Page 5 of Cruel Russian Monster (Safin Bratva #2)

Living with Vera was…difficult.

Three years ago, she was mine. My girl. My weakness. We had sex, sure, more times than I could count, but she was in college, and spending the entire night together was always off the table. Her rules, her boundaries.

Now she was under my roof, wearing my name.

And all I could think about was getting her in my bed…and keeping her there.

But I had to chase those thoughts away. My focus was on helping Lev put out these damn fires caused by Artyom and the ghost enemy lighting them. One of which I was currently interrogating.

And by ‘interrogating,’ I meant beating the shit out of him until he told me what I wanted to know. They tried to raid one of our warehouses and set the room on fire where the workers were held captive.

My men waited outside the small room.

But the man just smiled at me and refused to say a word.

His torn shirt slid down, and that was when I saw it—a star inked on his shoulder. This time, they’d fucked up, as I knew they eventually would. Instead of sending mercenaries, they’d sent one of their own.

Our ghost enemy wasn’t just some outside player. It was another fucking Bratva faction.

Either that…or it was one of the factions Artyom had pitted against us. With so many enemies, they probably assumed they could topple us, topple what our leaders built before us, and what we continued to build.

That would only happen over my dead body.

But my gut told me the truth. This had nothing to do with Artyom making us outcasts among the other Bratva factions.

The people who paid those mercenaries to grab Katya? They were affiliated with the man tied in front of me. They were fucking Bratva.

After carving the star from his skin, I took a picture of him, slit his throat, and instructed the boys to dump the body.

I walked over to the dock and threw the piece of skin in.

The fish would discard it soon enough. I didn't want the other men knowing the man was Bratva, for them to run back and tell Lev.

I’d have Timur look into who the hell he was under the radar.

Lev already had enough on his plate. If he found out it was another Bratva faction behind Katya's kidnapping, there was no telling what he’d do.

One of my jobs as his underboss was making sure he returned home alive every damn day.

To his wife. To his kid.

And that was a job I took personally.

After returning to the office, I took a quick shower and told Tomas to take me home.

Unlike most Bratva leaders, I didn’t keep a swarm of security around. Tomas acted as both my security detail and my driver. He came in at a set time and left most days in the evening to be with his family.

I liked my privacy.

Lev’d been on my ass lately, telling me it was time to tighten things up, especially with all the attacks. But it wasn't happening. Not now, when Vera was under my roof. Tomas was loyal to me; he'd take my secrets to the grave. And for that, I paid him generously.

Surprisingly, even without guards, Vera hadn’t tried to run.

She got up every morning, made breakfast, and even left dinner in the oven for when I got home.

Of course, I checked the cameras first to make sure she hadn't poisoned it.

But I still caught myself smiling as I watched her on screen, dancing and singing into a damn wooden spoon.

One morning, I got up early just to see her in the kitchen. Usually, I waited until she’d gone back to her room with her breakfast on a tray. But that day, she had cut her finger, and I didn’t think. I just ran in.

Without hesitation, she let me check her wound. I wiped the tears from her eyes and told her that I'll need to stitch it. She didn't argue, she just nodded. The woman I kidnapped and forced to marry me trusted me to stitch her wounds…that gutted me. Fuck.

After grabbing the first aid kit and numbing the area, I stitched her up. I’d patched up enough of my men and myself to handle it without setting foot in one of our clinics.

Still, that gentle look in her eyes when she whispered “thank you”—real and unguarded—it stuck with me. Her hand in mine…the other on my chest…our lips inches away from each other's…

I shook the thought away.

I didn’t marry Vera to play house. I married her to keep Artyom from tearing our damn faction apart. And soon, he’d find out, he and every damn Bratva brother across the U.S. and beyond, that Vera Rykov was now Vera Safin.

Yet somehow, playing house was exactly what crossed my mind then. It was only four in the afternoon, and I was already on my way home to check on her.

Tomas dropped me off, and I entered the house quietly. But the closer I got to Vera's room, the louder her shrieks came.

With my gun now in my hand, I rushed in and found her in the bathroom. I froze.

The sink tap had snapped clean off, and water was gushing out onto the tiled floor. Vera stood in the middle of it, hands pressed desperately against the broken pipe, soaked from head to toe.

