knees, wrapping my other arm around her waist.

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