Page 55 of Brutal Reign (Bratva Kings #3)

CHAPTER

FORTY-THREE

PAVEL

The palette knife scrapes across the canvas in savage strokes, leaving trails of midnight blue and charcoal that mirror the storm inside me. Paint covers my hands and arms, spatters across my bare chest and the waistband of my jeans, but I don’t give a fuck about the mess.

This is how I bleed. This is how I process the weight of what I just did to the woman I love.

A bottle of whiskey sits half empty on the paint-covered table. The amber liquid has done nothing to dull the sharp edges of my guilt. It’s been three hours since Hope ran from my office, and I can still see the exact moment her world crumbled.

I had to become someone else in my office, the Syndicate boss instead of the man who loves her. She deserved the truth, all of it, no matter how much it destroyed us both.

But fuck, it doesn’t make it hurt any less.

The brush moves without thought, creating abstract slashes across the canvas that mean nothing and everything at the same time.

I fucking love her so much it’s like a physical ache, but we can’t move forward until she knows the whole ugly truth about Simon, Chen, and even her father.

My fist connects with the wall before I can stop myself, leaving a crater in the drywall and blood on my knuckles. The pain feels good; it’s what I deserve for putting that look of absolute betrayal in Hope’s eyes.

I reach for the whiskey again, taking a long pull that burns all the way down. The alcohol should be numbing me by now, taking the edge off. Instead, it’s making every emotion more raw, more immediate.

The soft click of the studio door opening and closing barely registers through my self-destruction. Probably Yarik, coming to check on me after hearing the crash of the easel. Or Roman, who seems to have a sixth sense when I don’t want him around.

“I don’t want to hear it,” I mutter, not turning around as I stare out the window into the darkness beyond.

There’s no response, but when I finally glance over my shoulder, it’s not Yarik or Roman standing by the door.

It’s Hope.

She looks tired. Her eyes are red-rimmed and her hair mussed. But she’s here, in my studio, looking at me with something that isn’t the hatred I expected.

I go still, not daring to move or speak or even breathe too loudly. I don’t know what she’s going to say, and I’m terrified that whatever it is will be the final nail in the coffin of what we had.

She takes a tentative step toward me, then another, and my heart hammers against my ribs. Then she reaches for me, pulling me toward her with urgency.

Her kiss is desperate and demanding. I can taste the salt of her tears as she pours all her emotion into this moment. I don’t know if this is forgiveness or a final goodbye, but I hold nothing back.

“Hope,” I try to say, needing to understand what this means, but she silences me with her mouth, her hands already fumbling with my jeans.

“I need you,” she whispers, and the broken way she says it makes my chest constrict. “Please, Pavel. I just need you.”

I capture her mouth again, walking her backward until her legs hit the leather couch I keep in the corner for late nights when I can’t sleep. The studio is a disaster with paint scattered across the floor, canvases torn and wrecked, but all I can focus on is her.

My hands find the hem of her shirt, and she helps me pull it over her head. The sight of her in a delicate lace bra makes me feral.

“Beautiful,” I murmur, my fingers tracing the curve of her breast through the lace. “So fucking perfect.”

She makes a sound that’s half a sob, half a moan, and then she’s pushing at my jeans, needing them gone. I help her, kicking them aside along with all her other clothes, until we’re both naked in the low light of my trashed studio.

I guide her down onto the couch, pushing my legs between hers until her thighs are locked around my waist. My weight settles over her as I press my cock against her entrance.

The leather is cool against our heated skin, but all I care about is the way she’s looking at me with a desperate want that mirrors my own.

“Look at me,” I command when she tries to close her eyes. “Give me your eyes, angel moy. I need to see you.”

Those dark eyes lock with mine as I settle between her legs, the head of my cock pressing against her entrance. She’s already wet for me, ready, and when I push inside, we both groan at the sensation.

“Fuck,” I breathe, fighting for control as her tight heat surrounds me. It feels like coming home.

I start to move, slow and deep, watching every expression that crosses her face. Looking for some sign of what this means to her, what we are in this moment.

“Whatever this is between us, whatever happens after tonight, I need you to know that I’d do anything for you and Kin. You are my world now.”

Tears spill down her cheeks, but she doesn’t look away. Instead, she pulls me down for a kiss that claims me with urgency. Her lips part with a soft gasp as her tongue slips in to tangle with my own.

“Show me,” she whispers against my lips. “Show me how much.”

So I do. I put my soul into the way I move inside her, each thrust a confession of my love and a prayer that this isn’t the end. My hand slips between us, finding her clit, and she arches beneath me with a cry that goes straight to my soul.

“Come for me,” I murmur, circling the sensitive bundle of nerves with my thumb. “Let me feel you fall apart on my cock.”

“Pavel.” She gasps, her body tensing beneath mine. “I’m so close?—”

“That’s it, baby,” I praise, feeling her clench around me as her orgasm builds. “Show me how I make you scream.”

She shatters with a cry that echoes through the studio, her body convulsing around me.

“Hope,” I groan, my rhythm faltering as my own release approaches. “I can’t hold back.”

