Page 43 of Brutal Union (Ruthless Mafia Kings #8)

My eyes dart to the small window being illuminated with the orange and pinks of the rising sun, as I listen to the soft creak of the basement stairs of Sho leaving the basement.

I stay where he left me, my hands still trembling faintly, as the weight of his absence presses against my spine.

The warmth of his touch lingers along my hip, ghosting the spot where he’d held me as if his hand had carved itself into my skin.

But now, the air is colder, harsher. The scent of blood and rot reclaims the room in his wake.

And in front of me, chained and quivering, is the man I once feared above all else staring at me like an expectant child.

The man who ruled entire cities with nothing but his reputation and a single word.

The man who tore my mother to pieces—body and mind—and carved a legacy of violence into my bones.

Now, he is nothing more than sagging flesh and fractured pride, bound to a wooden beam like a criminal from another age.

His muscles twitch under broken skin, his chains groaning softly with every pitiful shift.

I walk toward him with the lazy stride of a queen walking down the aisle to her coronation.

My steps land with a hollow, steady rhythm on the bloodstained floor, and the echo feels like a drumbeat of judgment in the silence.

As I near him, he attempts to raise his head.

The effort alone seems monumental, and when he finally manages to lift his gaze, his one open eye fixes on me with a murky desperation.

There is no hate in it. No command, but he can’t stop the hatred flooding his pupils.

A bitter laugh coils in my throat before I even realize it's coming. I don’t try to hide it. I let it spill freely into the room, low and humorless. I stop just inches away from him, arms loosely folded across my chest, as I take in every broken detail of the monster who made me.

“I almost don’t believe it,” I murmur, my voice smooth and edged with ice. “Captured again. Stripped, gagged, shaking in your own filth. My, my how the mighty have fallen.”

My fingers dance along his chains, a small smile on my face.

“ Papa, ” I croon, the word soaked in irony and venom, “you used to walk through rooms like a god, remember?”

I drift closer, running my nails lightly down the rusted links that bind him, watching his skin flinch with every tap.

“Entire mafias bowed to your presence. Grown men pissed themselves at the sound of your name. You were bigger than life.”

I circle him again, moving with an assassin’s patience and precision, each step punctuated by the sharp click of my heels against the warped floorboards.

The scent of stale blood and rot trails with me like a shroud.

His head twitches toward my voice, but he doesn’t have the strength to follow. Not completely.

“And wow …” I let the word drag from my lips like smoke, stopping just behind him, my voice dipping lower. “Look at you now.”

His chains shudder with sudden motion, jerking beneath my fingers. A wheezing, guttural sound bubbles up from his throat—a mixture of rage and desperation. It makes the gag twist obscenely in his mouth as he tries to speak through it, biting down as if he could chew his words back into power.

But it’s too late for that.

I lean in closer, my lips inches from the slick, crusted edge of his ear.

“Nikolia would love to see you like this,” I whisper, my tone rich with satisfaction.

“I should warn you—we didn’t denounce him like you wanted.

That fantasy of yours? Where we cut him out of the bloodline like a cancer?

” I chuckle under my breath. “Didn’t happen.

Because half or full, he’s still our brother.

And unlike you, he actually earned our loyalty, well after I roughed him up a bit. ”

I round the chair and squat in front of him, my fingers curling delicately around the twisted wire securing the gag.

His eye meets mine—bloodshot, feral, pleading.

He grunts again, more frantic now, trying to communicate something through the wet gag that chokes his breath.

Sweat pours down his ruined face, trailing through grime and blood.

I tilt my head, studying him. Then, slowly I wipe the soot off his cheek in calm loving strokes, like I am his endearing daughter, and not the assassin he has raised me to be.

“You want to say something, Papa?” I murmur, voice lilting with mockery. “You always did love the sound of your own voice.”

The final twist of wire comes free with a brittle snap. I draw the blood-stained cloth from his mouth, careful not to flinch as it peels away from his split, bloated lips with a sucking sound.

His first gasp is ragged—raw like he’s been breathing through gravel. He coughs, spits blood onto the floor between us, and wheezes a breath that sounds half like a sob, half like a curse. When he finally finds his voice, it scrapes out of his throat like it was dragged over nails.

