The Thief’s Captive (Bratva Sinners #3)

Chapter 1

Go Big Or Go Home

Alex

Iwas about to pop my kidnapping cherry.

I’d popped all the cherries already. Death. Torture. Theft. I’d done it all. I’d stolen thousands of times—mostly cars, the reason for this whole ordeal—but I’d never kidnapped anyone before.

The truth was painful to acknowledge in this dark, loud nightclub while I waited for the deed to be done. And the truth was simple—we were fucked. We’d pushed it to the absolute limit and we had only two choices now: death or kidnapping.

Neither my partner nor I wanted to assassinate a U.S. Attorney because that would inevitably bring a slew of other grandiose problems, and we were already in over our heads.

So, we decided to kidnap that U.S. Attorney’s only daughter. His name was Sebastian Moretti and his daughter’s name was Jane or Jen or…Julie?

It didn’t fucking matter. The father-daughter duo had been building a case to lock us up for decades and we didn’t have any time to delay, no time to think about it, or even do any research.

There was also no time to figure out a solid plan or weigh all the options, but we made the call. Every choice had a consequence—win or bust, go big or go home, and I always went big.

I was always a winner.

“Ona v zolotom platye,” Maksim, my head of security, shouted in my ear and pointed toward a group of women on the chaotic dancefloor, all of them looking awfully young. We didn’t even know how old she was. Hopefully over twenty-one since she was in a nightclub.

He said she was in a golden dress. I squinted, not sure why—it was already pitch black in here—I could barely see anything, let alone the color of a dress.

“Mashina zhdet. Vse gotovo.” Maksim let me know the car was waiting and everything was ready. Everything being the entire security system of the nightclub about to be corrupted.

I took a last drag of my cigarette as I watched Maksim shuffle toward the crowd and headed after him, ready to get out of here, but someone’s fingers dug into my forearm. I turned around and dread hit me instantly.

“Alex? Oh my God! Baby! I didn’t know you were going to surprise me!”

Gianna. My ex-girlfriend. A true demon walking on this earth. A dark soul living in a stunning body.

I blinked at her, quickly trying to calculate how she knew I’d be here tonight.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Gianna whined and slumped against me, wrapping me in her intoxicated hug.

I pulled back and steadied her with one hand. She was drunk, but more importantly—I wasn’t her baby. “You should have told me you were coming!” she shouted in my face just as I watched a whole bevy of her friends file into the VIP booth I was about to abandon.

“What’re you doing here?”

Gianna’s smile slightly faded, but her nails dug deeper into my forearm. “Huh? It’s my birthday, what’re you talking about?”

My phone buzzed in my pocket at the moment.

Maks: 3 mins

“Alex?” Gianna called my name. “You didn’t…You didn’t know I was here?” I caught the look in her eyes; disappointed and hurt, but I knew better than to believe that. This was Gianna’s schtick—puppy eyes and trembling bottom lip.

She’d used it throughout our one-year relationship and our million breakups over the last year. At some point, I stopped believing her, but…I still picked up the phone when she called.

Because it was so difficult to disentangle from old and familiar strings.

“Gianna, are you stalking me now?”

She reared back, her gaze searching mine. In the half-darkness of the grimy club, our last night together rushed back to me. The curve of her waist, her fake lips kissing up my neck, the filthy words she whispered in my ear, but mostly, the way I couldn’t get hard.

Gianna was objectively one of the hottest women in the city—tall, sexy, exuding all that sensual energy.

Her wardrobe was off the runway; her body was flawless and lasered or waxed in all the right places.

And in the beginning, it all worked for me.

I enjoyed the hot sex and tuned out all her stupid stories.

I fucked her the way she wanted and agreed to whatever she proposed.

But somewhere between breakup number three and seven hundred, my dick stopped showing up for her. Just wouldn’t fucking work. I’d lie awake at night in my bed and wonder if I had an actual medical problem because what the fuck was that? How could I not get hard?

Maks: 1 min

The text brought me back to my current reality: we were about to kidnap a U.S. Attorney’s daughter, Gianna showed up out of nowhere, and I was standing there wondering if I’d have a limp dick for the rest of my life.

“I have to go.”

But she tugged me back instantly. “But it’s my birthday! You forgot?!”

“I haven’t, but we’re not together anymore, remember?” I jerked my arm away, but Gianna was like a leech. I looked down to see the familiar blood red color of her nail polish piercing into the ink on my wrist.

