Chapter 24
ALEXEI
All I can think about when I storm out of the bedroom is how little Isabella understands about this situation. I would think that someone who came from a similar lifestyle would understand that there are rules that just cannot be broken. Leaving the Bratva… leaving the Bratva?
She doesn’t know because she’s never seen what happens to someone who tries to leave.
I have. In my life, I’ve seen men beaten to within an inch of their lives.
I’ve been party to the torture and murder of would-be absconders.
She could not imagine how much blood there is on just my hands from the few who have attempted to leave the brotherhood.
Leaving, truly leaving, has never been in my plans because it is something that just doesn’t happen. Even now, the plan has always been to wait until things are safe enough for us to return. How could she think that I would ever choose to leave the brotherhood?
I walk outside to the porch and find Dmitri standing guard… or rather, sitting. He’s leaning back on one of the chairs on the porch, rifle at his side and feet up on the railing. At the moment I walk out, he’s just lit a cigarette.
“Everything all right?” he asks me.
I look out at the night stretching beyond the cabin, the black of the trees that surround us against the midnight blue of the sky, telegraphing dawn hours away from now. The moon is full and bright and hanging low, just above the treetops.
“I needed some air,” I tell him. “How are things out here?”
He’s looking at me suspiciously. “Quiet.” Dmitri takes a drag from his cigarette, then adds, “Want to talk about it?”
I don’t, but I can’t just let it fester inside me. “She’s pregnant,” I tell him.
He freezes, cigarette burning between his fingers, eyes trained on me. “What?”
“Isabella. She’s pregnant.”
He sits up, setting his feet on the floor. “That’s great news—”
“No, it’s not. She wants us to leave. For good.”
His smile fades. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘leave’?”
I sigh as he stands up and approaches me. I look down at the smoking cigarette in his hand. I haven’t had a craving since I decided to quit a couple of months back. But now…
“Got another one of those?”
He nods, reaches into his jacket pocket, and produces a pack, handing it to me. I take out a single cigarette, pop it between my teeth, then lean in as he lights it for me.
I take a drag, letting the smoke fill my lungs and relax my rage. Funny how these things can bring instant calm.
“She wants me to leave the brotherhood,” I tell him. “I think she has some fantasy about the two of us running away together or something.”
Dmitri leans against the porch railing, sitting on it while he regards me. “You make it sound like a bad thing.”
“I can’t leave the Bratva.”
“That’s not what I mean,” he says. “If I got a girl pregnant tomorrow, I would hope that the first thing she would want is to have some romantic fantasy about running away with me. We don’t really attract women who want anything like that. At least, not on purpose.”
He’s right. During my four years of celibacy, women have been throwing themselves at me.
None of them even remotely caught my interest. They all want my body or they want what they think I am.
None of them want to know me or have ever come close to caring about me, really.
Women who meet a man like me, they’re usually looking for something—sex, money, status. There are no romantic fantasies.
“How do you feel about her?” Dmitri asks me. “Like, no bullshit. I mean, I know you two didn’t get together conventionally, but… well, you’ve had some time to get to know one another.”
I’m a little confused by the question. “What do you mean?”
He snickers. “Do you love her, Alexei?”
I feel like the answer to that is sitting on the back of my tongue. Like an automated response to any other question I’ve ever been asked. And yet, I don’t understand it. I take a drag from the cigarette, considering for a few seconds.
The way she’s come to smile at me lately lifts my mood almost instantly.
The sweet, floral scent in her hair, and the taste of her skin on my tongue.
The light when it catches her sapphire eyes and the way they turn up when she laughs.
How the sound of that makes me feel like freedom and bright, blue skies.
“Yes,” I say. “I do love her. Very much.”
“Does she know it?”
“I’ve never said it aloud before now… so I’d guess not.”
Dmitri sighs and takes another drag. Then he chuckles, his mouth turning up into a smile. “It’s funny how love finds even men like us sometimes. I guess there’s nowhere it can’t reach, is there?”
I smile at him and start to reply… and then the world explodes.
It happens so fast that I don’t even register it for a second.
Dmitri’s face, smiling and bright in the shadows of the night around us.
And in the next second, a pop rings out in the distance and in that very same second, the side of Dmitri’s face is splattered with red.
His smile drops, and the light in his eyes winks out.
Hot, gunpowder smelling liquid splashes my face.
I react, stumbling away as he falls to the ground.
There’s no time to do anything because the next second, burning gun smoke embers fly past me, making holes in the screen door. I drop and reach for the gun in my belt, but it’s not there. It’s sitting somewhere up in the bedroom.
Glass breaks above me as I force my way back into the house to take cover. The bullets fly, breaking the windows and putting holes in the wall. I dive behind the couch and suddenly, I hear shouting from the kitchen. Anya’s voice rings out as the sound of punches landing fills the room.
The bullets have stopped, so I run to the kitchen. Anya is standing toe to toe with a man twice her size. He already has one side of his face bruised all to hell. Another man stands in the door, gun in hand.
Anya hits the one in front of her with a skillet, snapping his neck to one side viciously before he falls with a hard thump to the floor.
The second gunman goes to point his gun at me, but I grab his wrist, shoving it upward, then I punch him in the face.
His nose cracks under my fist as he tumbles backward out into the night.
I turn just in time to see two more rush in.
One goes for Anya, but she’s ready for him.
She aims for his head with the skillet, but he flinches and she catches him in the arm.
It still sends him flying sideways. She grabs a nearby butcher’s knife and sweeps it across his throat as he leans into the sink.
Splashes of blood spurt from his throat as he gags and falls to the floor.
I charge the second, lowering my head and driving my shoulder into his midsection. I hit him hard and we both go tumbling back into the living room. I roll him, getting on top of him, and start pummeling his face in.
Then I’m grabbed from behind. A huge arm wraps itself around my throat and lifts me up to my feet. He only gets me up for a moment and slams me back down to the floor, then shoves his knee in my back to keep me down.
And then I hear screaming. Isabella.
I struggle to get up, but he grabs me by my hair, lifting my head up in time to see one of them coming down the stairs. He’s got Isabella over his shoulder. She’s wearing her nightshirt, but her bare ass is in the air as she flails.
“Jesus,” I hear one of them say. “You couldn’t get her decent?”
“Let me go!” she’s screaming. “Put me the fuck down!” The guy holding her is having a hard time with her. It looks like he’s going to drop her.
“Yeah, right,” he says. “See you in the car.”
And then, the hand holding my head forces it into the floor. My forehead smacks the wood and it’s lights out.