Page 8 of Bratva's Secret Girl

They could have taken the most precious, innocent, lovely thing from my world, and I might have allowed it because I thought I was keeping hersafe.

If those ignorant little shits had been luckier, I’d have lost her.

That’s not happening.

Not now. She’s mine.

5

HAYLEY

Everything is clouded by disbelief. The tears are drying, a little tight from the salt, on my cheeks.

My kind, gentle giant of a boss just shot five men in cold blood.

For me.

He pulls the car he’s put me into—even clipping my seatbelt—onto the road and I blink.

“I have to go to Payton.” That much is clear, despite everything. I have to check up on my baby sister.

“Absolutely not,” glancing over, he levels a hard, glittering look at me that’s as utterly unfamiliar as him taking a gun and using it with the ease of a man who has used it many times. And he seems unconcerned by killing.

At all. That should scare me, but instead, my crazy body thrills.

“Please.”

Maxim’s brows lower and he just shakes his head, “I’ll send?—”

“She’s my little sister!” Desperation unclogs my brain, sharp and violent. “I’ll go alone if I have to.”

He doesn’t reply.

Logically, I know that the person who is the greatest threat to Payton is lying on the floor of the café. But why couldn’t he find her? He’s her boyfriend, it makes no sense? She would either be at uni, or at home. Sometimes out with her friends at a pub for a couple of hours, but she never goes off without telling me where she is and when she expects to be home. Not after how Taylor went missing.

I grab for the door handle and a big hand shoots out and slaps me down.

Maxim’s tattooed, hair-dusted knuckles are white as he grips my forearm.

“Fine.” Maxim lets out the grumble of a pained animal as he slowly releases me. “I’ll take you.”

“Our house.” I reel off the address, and Maxim nods, taking a turn like he’s a cab driver who knows his way to every street in London.

Maybe he does.

Seconds later, he’s accelerating so hard that I’m drawn back into my seat and speaking in rapid-fire Russian. It takes me a moment to realise that he’s on the phone to someone.

I’m still processing everything that’s happened when we pull up outside the tiny Victorian red brick house that I share with Payton. It’s an old worker’s cottage, just a kitchen and a living room downstairs, and two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, and a little courtyard garden at the back.

It’s a quiet residential street, lined with parked cars down each side and one lane down the middle. I don’t usually take any note of the vehicles since neither Payton nor I drive—we couldn’t afford to even if we wanted—but there’s something off.

Maxim doesn’t bother with the lack of parking space, and when another large black car pulls up behind us, and a third comes down and stops bumper to bumper with us. And then I notice that down the road there are a dozen more black SUVs.

“Do you have your house key?” He holds out his hand.

I shake my head. “I left it…”

My tummy drops.