“Don’t say that!” Gianna complained loudly, her previously intoxicated state vanishing as the seconds ticked. Seconds I didn’t have to spend on her. “Fine, maybe we’re on a break or whatever, but we’re—we’re not broken up!”

“Stop!” My patience was wearing thin just as my phone buzzed again. “Gianna, stop. We’re broken up. Stop calling me. Stop showing up randomly, just stop,” I implored her, my own voice sounding harsh in my ears.

I sidestepped her, itching to get the fuck away from her and out of this dark shithole. Just get in the car and the fuck out of here.

I pushed my way through the sweaty dancing bodies, mere feet away from the back door, but Gianna’s perfume—spicy and nauseating—hit my nostrils once more.

“I’ll go to the cops!” Gianna almost jumped in front of me, shouting right in my face. She was no longer drunk. “And I’ll tell them everything!” She spoke clearly, making sure I could hear her. “I’ll tell them how you’ve abused me for years. And I took it all! Scared to speak up!”

That made me pause. I narrowed my gaze on her, certain I’d heard wrong.

“What? What the fuck are you talking about? I never abused you.”

She knew that, of course. The ice in her eyes made me shiver, but she stepped closer, about to deliver more vitriol.

“You didn’t?” Her hands slid up my chest and onto my neck, forcing me to pull back.

“Everything we did together? Every time you spanked me, tied me up, spat in my mouth, fucked me up against the wall in some dirty club…did I ever say the word…yes?”

The phone kept buzzing in my hand, the lights of the club flashed on Gianna’s face, and the calamity of my situation descended on me like a tidal wave. Gianna was rewriting our past on the fly.

What a delusional and manipulative bitch.

I leaned down to make sure she heard me. “You fucking asked me to do all that shit. To spit in your mouth. To tie you up. I did everything you wanted. Don’t you fucking dare spin it like that.”

But in response…she laughed. It was fake and so rehearsed, and it always made my skin crawl.

“Try me, Alex,” she said, somehow fully sober.

“I wasted two years on you.” She stuck two fingers in front of my eyes, the smile never leaving her face.

“And you’re not going to fucking discard me like a bag of shit on the side of the road.

” Her hands reached the collar of my shirt and she fiddled with it, just like always.

I’d been a complete fucking idiot. Just one massive, undeniable dumbass.

“Fuck off, Gianna. Never fucking call me again. Never—”

“Sasha! Now. We have to go now!” Maksim’s voice sputtered in my ear, and he pulled me back, away from smiling and jovial Gianna.

No matter. Gianna was just a hiccup. Just a splinter—the rest of the night would go according to plan.

I took a deep breath in and out and followed Maksim, forcing myself to forget about her.

The emergency exit had been disabled, and I pushed the door open into the warm night just in time to see tanned bare legs swung over one of Maksim’s guys’ shoulders.

I paused mid-step, taking in the sight. The young woman writhed with wild motions; her hands zip tied behind her back.

Damn.

I didn’t think it would look like that.

“Mmm! Mmm!” The girl’s voice was muffled by the gag in her mouth and the black bag over her head. Maksim’s man was shoving her into the backseat of a car, another guy dragging her in while the rest of us watched.

Watched a person being fucking kidnapped.

I shook my head, repeating the same thing to myself for the thousandth time—this would be fine. We’d already decided.

Maksim slammed the door just as Moretti’s daughter kicked up her foot, almost landing her heel in his face. Three seconds later, I was in the front seat, and he was flooring it out of there, all of us focused on one goal: getting her to the house and out of the city.

“Mmm! Fuuuuuu-off!”

The backseat was chaotic. The kidnapped girl screamed and screeched, headbutting the man holding her like she was a toddler.

At the same time, what had I been expecting? That she’d come easy?

Yeah. I wanted easy and simple.

I squeezed my eyes shut and turned away from them, forcing down all my doubts.

Stealing a person was a first, not just for me, but for all of us.

We were all thieves, but we stole cars, never souls.

Maseratis, Range Rovers, Ford Trucks, BMWs, Mercedes—you name it, we’d stolen it.

A young woman had never been on our hit list before.

Death was easier than holding someone captive. Death was simple and quiet. And I loved that. I built an entire empire on those principles. Simple. Easy. Quiet.

Our first job ever—a black BMW M5 that we stole on the outskirts of Moscow at the ripe age of fifteen was very quiet, very simple, and very lucrative at the time.

It was just us two—me and Andrei, the man who was my best friend and would become my lifelong partner.

We stole that dream ride and sold it a few days later for more money than we’d ever seen in our lives.

No consequences, no repercussions, just pure adrenaline.