“N-Nadia…” he rasps.

“You said I was weak,” I continue, cutting him off and stepping behind him as I speak low into his ear.

“You said I’d never survive without your name, your guidance, your rules.

That I would be no better than my mother, conning men into loving me just so I could betray them.

That I’d amount to nothing but a ghost of your shadow. ”

I step back into view, crouching in front of him, tilting my head as I study his face.

His jaw is slack, his lips cracked and bleeding at the corners.

The gauze twisted across his mouth is dark with dried saliva and blood, sagging slightly from hours of muffled moaning.

I don’t flinch. I don’t feel pity. Not even a flicker. Just a simmering, precise satisfaction.

“Funny,” I say, voice soft now, almost thoughtful. “Because I’m standing here. And you—” I gesture to his ruined form with a flick of my hand “—you’re not even fit to be a jester, let alone the king of the Bratva.”

I reach down and pick up one of the teeth from the floor, warm and slick between my fingers. I let it dangle in the space between us, holding it where he can see the blood crusted into the enamel. He stares at it like it’s a weapon, or a confession.

“Did it hurt?” I ask, one brow arching, my voice deceptively gentle. “When Sho ripped this out? Or did he punch them out because you never learned to shut the fuck up?”

Boris closes his one good eye, jaw quivering. It’s not fear of pain. Not anymore. It’s the realization that this is the legacy I’m building—not beneath him, but above him. With every breath he takes, I get stronger. And it eats him alive.

I straighten slowly and let the tooth slip from my fingers. It hits the floor with a soft tap, barely a whisper, but in the silence of this room, it sounds like a gunshot.

“You think this makes you strong?” he spits, lips curling back over bloodstained teeth. “You think I lost? You’re just parading around in a dress stitched from my name, Nadia. If I gave the order tomorrow, half the Bratva would still kneel.”

I turn to him slowly, eyes narrowing. He chuckles—or tries to— but it comes out as a wet hack, stringy saliva spilling down his chin.

“You weren’t meant to lead,” he sneers, voice rising despite the damage.

“No man in this world respects a girl playing king. I’d rather give the throne to a bastard.

.. to a half-blooded son of a whore ... than leave it to my cunt of a daughter who couldn’t even keep her legs closed to be worth something. ”

I tilt my head, studying him, calm as ever.

Leaning in until my lips almost graze his ear, I whisper, “I am going to kill you, Papa. Me, your daughter, will be the one to end the Demon of New York, and when I am done I will tell that man upstairs that I love him, and fuck him with your blood still drying on my hands, sounds good to you?”

“When they kill you, Nadi,” he whispers, the words slithering from his battered throat like poison through cracked lips. “When they put your strength to the test, I will be there.”

His chains rattle violently as he thrashes, the sound shrill and desperate like the death cry of a dying animal. His single bloodshot eye glimmers with feral glee. His voice rises, raw with spite.

“When they kill you for being the weak girl you are, I will be there to spit on your corpse , Nadia. Do you hear me?” His body shudders with the force of his conviction, the words spat through his broken teeth. “ I will not die. You cannot kill me! ”

My blood is already boiling, but then he gathers whatever foul, sour saliva remains in his mouth and launches it at me—a wet, violent glob of blood-tinged spit that lands across my cheek and jaw.

Silence floods the room. I don’t flinch. I don’t blink. I just stand there—his filth streaked across my skin, warm and sticky and unworthy of wiping away. My chest rises once. Slow and controlled like I am swallowing any emotion I had left, any obligation I had as his daughter, down.

My first strike is a brutal, closed-fist punch to the side of his jaw, the crack of bone echoing through the room.

His head snaps to the side, a splatter of blood flying from his mouth.

Before his chains can swing back into place, I slam my fist into his gut—deep, fast, and sharp enough to lift his body slightly from its hanging position.

He groans—chokes—but I’m already swinging again.

“This is for Nikolai! ” I scream, my knuckles breaking skin as I drive another punch into his mouth. “For dragging him through your war! For making him clean up your messes with blood on his hands and your name on his back!”

I don't stop. My fists are a blur—ribs, face, jaw, temple.

