Page 20 of Forced Bratva Hostage (Dubrov Bratva #15)

Andrei and the guy called Nico are still down there on the beach talking. I’m torn between minding my own business and finding out what is going on, and the latter of those options eventually wins. My curiosity outweighs my manners, and I creep onto the balcony to listen to what they’re saying.

It’s easy to stay out of sight by ducking just below the balustrades.

I sit quietly, leaning against it and tilting my head towards their voices.

The longer I listen, the more my heart aches for Andrei. He lost his best friend, and he thinks Boris is responsible. Nico seems to think it was Boris, too.

The way Andrei is speaking, he’s drowning in guilt over it, and all I can think about is that Boris wouldn’t do something so cruel.

Not on purpose. There must be a massive misunderstanding between everyone involved.

If everyone took a step back and had an open conversation with my half-brother, they would see it was some kind of mistake. Maybe Grig got caught in the crossfire.

Anxiety begins to bubble inside me when Nico talks about revenge and how it won’t help bring Grig back.

Now I know why Andrei took me. He planned to use me to get at my half-brother.

But why has he been so nice to me? Surely, if I’m part of his plan to hurt my family, then he should hate me.

I don’t feel that at all.

He makes me feel safe when I’m with him.

My mind races as it goes through everything that’s been happening between Andrei and me.

It aches to think that it might have to end. I don’t want things between us to change. They’ve been so good. I love being around him.

I have to fix this.

I have to find a way to show them that Boris isn’t the person they think he is. He’s not a bad guy.

My heart beats faster, my palms getting sweaty with anxious energy when I decide that I’m the one who can fix all of this.

Keeping my head ducked low, I creep back into the villa.

Andrei’s phone is here somewhere. He left it behind when we went for dinner earlier and if I can find it I can call Boris.

One phone call can clear this entire mess up.

I have faith in my half-brother. He might be an asshole, but he isn’t a murderer.

The phone is lying on the kitchen counter, right in the open. Guilt washes over me when I pick it up. Andrei left it there because he trusts me, but this is important and worth the risk of upsetting him.

I dial Boris and wait with the phone pressed against my ear as it rings, once, twice—

“Who is this?” Boris’s voice is harsh.

“It’s Tia,” I stammer, immediately feeling like a child, reprimanded by his tone.

“Tia, what the fuck. How are you calling me?” he says, abrupt and cold. I would have expected him to be happier to hear my voice.

“I know why Andrei is angry with you,” I say, changing the subject. I don’t know how much time I have before he comes inside.

“Why?”

“Because they think you killed a man named Grigoriy—Andrei’s best friend. You didn’t kill him, did you? There’s been some kind of misunderstanding, right?” I ask, waiting tensely for him to ease my worry with his reply.

“I killed him,” Boris says without hesitation.

“What?” I stammer in disbelief. He answered me as though I’d asked him if he wants sugar in his coffee. Nonchalant, zero emotion.

“Tia, what the fuck is the problem? He’s dead. They need to get over it. It happened so long ago, I don’t even remember why I had to kill him. He was a small fish in a pool of sharks. His life didn’t matter either way.”

“Boris,” I say, fighting tears. I want to argue with him, to tell him that every life matters.

But I’m in shock. I’ve never come face-to-face with this side of him before.

I’ve never seen this level of cold cruelty.

He honestly doesn’t give a shit about taking that man’s life.

He doesn’t give a shit about what it did to his family.

“Come home,” he says, his voice softening. “Tell me where you are, and I can come fetch you. We want you back home, Tia.”

But suddenly his gentle words seem fake to me. Were they always fake? Was I just being blind to who he really is?

Nausea knots in my stomach and I take a sharp breath in to try and control it. “I’m not coming home,” I snap, hurt and angry. My entire life seems like a lie. Every interaction with Boris seems fake now. I don’t know what’s real anymore.

“Excuse me?” he snarls, the soothing tone disappearing the moment I refuse his demands.