I put my gun away and stalked over to her, the water splashing me as I placed my hands on the cabinet door.

She stepped out of the way, giving me enough room to open it and reach for the shutoff valve.

I twisted it until the water finally stopped.

As I rose to my feet, the cabinet door shut itself.

The knees of my pants and the back of my jacket were wet.

Vera finally stepped away from the sink.

Her satin pajama top was plastered to her skin. Thin straps clung to her damp shoulders, and the cold air from the AC had her nipples pressing visibly against the fabric, taunting me.

“How the hell did this happen?” I snapped, my voice sharper than I intended.

I knew damn well she couldn’t have broken it on purpose. But I needed to feel something, anything, other than the raw, dangerous urge to pin her to the counter, rip that top off, and suck those perfect nipples until she moaned my name like she used to.

At first, she looked startled.

Then the fire came as anger flared in her eyes.

“I came to use the bathroom. Then I needed to wash my hands. I turned the tap, and the damn thing broke right off! That’s how the hell it happened.”

“And you thought using your hands to stop the water was the best plan of action? Instead of shutting it off at the source?” I lifted an eyebrow.

“I was startled! I wasn’t expecting it,” she shot back. “Maybe you shouldn't buy those cheap ass taps! And try to install it yourself. And maybe, it wouldn't have broken off the way it did.”

I smirked. “I think you did it on purpose. Yanked off the tap, and wore a top that could easily become see-through. Are you trying to seduce me, Vera?”

I let my gaze deliberately drop to her breasts, then back up to her face. Her cheeks flared red.

She crossed her arms over her chest in a poor attempt to shield herself.

“Seduce you?” she scoffed. “How do you seduce a man who no longer has a soul? If you think I’d ever want you to touch me again, you’re delusional.”

She spun, trying to storm off, only to slip on the water-logged floor.

I caught her before she hit the ground, pulling her flush against my chest. She looked up at me, defiance fading from her eyes, replaced by something softer. Something I'd seen before…lust.

Feeling her this close again made me want to bury myself inside her and never come up for air.

We stood there for a few moments, a magnetic pull drawing our lips closer.

Suddenly, my phone rang, shattering the moment.

I released her slowly and without a word or second glance, walked out of the room.

“Lev, what is it?”

Lev's voice was strained. That was how he always sounded right before he flew off the handle, and for him, that was a rare occurrence.

“There was an explosion at Drakon.”

Fuck!

Drakon was the club Avit and Pyotr ran together.

I bolted down the stairs, heart racing, not giving a damn that I needed to change my clothes. My brothers needed me. I'd change at the office later.

“Injuries? What about Pyotr and Avit? Are they okay?”

If one hair was singed on my brother’s head, someone was going to die.

“They’re fine. Shaken, but alive. We’ve got casualties, though, and innocent fatalities.”

“Where are you now? Have the police arrived? What about the fire department?”

“Marten is taking care of the firefighters; I've called our connections inside the department to get their asses to the scene. I'm one minute out.”

I jumped into the car, and Tomas hopped behind the wheel.

“I’m on my way.”

I hung up and pocketed my phone.

“Tomas, to Drakon.”

“Yes, sir.”

One hour later, my brothers and I were gathered inside Lev’s office at the headquarters downtown.

“We need to find these fuckers and kill them,” Marten growled. “First Mariya and Ninel, now Avit and Pyotr? They're getting way too fucking close.”

“I agree,” I said.

I wanted nothing more than to sink my knife into the hearts of the bastards who went after my siblings.

But first, we needed to confirm who the hell did it.

“And there's no fucking way I'm going into hiding because of this,” Avit said firmly. “If those fuckers thought we'd put our tails between our legs and hide, they have another think coming.”

“Timur and the others are already on it,” Lev said. “We can't keep taking fucking hits like this. We need more eyes and ears on the ground. We also need men to infiltrate Artyom’s crew, or at least bribe some of his men for intel so we can stop his attacks before they happen.”

Lev inhaled deeply, meeting each of our gazes.

“At least we'll be able to control his movements from our end.

The ghost enemy, we can't. This shit is making us lose money and credibility outside the U.S.

, too. If we can't keep shit under control in our own damn faction, how the fuck can we be trusted to handle business deals?”

