Walking Red Flag (Semyonov Bratva #3)

Chapter 1

I do more gagging than nagging if you love me right.

— Milena’s secret thoughts

MILENA

“ I gotta go, Asher ,” I said with a sigh. “ Hazel is here to run with me.”

Asher rolled his eyes. “ Of course she is. You go run instead of talking this out like an adult would.”

I gritted my teeth. “ Asher , now is not the time. You knew that I was going running way before you started this discussion with me.”

“ I did, but I didn’t think that you would refuse to talk to me about it. Why do you act like this?” he seethed.

“ I promise that we’ll talk about it when I get back,” I repeated.

“ Well , that’s not going to work for me, because I’m leaving on a business trip,” he grumbled. “ I leave in an hour.”

“ What ?” I asked. “ When did this happen?”

“ While you were in the shower ignoring me. They asked last week if I wanted to go, I said no, because it was your birthday this weekend. Then you pulled this shit, and I told them I’d go.”

That just made me angry.

I narrowed my eyes at him and counted to ten in my head.

When I was calm enough to reply, I said, “ Well , I hope you have a safe trip.”

He snorted and turned his back on me.

I shuffled to the door, wondering if I should just call it quits now.

It was obvious that this wasn’t working with Asher .

He was too…much.

Just too much.

There were no other words for what he was.

I opened the door to the apartment and was unsurprised to find Hazel already standing there.

“ Hey …”

“ What the fuck was that?” she grumbled.

I waited until the door of Asher’s apartment was closed before I gave her a “wait” face.

She did, not saying a word until we were downstairs and stretching outside of the building.

“ Well ? What was that?” she repeated, frustrated now.

I sighed. “ That was Asher being a complete dick.”

Had she not been hanging out with her new office friends over the last month, she might’ve known that Asher and I had been having a few issues.

Those issues were now big issues that were dominating our relationship.

“ Asher wants to go out and enjoy more of life than I’m capable of giving him,” I vented. “ He wants to hang out with his friends, and he wants me to go with him because he feels guilty when I stay home. Then he says he feels obligated to hang out with me instead of participating. When I do go, he leaves me, and I only see him from across the room of wherever we happen to be. And to be quite honest, I’m not too fond of his friends, and he thinks I have an unhealthy attachment to my family.”

Hazel snorted. “ You kind of do, but it’s understandable.”

I stopped stretching and looked at her. “ What do you mean by that?”

“ I just mean that you are with them all the time, and you never spend time with him unless it’s after you’ve seen to their needs.” She shrugged, like she hadn’t just stabbed me in the heart.

“ You know that I love my family,” I pointed out. “ I don’t think it’s a crime to want to be around them.”

“ No , not a crime,” she agreed. “ But you could go hang out with Asher before you check in with your family. You could stay with Asher without completely dropping him if someone from your family calls and asks you for something.”

I snorted. “ The only time I ‘drop’ Asher is if someone calls for emergency babysitter help,” I said. “ And Auden and Maven are really the only ones that call me to help, and that’s only because they know that Shasha and Brecken , as well as Nastya and Haze , are busy with their own kids.”

I was an aunt of seven.

Maven , my sister, had married Auden , a police officer with Sunnyvale Police Department , years ago. Maven owned a bakery, and was up at the crack of dawn every day making delicious delicacies that made fat go to my hips.

They had three kids: Lola , Brando , and Redford .

My brother, Shasha , is married to Brecken , a high school principal. They had two children, Vivi and Jessa .

Then there were Nastya and Haze , who was also a police officer, or more accurately, a detective. He worked for Fort Worth Police Department . Nastya co-owned her own business with Haze’s daughter, Desi .

“ I mean, I know that you do,” Hazel said as she started to jump up and down to warm up her legs. “ I just think that you might be in the wrong here. Maybe what he’s saying is kind of true. Maybe you don’t prioritize him, and he notices that.”

We started our run, and for the entire time, I listened to Hazel berate me, as well as talk about her new office friends that were just “the best ever.”

She talked about her really good friend, Rayann , that was married to a man named Gibson . Gibson and Rayann were partiers, and that worked out really well for Hazel’s boyfriend, Mark .

Mark was a social climber. He was all about finding people that could help him level up in the world.

As I listened to Hazel talk about how Mark was driving her nuts wanting to go to the parties that Rayann and Gibson threw all the time, I had to internally laugh because that was exactly what my own boyfriend was trying to do to me.

Yet , Hazel couldn’t see that.

She was so hypocritical.

The six and a half miles we were doing that day went by slow as molasses. Not because I was running slow, but because my mind was whirling, and I didn’t like what I was figuring out about my friend.

By the time we wound up back at Hazel’s apartment, I was fighting off a headache.

“ See you tomorrow?” I asked.

“ Oh , I can’t tomorrow.” She looked away sheepishly. “ Something came up.”

I didn’t bother to call her on her obvious lie.

Instead , I said, “ That’s okay. Are we still on for the long run Saturday ?”

“ Absolutely .” She hesitated. “ Hey , I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“ Okay ,” I said. “ What is it?”

I was nervous about what I was about to hear come out of her mouth.

If she said something about giving Asher another chance, I was going to scream.

“ I wanted to let you know that I invited Rayann and her friend, Jacinda , to run the race,” she said. “ I’m not sure they’ll go, but just wanted to let you know.”

