Page 53 of Pregnant Bratva Bride

But he wasn’t listening.

“Nikolai, stop it,” I tried to hold him again, but he shrugged off my hand again. “Niko, what are you doing? Where do you think you are going? Stop doing this, you’re hurting yourself.”

I stood in front of the door to block his path. “Niko, your injury is still barely healed. The doctor said...”

“What the doctors always say,” he growled weakly but stood his ground. “Move, Giselle. I’m going to finish this.”

Hurt, angry, and upset, I moved away from the door. He opened it and I watched him disappear down the hallway.

Chapter 19 - Nikolai

I gripped the walls to steady myself as I headed downstairs, still burning with fury, each step fueled with anger and pain as I descended the half-turn stairs. My shoulder throbbed but I paid it no attention.

I saw flashes of the incident at the mall and the car chase with the Italians, and I was enraged. The terrified look on Giselle’s face still haunted me and I wondered what I would have done if anything had happened to her.

Those filthy Italian scum had dared to touch the lives of the ones I cared about and they were going to pay dearly. To stop it from happening a second time, I had to devise a strategy to get back at them for what they had done. I had to put an end to this game, once and for all.

Pain racked my shoulder, and I approached the bottom of the stairs with a grunt. A conversation was ongoing in the living room with hushed tones. I sucked in a deep breath through my teeth and pulled the rest of my weight to a plush armchair in the room.

I collapsed on it with a groan, and all eyes in the room settled on me. My brothers, Sergey, Maxim, and Vlad sat facing themselves, each with grave expressions on their faces.

“Niko, what are you doing downstairs?” Sergey asked in a withering tone. His eyes flickered to my shoulder, but I ignored him and reached for the bottle of rum on the table.

I uncorked the bottle with my teeth and threw my head back to down the contents.

“Nik...” his voice came again, more solid than the first time. “You should be resting in your room with your wife...”

“I heard you the first time, Sergey,” I snapped, eyes darkened and filled with rage. The rum burned against my throat and my chest, just the way I wanted it to. It cast a numbing effect on the pain I felt in my arm.

“Then, why are you here?” Maxim asked.

“Yeah, Niko,” Vlad piped up, kicking up his legs over the table and leaning back with a smug smile on his lips. “Why are you here?”

I eyed them and took another swig from the bottle. “Same reason as all of you, my dear brothers,” I pointed at them. “You said I should be upstairs resting with my wife, right? But a moment ago, if things went south, she wouldn’t be here with me. So, why the hell would I be resting when those fucking bastards are still out there, plotting their next move.”

Sergey frowned. “Be reasonable, Nikolai. You need to fully recover.”

“Oh, but I am, brother,” I smirked, my voice trembling with seething anger. “This is the best version of me. I am sane, fueled, and ready to destroy every single one of those pricks. We have to put an end to this. We have to demobilize them and make sure they don’t get to do this a second time.”

Maxim faced Sergey; his blue eyes twinkling and his sleek dark hair gleaming under the light. “I agree with, Nikolai. This has to stop. Our brother got injured today. Who’s to say they won’t come for us next?”

“They already are,” Vlad chipped in.

Sergey rose from his seat and paced the room slowly. We all knew what that meant. The head of Bratva had obviously begun going through plans in his head. “Giovanni is dead and his son is supposedly out of the country.”

“Supposedly,” Vlad said offhandedly, his nose buried in his phone. He typed furiously and raised his head. “But we still have Giovanni’s men hot on our tail, though. That means...”

Maxim lifted a finger and our youngest paused. “Someone else is the mastermind.”

“How’s that even possible?” Sergey voiced his curiosity.

“That’s because it’s not,” Vlad said and put his phone face down on the sofa. “It’s not possible for another to give the orders when Giovanni has an heir.”

I twirled the contents of the bottle and shrugged.

“It could be, Vlad,” I said, and they all looked at me. “You never know. The guy might have chickened out at the last minute, deciding that he didn’t want to be a part of the Cosa Nostra.”

“Then word would have spread,” Maxim added with a frown. His brows furrowed and he tapped his chin with one leg crossed over the other like a noble gentleman. “If the heir stepped down, there would have been an uproar and a public introduction of the new Capo into our society. None of these behind-the-scenes moments would have been necessary.”

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