“I don’t want you to,” she says, her nails digging into my shoulders. “Don’t be gentle with me.”

Her words unravel what’s left of my control. I bury myself deep and let go, pumping hard into her welcoming heat. She holds me through it, her hands stroking my hair and back, anchoring me, as I shake apart in her arms.

When it’s over, I collapse against her, both of us breathing hard. The leather couch is too small for both of us, but neither of us moves to adjust. She feels just right, and I’m not ready to let her go.

“Hope,” I start, but she silences me with a gentle touch to my lips.

“Not yet,” she whispers. “Just be with me. For right now, just be with me.”

So I hold her close, memorizing the sensation of having her against me.

Minutes pass in heavy silence. Hope’s breathing has steadied, but I can sense the tension in her body. The darkness makes everything feel suspended, like we exist in a space outside of time where consequences don’t matter. But I know that’s an illusion.

Consequences do matter, and very soon, she’ll have a decision to make.

“You know…” she says finally, her voice soft but clear in the quiet studio. “Hiding out with my father in that safe house in Switzerland was the best three weeks of my life. Or at least, it seemed like it then.”

I release a throaty laugh. “That’s not a typical reaction.”

“I know, but it was the most time I’d spent with my dad since I was eight years old. After my mother died he sent me away to boarding school in the UK.”

The sadness in her voice makes my chest tighten. There’s pain there, buried deep but still raw around the edges.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her, because what else can I say?

Her smile is bitter. “He thought he was protecting me. Keeping me away from this world, from the violence. But I felt abandoned. Simon replaced me in my father’s life.

The day after I was shipped off to England, he moved into my childhood home.

While I was learning French conjugations, he was learning the family business.

While I sat alone in boarding school dining halls, he sat at our family table. ”

I’d known she was sent away young, but I’d never considered what that must have felt like. To lose her mother and then be separated from her father, watching another man take what she thought should have been her place.

I press a kiss to the top of her head. “He kept you safe in the only way he knew how.”

“I know he thought he was doing the right thing. But those three weeks were the first time since I was a child that I felt like his daughter instead of an obligation he had to manage from a distance. We talked, really talked. He told me stories about my mother, about their early days together. He taught me how to play chess and how to fold wontons the way his grandmother taught him. But the night of the attack, I knew something was up. He became distant, distracted with whatever was going on.” She releases a tight breath.

“Simon showed up that night… joined us for dinner. He hadn’t been hiding out with us until then; he was managing the front lines.

Apparently, he had business to discuss with Baba, but I’ll never know the real reason. Things between them felt strained.”

The raw hurt in her voice makes me want to tear something apart.

“I’ve always wondered how you discovered our location in Switzerland. My father was so paranoid about security.”

“Someone tipped us off,” I admit. “A leak from inside the triad. Don’t know who.”

She pushes herself up on her elbow, turning to face me directly. “Tell me exactly what happened after I stabbed you.”

I think back to that night—the chaos, the pain, the confusion.

“Roman put a field dressing on me while Maxim went ahead to your father’s office, alone.

The door was locked, but before he could enter, he heard a gunshot.

When he finally got in, your father had taken his own life.

” I pause, seeing her flinch, but she needs to hear it all.

“Afterward, I went to the office to see if I could salvage any files from his computer.”

She sucks in a pained breath. “Y-you saw him?”

I nod slowly. “I’ll never forget it. Your father was slumped forward over his desk, and there was a pistol by his left hand.”

Her eyebrows furrow. “His left hand?”

“Funny thing to notice, right? Some things are burned into my brain forever.”

She pauses, shaking her head slowly. “That doesn’t make sense. My father was right-handed. Always used to joke he couldn’t even brush his teeth with his left.”

The hair on my arms stands on end. No one kills themselves with their non-dominant hand. “Do you know what kind of weapon your father typically carried?”

“A Glock 19. Always engraved with his initials and a small dragon. I never saw him carry any other weapon. Why?”

“Shit.” I drag a hand through my hair, my mind racing through possibilities.

“What is it?”

“The gun by your father’s hand was a small caliber .22.”

Hope’s mouth opens and closes soundlessly, her eyes going wide. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Ice floods my veins as the pieces start clicking together.

“Hope, when Maxim entered the office, there was no one else inside, and the door was locked from within.” She stares at me, not yet understanding. “You escaped using the secret passageways, right? Did those passages connect to every room in the house?”

“Not every room, but there was access to a passageway in my father’s office.” Her face pales as the implication hits her. “Oh God. You think Simon...”

“Wrong hand. Wrong gun. Wiped computer.” A chill drips down my spine.

“Simon knew we’d capture and interrogate Lai King.

By killing your father and making it look like a suicide, he comes out looking like the hero.

He tells everyone this brave story of how he fought to the very end, only escaping to fulfill your father’s dying wish to protect you.

And since everyone died that night, there’s no one left to poke holes in his story or challenge him taking over the triad.

” I pause as another detail surfaces. “You know, someone on the dark web tipped us off to the location of the villa. We never discovered who that person was, but now I’d bet my life it was Simon. ”

She nods slowly, her face crumbling as the truth becomes undeniable. “I think I’m going to be sick.”