His chains creak with the force of each blow, blood raining down like ink.

“This is for Gwen! ” I snarl, grabbing the chain above his head and driving my knee into his sternum. “For threatening the one person who saw my brother as more than your puppet! For putting a child in your crosshairs!”

I yank his head back by his hair and slam my elbow into his nose. The cartilage crunches beneath the force, and a fresh spray of blood soaks my chest.

His head lolls. His breathing turns to wet, shallow gasps. But I don’t stop. Not yet. Not until he feels everything.

“This is for Aleksandr, ” I growl, my voice cracking now, hoarse and wild. “For turning my beautiful brother into a man afraid of his own fucking demons— your demons! ”

Boris tries to speak, to wheeze some final word—but I don’t let him.

I grab the iron cuff around his wrist and pull his arm taut. With a shout, I drive my boot into his exposed elbow, the joint snapping backward with a grotesque pop. He screams—high and animalistic—but I don’t flinch.

I never flinch now.

“This,” I whisper, the words thick with rage and tears as I crouch in front of him one last time, my blood-slicked hand curling into a fist, “is for me. For the daughter you tortured. For the little girl who slept with a knife under her pillow because you taught her to fear love. ”

I hit him again.

And again.

My arms ache. My bones scream. My hands are raw and broken.

But his face is no longer recognizable. His body sags like a torn sack of meat, twitching faintly with what little nerve function he has left. He gurgles something, but the only words that matter now are mine.

“For the woman I became in spite of you.”

I wrap my fingers tighter around the chain above his head, my breath ragged and loud in my ears as I stare down at the ruin I’ve made.

“And last but not least,” I say, voice hoarse, almost broken from the force of my screams, “for my mother—for the bad luck she had stumbling upon you, you terrible man. ”

With a final roar, one that scrapes out of my chest like it had waited years to be born, I pull. Hard. The beam groans under the strain, wood cracking, metal shrieking. His body jerks once, violently, then drops like dead weight. The chains go slack. The room falls quiet.

I let go, my arms trembling. My chest heaves as I take in the stillness around me.

The silence is sharp, total.

And in it—against every expectation, against everything I’ve built my life to resist—I feel complete.

Not triumphant, not victorious, not even proud.

Just… whole. Still. The storm inside me is gone, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m not waiting for the next blow to fall.

I wipe the blood and spit from my mouth with my forearm and look down at what’s left of the man who thought he’d never be defeated.

Boris fucking Petrov, the demon of New York just died at the bare hands of his daughter. A fate he would deem worse than death itself.

I stare at the body for a long moment. There’s nothing left to say. No more words to be exchanged. I turn away, not because I want to escape—but because there’s something more important I need to do.

Something I should have done long before now.

I move quickly, the blood on my hands drying tight against my skin as I leave the room and climb the narrow stairs. My legs ache. My chest still burns from the fight, from the screaming, but none of it matters. None of it slows me down.

By the time I reach the top, I’m out of breath. My heart pounds harder than it did when I was hitting him. My feet carry me across the narrow hallway, faster and faster, until I find Sho.

He’s sitting in the center of the small living area, legs crossed under the low table, a cup of tea in one hand and a book in the other. His shirt hangs loose on his shoulders, hair still damp from the shower. He doesn’t look up immediately, too caught in whatever he’s reading.

He’s calm. Entirely untouched by what just happened downstairs.

I stop just inside the doorway, trying to catch my breath. Blood clings to my knuckles and forearms, smudges of it probably on my face. I know how I look—like a storm. Like I crawled through hell.

But when he finally lifts his eyes to mine, he doesn’t flinch. His gaze meets me the same way it always has—sharp, amused, steady.

I open my mouth, but nothing comes at first.

He waits, setting his book down. “Is it done?” he asks, voice quiet.

I nod. “It’s done.”

He studies me a moment longer, and I know he’s reading everything on my face—every unspoken thing I’ve kept locked behind anger, behind power, behind my survival instincts. For years, I built myself into something indestructible. I was made to endure. To rule. To take.

But no one taught me how to give.

So I take a breath. Deep and shaking.

And then I say it—what I’ve never said to anyone.

“I love you.”