Page 77 of Forced Bratva Hostage

I choke on the pain of his words.

It is my fault. All I had to do with cry out. One word. Anything. If I had opened my fucking mouth, he’d still be alive.

I glare at my half-brother, seeing him in an entirely new way. It’s as though someone has lifted the rose-tinted glasses off my face and I’m able to see his rotting soul, clear as day. His heartless, cruel, true self.

“Are we done here?” Van asks, speaking to Boris.

“Yes, get them both in the car. Tell the pilot we’re ready to leave. I want to be far away from the hotel by the time the firetrucks show up at the beachfront.”

They carry on talking, but everything sounds like I’m trapped underwater. Sounds are echoing at me from a distance. Muffled and distorted. The world is moving in slow motion.

Van drags me from the room. Shouting something at me. But I’m numb. I’m dead inside. I can’t feel anything or see anything.

I can’t believe that any of this is real. I refuse to accept it, yet I saw it with my own eyes.

I’m the reason that Andrei is dead, and I can never change that.

I’ll never see him again.

I can barely remember the plane ride home. It’s as though everything that happened after the explosion just isn’t real.

Days go by, one by one, and all I can think about is Andrei.

Each time I picture his face, I want to sink into the black hole where my heart used by and let the pain of losing him swallow me up.

I hate myself.

I hate my half-brother.

I don’t know how to get through this.

***

Back home, things have changed.

It’s been two weeks since we left the Bahamas. Two weeks since Andrei died, and my heart only gets more lost with each passing day.

I love him.

And I am the reason he died.

I am a prisoner in my own home again, but this time it’s worse. Boris is making it clear that I am not welcome here unless I make sacrifices for the family. He expects me to earn my place here and to earn his trust back. There is no world in which I want to earn his trust. I wish he would die, and I’d never have to look at his face again.

He’s told me over and over again that the only reason he wanted to get me back, torescueme from Andrei, was to use me against him. It wasn’t because he cared—according to him, he hadnevercared about me.

“Do you know what our father did?” Boris muses as he paces up and down in my bedroom, ranting again. I sit quietly on the edge of my bed, enduring his long, tedious lecture. It didn’t take me long to learn that if I didn’t at least pretend to listen to him, he doesn’t hesitate to deliver a sharp slap across my face. And I’m certain it would quickly get worse than that if he sensed defiance in me.

I’m numb and heartbroken, but I’m still afraid of the pain he might inflict on me.

“No,” I mutter. “I don’t know what our father did.”

“Our father made a clause in his will—a clause thatforcedme to take care of you. The family trust is withholding millions of dollars from me. It only gets released year by year, as long as I take care of you. Can you fucking believe it? I would have gotten rid of you the moment the old man died if it wasn’t for that.” He pulls his mouth tight.

A single tear spills down my cheek.

What I overheard all those years ago plays back in my mind.

You’ll get nothing from me—