Page 34 of Deadly Knight (The Bratva’s Elite #2)

With a move too quick for me to catch, he spins to face me, a single step bearing down on me.

Although I feel in my heart he won’t harm me, instinct has me retreating.

For every pace backwards, he also steps, our dance concluding when the backs of my knees hit the mattress.

He wraps his hands around my arms, his grip tighter than he would have dared in the past.

Rage flickers in his eyes, but it’s quickly extinguished for something much softer.

However, his grip doesn’t loosen, and I’m not entirely sure I want it to.

Our chests are close together, our panting breaths mingling, but for a moment, years of running melts away.

The wall loses a few rocks, shattering the last two years to the ground.

“You want the truth, moya dusha ? Ivan used you as a pawn because I never stopped caring. I was close enough to save you in time because I was in Toronto. I’ve always been there.”

My words feel far away when I whisper, “You were supposed to forget about me, to let me go.”

“It’s really hard to forget the other half of your soul.”

With that, my heart starts cracking. Like he knows this, his hands loosen, one finger at a time.

“You were supposed to heal.”

“Heal from what? You’re the balm to my aches, Katya, then and now. You’re my drug of choice. My painkiller. The only thing that makes all the other shit better.”

If my heart weren’t already halfway broken, that would have done it. “We broke up, Dimitri.”

“No, you broke up with me. For me, we never ended. You ripped my heart out of my chest.”

My eyes water, but I quickly blink, unwilling to reveal how those words slash at my insides. In the end, he might think he’s fine, but I’m not. I need to go home to Toronto and back to the life I’ve created for myself, not get caught up in anything from my past—him included.

“I’m not apologizing for that.” I can’t, not for making the right choice.

His hands fall away, his whisper as agonizing as this entire conversation. “I’m not asking you to.”

With the conversation stilted in a moment of careful peace—the kind found right after a fight when both sides pause to determine how the other party will react—I switch to pleading, recognizing it might be the only way to get through to him.

“Please take me home.”

“You are home. Canada isn’t it.”

It’s become my home. It became the place I ran to, to hide, to rediscover myself after the hell of graduation night. After ten years, it’s been as much of a home as Russia was, even if, despite its massive cultural environment, it’s not the same, like something is always missing.

I stop, my bare feet pressing into the plush carpet. For half a second, I wonder when exactly I lost my heels and where they are. “It is now.”

After another step, Dimitri hauls me backwards, his arm banding around my chest. Before allowing my body to be tricked with old desires, my fists slam into his chest as I try—and fail—to escape his hold.

Now would be a great time to remember those self-defence lessons I’ve spent the past year doing, but like a novice on day one, they’re non-existent.

“You can’t keep me here.”

“Watch me,” he replies in a dark tone. His eyes go flat and, in a movement I don’t see coming, he trips me, placing me on the bed. “Stay here until I return.”

He backs away, like he’s expecting me to obey. I don’t, shooting to my feet. “Return from where?”

“Toronto, obviously. My father is a threat to you, my cousin, and my organization. I refuse to stop until he’s dealt with. Here, you’ll be safe so he can’t touch you again.”

While I should be grateful for his desire to protect me, this also shouldn’t be my reality. Seeing him has done enough to my mental walls; much longer exposure, and he’ll destroy me. It’ll be years before I reclaim the new version of myself.

“Take me back with you.” I step, only halted by his cold glare. “I have a job…a life. You can’t kidnap me.”

“Too late, already have. A friend hacked your work’s system. You’re on leave until further notice. As for everything else, forget about it.”

My head pounds at the thought of him having someone hack my work , all to lock me up in his Russian mansion while he parades in my city.

This is too much. This isn’t even about stalking me for a decade and not following my request; it’s everything after.

It’s that if I stay a moment too long, Dimitri will see how utterly not okay I am.

He’ll try to fix me, not understanding safety, therapy, and not being in the city of my nightmares is the only way to do that.

“I have clients who need me.”

“And I need you safe!” he roars. “They’ll survive without you, but I won’t.”

His disclosure hovers in the air between us, partway between heartache and love. Between what remains and what was.

“I would have been safe if you’d left me alone.

Your father wouldn’t have had reason to target me again.

” The words slip out in a soft utterance, finalized by a gasp, my hands pressing into my mouth, but it’s too late.

They’re out there, heard by us both, and I immediately feel like a bitch, especially when his expression flits from agony to blankness.

Shut down, and I did that…but he’s also at fault, even if I regret admitting it aloud.

If Dimitri moved on, married someone else, became the soldier he was intended to be and never looked in on me, Ivan’s entire goal would have been met.

He only came for me because he knew it’d hurt his son—again.

His jaw clicks so hard, I swear I hear it from across the room. “Just like you won’t apologize for breaking up with me because you felt it was for the best, I won’t be apologizing for any of this. Not when it’s for the best.”

“Dimit—”

He spins, cutting me off, and like déjà vu, we find ourselves stalking back to the bed.

One step of his, two of mine. His manic look should entice only panic; if he was any other man, it certainly would.

It’d send me into a spiraling tailspin of hell.

Instead, something else sweeps through me. Something comforting.

“You. Are not. Safe! And I fucking refuse to watch what almost happened yesterday occur again.”

The last thing I recall is getting taken by Ivan in the park after my date unfortunately was working for the devil. I want to ask what exactly happened, but he speaks again, and like the same crack that jumpstarted his anger, this one ends it.

In a broken whisper, his words imbedding into my skin, he murmurs, “ Moya dusha , feel whatever you want about me, but if this is the only way to ensure your safety, nothing else matters. If you return to Toronto and he finds you again, he won’t hesitate to harm you worse because it’ll break me, and he’s aware of that.

Please don’t ask me to watch you be hurt again. ”

And there goes another brick on my wall.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything. Not until I get back.” Slowly, he reaches up, tentatively stroking my cheek, my body reacting to the person it’s missed for years. The person whose touch I’ve had to lock inside boxes and behind walls to move on.

The touch that chips away ten years’ worth of therapy.

It’s like this I realize precisely how close we are; how his head is almost above mine and mine is tipped to keep him in view. I’m trapped with the mattress pressing behind my legs and by his imposing form.

“How long will you be gone?”

“However long it takes.”

“That’s not a good enough answer. I have a life to return to.”

“It’s the only one I got.” His hand tightens on my face, his weight coming down heavy—possessive. Claiming. “Do you hate me?” he asks suddenly.

Do I? I don’t, even if I’m pissed as hell at him.

I can’t hate someone I’m uncertain exactly how to feel about.

There are ghosts of old love floating, trapped beneath the pressure placed on myself to let him go.

If anything, he should hate me . For not being strong enough to stay with him and still being too weak to remain.

I don’t hate him, but like I reminded myself upon waking: I’ll fake anything to get home and put this behind me. Which means lying; hating him because it’s a reasonable feeling to have about someone stalking me for a decade.

“Yes.”

His hand shifts to my neck, the ribbon brushing my pulse. “Good. Then you won’t care about this.”

This?

He dips down, his hand angling my neck up as his mouth slashes across mine.

It’s angry. It’s explosive. It’s years of pent-up loneliness unleashed.

I shouldn’t kiss him back. I should shove him off of me. But when his tongue teases my bottom lip in that way I’ve always loved, I release logic, sanity, and hate for these few seconds.

The walls come crashing down, now rubble between our feet.