Obsessed Bratva King (Russian Mafia Empire #3)

1. Cora

1

CORA

“ C ora, come on! Get out here.”

I look back at the bathroom door. Darren’s banging his fist on the far side.

“They’ll be here soon. What’s taking so long?”

“Who’ll be here?” I finish tying my hair up, wondering why he sounds so pissed.

“You got that dress on yet?”

I look down at what he called a dress when he gave it to me an hour ago. The hem barely covers my ass. “It’s a bit small,” I say, as much to myself as to him. “Do I have to wear it?”

A laugh. “You want to look good for my friends, right?”

I grip the hem of the dress so tightly my knuckles whiten. “What friends?”

His voice gets louder. “I bring you in from the streets. You were homeless, remember? I don’t charge you rent. I buy you food. I buy you clothes. All you have to do is look good and smile. You can do that, can’t you?”

I should have guessed there’d be a catch. He found me begging on the streets, offered me a room away from the freezing rain chilling me to the bone. Never asked for a thing from me.

Until today.

I catch fragments of conversation. I’m guessing they don’t know how well sound travels through the bathroom door. “Homeless, naive, easy…” Darren is saying to someone.

A pig like snort. The sound makes my stomach churn. “Is she hot?”

“She’ll put out tonight,” Darren replies. “That’s what matters. Then we put her to work.”

“Doing what?”

“Fucking, of course. That’s all women are good for. Got a brothel room with her name on it ready to go.”

Another laugh. “Bet she’ll love it, the dirty fucking whore.”

“They all do.”

I am in big trouble. He doesn’t know I heard that. I’ve got to move fast.

I scan the cramped bathroom for an escape. There’s a window above the toilet, the glass cracked but offering my only shot at freedom.

I clamber onto the toilet, tossing the pile of towels off the windowsill so I can fumble with the latch.

The window creaks open. In the lounge, beer cans are being cracked open. I can smell cigar smoke. “Cora,” Darren calls, rattling the door. “I’ve got some friends who are dying to meet you. Come on out, darling. Don’t be shy.”

I glance back in a panic. That’s when I see it: a duffel bag half buried in the towels. The top is open. I can see banknotes inside. He hid it in here. Money. A lot of money.

“Cora?”

The window’s open. I should leave it where it is. Get out while I can.

“Just a moment,” I call out as I lower myself back down, grabbing the bag. Inside, more crisp stacks of cash glimmer in the faint light.

His voice booms again, more urgent and menacing as he hammers on the bathroom door. “Get out now, or I’ll bust that lock! You’re embarrassing me.” He rattles the lock. “Come on! Open this door.”

I hoist myself up through the narrow window, bag in hand. The cool night air hits me hard as I tumble onto a burned out dumpster. Behind me, I hear the bathroom door crashing inward as the lock finally gives way.

I haul myself upright, climbing off the dumpster into a stinking alley.

The bitter wind slashes my face, knifing through my dress. Thin satin, useless. My arms are bare, my legs trembling with every desperate step, but I don’t stop—not with Darren yelling abuse as he tries to force his way out the bathroom window.

My lungs burn as I run, my ribs screaming with each breath.

All too soon, I hear voices yelling behind me.

“Find that bitch!”

“Don’t kill her, she’s no good to us dead.”

“I’ll break her fucking legs for her, see how well she runs after that.”

That pig snort again. “She can still fuck with broken legs, right?”

My fingers are stiff from the cold, but I clutch the strap of the bag, refusing to let it fall. This money is my way out. My shot at freedom.

I veer off the main street. Up ahead, a wreck of a building looms black against the Chicago night sky.

Charred ceiling joists stab at the sky. A burned-out husk of something old and forgotten, police tape fluttering uselessly in the wind.

Perfect.

I throw myself inside.

Darkness swallows me whole.

For a moment, all I hear is my own breath, ragged and gasping, the wild hammering of my pulse. My body hums with adrenaline, every muscle locked tight.

I press my back against the wall, forcing my breath to slow.

The building is dead. A skeletal ruin, blackened beams clawing at the ceiling, walls caved inward, burned to their bones. It smells of old fire and damp rot. Scum covered puddles guide me deeper in.

I step forward carefully, breathing in the throat-coating scum of ash. A pile of books, charred and ruined. I pick one up. Psalms.

A church, maybe? Or what’s left of one.

The silence and the acrid tang of burnt wood…

It’s too much like before.

A memory slams into me so fast I stagger.

A different fire. A different building. The same dead silence. The same smells.

I was nine. My parents’ dying screams had long faded by the time I crept through the ruins of what used to be our home. A bakery with apartment above. The fire had eaten everything—walls reduced to skeletons, furniture to soot, their hard work nothing but cinders.

All because they hadn’t paid.

The mob had come, demanding their cut a month after we opened. My father stood firm. My mother shoved them out the door.

I remember stepping over the collapsed beams, peering into what had once been our kitchen, cold ashes shifting under my feet.

No one to save me. No distant relatives. No friends, all too scared of crossing the mob. Just mom and dad, now gone forever.

It didn’t take me long to work out I could only rely on myself. One foster home after another proved it, all wandering hands and not enough food.

So I ran, aged twelve, ended up on the streets. Made my own way in the world as best I could. Been alone ever since. Survived by doing what I had to. Grew up fast. Except not fast enough. Tried to trust again. Fell for Darren’s lies.

The sound of voices outside jolts me back to the present. They’re out there, looking for me.

I need to hide.

I grip the duffel bag and push deeper in, weaving through fallen beams and broken pews. Everything is jagged edges, the walls slick with old smoke, the ground treacherous with debris.

There—a recess in the corner, a collapsed doorway leading into what might have been a back room. I squeeze inside, my heart pounding so hard it feels like it’s rattling my ribs.

I press myself into the shadows, tucking the duffel behind a fallen beam. I need a weapon. Something—anything. My hands fumble through the wreckage, the wood splintering under my fingers.

There—a broken chair leg.

It’s not much. But it’ll do.

I tighten my grip around the wood just as I hear a noise.

Footsteps.

Slow. Measured. Not the frantic scramble of Darren’s men.

This is different.

Controlled. Unhurried.

I hold my breath, body rigid. A door creaks open.

For a long, terrible moment, there’s nothing. Just silence.

A shadow shifts in the dark, almost imperceptible. A presence, vast and patient. Whoever they are, they’re not in a hurry.

I barely breathe.

A figure steps forward.

The dim glow from the city filters through the broken stained-glass windows, and I catch my first real look at him.

Tall. Broad. Built like a man who knows how to break people and does it well. His face is carved from something harder than stone—sharp cheekbones, a strong jaw, a mouth set in a hard line.

His hair is dark, streaked with just enough silver to hint at his age—late thirties, maybe early forties—the age when a man starts to slow down and soften. But not this man. There’s not an inch of softness in him.

His eyes—ice blue and precise, scan the wreckage like he already knows I’m here, like he’s just toying with me.

The suit he wears is expensive, but rumpled, streaked with blood. His left sleeve is dark with it. And in his right hand, he holds a pistol.

I shift my weight, preparing to lunge. But the second I do, his head tilts ever so slightly, like he hears it.

Hit, then run. Buy me enough time to get out of here. That’s all I need.

He takes another step. Too close.

I explode from the shadows, swinging the broken chair leg like a baseball bat, aiming straight for his face.