Page 75 of Bratva Queen

“Oh, Isa,” He gripped my wrists between one hand and touched my face with the other. “If only you’d have accepted my advances. We would be in this together! You’d be my queen, at my side!”

“I’m my own queen you fuck—”

“Yes, yes… you’ve had your fun, built your little empire. But you know what I’ve been up to? I’ve been supplying your fucking drugs all along. Yes. In fact, Stepan owed me millions of dollars’ worth of stock that he just couldn’t pay up because the weaksuchacouldn’t handle his men well enough. Your idiot sons settled the debt once their inheritance paid out and cut ties with me, ruining my plans. I had to find a new one.”

I was silent for a moment. “So, you started working with Sorokin to get closer to them.”

“See? I knew you had the same business savvy I have. You’d have done the same thing, if only you weren’t a mother weakened by the biological bonds that your own sons don’t even give a shit about! I heard him in there! Dmitry hates you!”

I lifted my knee, swiftly knocking him in the stomach and forcing him to let me go. I tried to open the door but it was locked, and the driver was going full speed. Gregori laughed as he recovered his strength, then grabbed my head and knocked it so hard against the window that I saw blood and felt it stream down my face, before blacking out completely.

When I awoke, I was locked in a basement cell in Gregori’s home. Of course, I’d rarely ever explored his side of the house, especially not the basement. I didn’t realize he’d had it kitted out to imprison people, and if I had, maybe I would have realized that he was more than just a money laundering man.

“Ah, there’s my lovely Isabel,” he said as he walked around the corner, carrying a tray of food, water, even coffee. He slid it through a hatch and gestured for me to help myself. I did not. “You starving yourself won’t get you very far, now, would it? Besides, I don’t want to torture you. I just want to detain you. See?” He pointed to the bed that had plush pillows and thick blankets, as though it would gain him empathy from me.

“Why detain me?” I asked. “Why not use me to draw the boys out? Isn’t that the plan?”

“In due time,meelaya…”

“Don’t—” I started to growl out, but reminded myself that he wasn’t Stepan. He was a different kind of evil. He used his charm to get his way, he even had Aleksei fooled the few years he’d lived here. Alek knew he couldn’t be trusted, but had no reason to cut ties because Gregori played such a smooth game. He was patient. He didn’t get distracted by drugs and cheap women like Stepan did.

“I don’t plan to use you, Isabel.” Gregori slid a chair closer and sat down. “I plan to trade you.”

“What?”

“You see, even with my contacts and my wealth—wealth I had to hide from you, by the way, so you didn’t realize I was up to way more than you were witness to—I realized that I couldn’t overpower the Koslov boys on my own. Especially now that I’ve seen what an utter failure Elijah’s plans became. And even if I do now have access to your empire, since I’ll be Maxim’s advisor, it’s not nearly as big and strong as theirs.”

“Enter Sorokin,” I said sourly.

“Precisely. Sorokin, with his bratva family is strong enough to attack them, but he needs leverage, bait, information, I don’t know. All I do know is that I now have you, and he wants you. When Sorokin is ready, we’ll make the trade.”

“And what would you get in return?”

“Well, the Koslov empire of course.”

My eyebrows drew together. “Surely not, surely he wouldn’t just hand over such a big empire to you—”

“It comes with conditions, of course. But the main takeaway is that he would have an ally in the Koslov throne. We’d work together, blah, blah…” He waved his hand in the air, clearly not planning to live up to these conditions. “But you, my dear, are the key to all of it. So, you rest up, I’ll have more food sent down later.”

He left, and I was locked down there for two whole months before it was my time to shine. He kept his word and I was well cared for, but as soon as I was needed, his guards wrapped my hands and feet up with rope, plastered duct tape over my mouth, and spared me no pain as they transported me to Sorokin’s house.

* * *

“Was that the day we arrived?”Maxim asked.

“No. I spent a few nights in that house, tied to the bed. Sorokin asked me questions about you but when I didn’t, orcouldn’tanswer, he grew bored and left me alone.”

“He found another way to draw us in,” Misha said. “Maybe he planned to use you against us in the future.”

Maxim’s eyes narrowed. “But Gregori was still there… when we walked in, he was…”

“Yes. I don’t believe his intentions were as merciful as they had been the two months before. Since I was technically no longer his, he became less gentle.”

* * *

“It’s a shame, really,”Gregori said when he waltzed into the bedroom. “You and I could have ruled the bratva so well. But you could never let go of your feelings for my brother.”

I glared at him, full of hatred. I’d already come to the realization that it must have been Gregori who had Alek killed, or worse, killed his own brother himself.

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