“ Oh ,” I said, a little taken aback. “ We’re still running it together, though, right?”

I wouldn’t have signed up for a trail race if we hadn’t been running it together.

I had issues with trails. I had depth perception problems, and the last freakin’ thing I liked doing was running where there were roots and rocks and shadows.

But she’d begged me to run the trail marathon with her, so I’d thought…for her, I’d do anything.

She’d run a marathon for me, of course.

“ Yes , yes!” she promised. “ Are you still planning on borrowing your brother’s RV ?”

I shook my head. “ No , Shasha pointed out that getting an RV that far would be hell. So he booked me a huge cabin in the woods with great views of the mountains.”

“ Awesome .” She smiled. “ I’ll talk to you in a couple of days.”

Meaning , she had no plans to call me in the next few days.

Something she used to do religiously.

We’d been best friends since I’d moved down here years ago.

She was the first person I met in the running group, and I couldn’t believe how fast she’d become such an important part of my life.

Now I felt like she was pulling away, and I wasn’t sure how my heart felt about that yet.

She wasn’t gone, per se, but it felt like she was gearing herself up to exit.

I didn’t like it, and I certainly didn’t like how she’d talked non-stop about how her boyfriend treated her when she was around her new friends.

After saying goodbye, I headed around the block to Asher’s place, unsurprised to find him gone.

What did surprise me was to see my purse and shit sitting out on his doorstep with a note pinned to it saying “please do not steal this.”

This fuckin’ bitch.

What the fuck?

Would it have killed him to just wait until I got back?

Apparently .

I searched through my purse and found all my stuff where it belonged, even my ringing cell phone.

I smiled when I saw it was Vivi .

“ Hey , Vivi ,” I said. “ What’s up?”

“ Can you come watch me for an hour or so? That way I don’t have to go to the doctor with Jessa and Mama ,” my niece pleaded.

“ Of course,” I said without thought. “ I’ll be there in ten.”

I was there in fifteen, but Vivi didn’t hold it against me.

Brecken came out of her bedroom, Jessa , named after my grandmother, in her arms.

Jessa was screaming her head off, and I raised a brow at her.

Brecken frowned at me and said, “ What are you doing here?”

“ This one called me.” I threw Vivi under the bus.

Brecken sighed. “ She didn’t want to come, because she’s afraid she’ll get sick, and she won’t be able to play in her soccer game on Saturday .”

That was a valid reason…

“ I got her,” I reinforced. “ What’s going on with Jessa ?”

“ Ear infection. Again .” She groaned. “ It’s the third one in two months.”

I winced. “ You do know that ear infections run in our family, right? You lucked out with Vivi here. But I had to have tubes. Maven had to have tubes. And so did Dima .”

“ No .” Brecken rolled her eyes. “ But one would think that would be something you’d talk about when your daughter gets back-to-back ear infections.”

I patted her on the shoulder as she passed and said, “ Shasha is adorable in his own way, sis.”

Brecken snorted. “ I’ll be back in about two hours or so. I have to stop by the store. Are you taking her to your place or staying here, so I can let the boss know?”

“ I’ll stay.” I laughed. “ We’re going to boat watch.”

By boat watch I meant people watch, because it made my day to see all the crazy drunks on the lake waltz around on their fancy boats and tie one on.

“ Make sure that she doesn’t swindle you into another dip. Shasha still doesn’t have the path clear yet, and he said he’s seen a snake crossing the trail for the last three mornings.”

“ Ew .” I shivered. “ We won’t leave the deck.”

“ Awesome . Artur , Ivan , and Bogdan are here. If you need them, call.”

I barely contained an eye roll.

My brother, Shasha , was the head of the Russian Bratva .

He was an important person, and there were quite a few people that would like to see him harmed.

That’s where his men came in, always around, and always protecting.

If Shasha had his way, I’d have a constant bodyguard, too.

But that was just something that I didn’t want.

Like my sister, Nastya , I just couldn’t deal with having someone following my every step twenty-four-seven.

“ Behave .” She pointed at me, then she was gone, leaving me to look at my partner in crime.

We went out onto the deck, and together we boat watched and played Go Fish .

After I won for the second time, I turned to her and batted my eyes.

“ You are my sunshine…” I started to sing, but my niece placed her hand over my mouth and narrowed her eyes.

“ Stop ,” she ordered. “ I don’t like it when you sing to me.”

I pouted. “ But I used to sing that to you when you were a baby.”

“ I didn’t even like it then,” she deadpanned.

I burst out laughing, my already sore belly from my morning run protesting the movement. “ But Vivi , how will you know that I love you if I don’t sing to you?”

“ You could just tell me.” She crossed her arms.

God , so much like my brother, Shasha , it made my heart ache.

“ Okay , okay,” I said. “ I’ll try to remember that for next time, sweetie.”

She narrowed her eyes. “ Why do you use that term of endearment?”

“ Words ending in ‘ie’ are always so adorable, just like you.” I giggled. “ Cutie . Sweetie . Hottie .”

“ Die ,” she grumbled.

I sighed. “ Still in a bad mood, I see.”

“ I’d be happier if I could win.”

So we played four more hands before she gave up, and each time I made sure to play to win.

Wouldn’t do to have my niece getting a bigger head than she already had, thanks to my brother.