“I can help get inside intel from Artyom,” Pyotr added. “I know a few girls sleeping with some of Artyom’s security details. I'll get them to talk.”

My eyes narrowed. “Can you trust them to give you accurate information?”

His green eyes blazed.

Pyotr continued, “This ain't about trust. If they fuck me over, I’ll fuck them up. It’s as simple as that.”

“I’m sick and tired of this bullshit. Always looking over our shoulders. Ninel and Mariya are fucking scared, but they'll never admit it. Not with the way they were raised. They know we'll worry about them, and to them, that's a distraction. One that could get us killed.”

I watched his hands clench in his lap. Out of all of us, Pyotr always seemed the least concerned about anything. A playboy who loved to party, but never careless, never stupid, and definitely not harmless.

He sat forward and looked around the room, eyes hardening.

“I know how all of you think of me. I’m more than just a fucking playboy. I’m a fucking Safin, and I’ll do what I need to protect my own…the only way I fucking know how. The Bratva way—through fucking blood and sacrifice.”

Lev spoke. “Is that how you really think we look at you? As just a playboy? Because none of us sees that. As your older brothers, we might be a bit worried about the number of women you've slept with, but that doesn't take away from who you are. Got it?”

Pyotr nodded once.

We all knew we had our work cut out for us. Shit was far from over, the stakes rising more every damn day.

Over the next two hours, we worked on the situation from every angle. After we wrapped up, I was just about to leave the office when another notification pinged on my screen.

Another order from Vera.

When she moved in, I gave her a phone, a laptop, and a credit card, all of it bugged and tapped, needing to keep tabs on her. Her phone was modified to only be able to contact two people, me and Tomas.

I didn’t mind her buying things. Hell, I liked it.

It made me feel good that I could provide anything she desired.

I knew pulling her away from everything was hard, as it had been for Katya when Lev had done the same to her.

And maybe Vera was bored, especially being so close to Kira but unable to see or talk to her.

Still…some of the orders were odd: a single bar stool, a neon sign with the time half past eight, a blue miniature SUV, and a locust figurine.

Tonight? She ordered a red baseball cap and a red-and-white baseball shirt with the number forty-two.

Something pricked at the back of my neck. And an uneasy feeling coiled in my stomach, one I couldn't shake.

I veered back into my office, pulled up every order Vera had made since moving in, printed them, and laid them across the desk.

After thirty minutes of staring at them, the pattern clicked.

“Son of a bitch…”

Vera wasn’t just shopping. She was sending coded messages, setting up a fucking meeting…tonight, at a bar.

I sent Tomas home, grabbed one of the standby cars from the office garage, and drove to the bar.

It didn’t take long to find him. He was seated at the bar, wearing the red cap and that damn forty-two shirt. He was a scrawny guy with glasses and the worst case of acne I'd ever seen. Couldn't have been older than thirty.

I dropped onto the stool next to him and slipped my gun against his side.

I growled low enough that only he could hear, and dangerous enough to let him know I wasn’t one to be fucked with. “If you move, you die. If you try to kill me, you die. If you don’t answer my questions, you die. Got it?”

The guy’s eyes widened, and he nodded quickly.

“Who are you supposed to meet and why?”

“I’m supposed to meet Ms. Vera Rykov.” His voice trembled. “She said she needed help getting back home, that she was in some kind of danger, but didn't want to involve her family.”

I pressed the gun further into his side. “Did she say what kind of danger?”

He swallowed hard. “N-no. Just that she needed my help.”

“Did you tell anyone else you were meeting her here?”

“No. She said it was important that no one found out she was back in Philly.”

Without another word, I yanked him off the stool, dragged him out back, and shot him in the head. I tossed his body in the dumpster and called two of my men to come clean up the mess.

Then I got in the car and drove home, fury boiling in my veins.

Here I was, thinking she was settling in, making my home ours. All the damn while she was planning her fucking escape.

And where the fuck had she dug up a coward like that? Was that scrawny piece of shit supposed to protect her if things got ugly during her little escape plan? He didn't even try to lie, to cover for her.

A short while later, my car screeched to a stop, and I hopped out and stormed through the house, straight to her room.

I looked around, and it was empty.

I searched the house from top to bottom.

She was gone.