“I’m not coming home,” I say more sternly.

“If you don’t come home immediately, you’ll regret it. I will find you and I will make your life a living hell, sweetheart. You think you can say no to me? You want to test me? Obey me or you’ll fucking regret it, and I’ll make sure Andrei regrets it too.”

“You know what I realized, right now, this moment?” I say, my heart racing.

“Mm,” he growls into the phone in anger.

“I realized that Andrei is ten times the man you’ll ever be.”

The line is quiet for a moment, and I wonder if he’s hung up.

“You’re going to regret this, Tia,” he whispers darkly.

The line goes dead, and I want to throw up.

Moving slowly, I put the phone down on the kitchen counter. My hands are shaking more now than when I dialed his number.

My half-brother is a monster. How is it that I was so blind before?

The night air outside on the balcony is cool against my skin. I sit there watching Andrei, wondering how to tell him what just happened.

He’s deep in conversation with Nico. I’m not trying to hide anymore; I’m sitting in plain sight.

By the time their conversation ends, I’ve decided that I won’t tell him I spoke to Boris. He doesn’t need to know. That is something I need to deal with for myself.

Andrei looks up at me from the beach below, and immediately a smile spreads over my face.

He really is a good man.

Inside the villa, he sighs loudly and flicks the coffee machine on.

“Is everything ok?” I ask, stepping behind him and wrapping my arms around his front.

“Yes. And no.” He laughs quietly, a nervous tension running through his body.

“Will it be ok?” I ask.

He turns to face me and brushes my hair out of my face, tucking it behind my ears. His eyes are warm and beautiful as he looks down at me with a gentle smile on his lips.

My heart flutters as I smile up at him.

“Everything will be okay, little bunny. I’ll make sure of it,” he says, his hands brushing over the sides of my neck. He pauses, and his eyes flash with light just before he kisses me.

It’s soft, slow and sensual.

It’s not urgent or lustful like before.

This is different. It’s so intimate, it’s making my skin tingle.

My emotions are flooding me again, so I pull away from him, trying to get control of myself.

“I’ll make you coffee,” I say, stepping around him and picking up two mugs. “But how will you survive drinking out of some random mug and not your favorite one?” I tease him to ease the tension.

He stands behind me and wraps his arms around me this time, resting his chin on my head for a moment, he sighs deeply.

“I think I’ll manage. You do make really good coffee, so it should be alright.”

I giggle and lean back into him.

We carry our coffee to the sofa that’s facing the dark ocean, and after Andrei has settled into it, I snuggle against his side.

“Who is Grigoriy?” I ask, knowing he’ll guess I overheard them talking.

“A very good friend that I lost,” he says sadly.

“I don’t think it was your fault, Andrei. Sometimes bad things happen in life and it’s out of our control.”

“That might be true, but there are things that are also in our control, and those are the things I need to focus on now.”

He falls quiet for a long time.

I have so many things I want to say to him. I decide that the most important this in this moment is to say at least a small bit of what’s in my heart.

“Thank you for bringing me here. This place is incredible. And being here with you—it’s incredible, too.” I smile, pressing my face against his shoulder as I stare out into the night, thinking about Andrei and what he means to me.

It’s scary to admit it, but I think I’m in love with him.

We talk until late in the night, and we’re both yawning and exhausted.

Andrei falls asleep on the sofa, but I gently wake him up and lead him upstairs to bed.

Instantly, he’s asleep again when his head touches the pillow.

I pull the blanket over him, and while I would love to snuggle up next to him and sleep too, my mind is too busy.

I desperately want to figure out a way to fix everything.

I tiptoe quietly downstairs, make a cup of tea, and carry it out onto the lower balcony to look up at the stars. There are so many of them. They make me feel small and they quiet my heart.

What am I going to do next?

At this point, I’m not really a prisoner anymore. It was easy to use his phone. It would be easy to slip away. But I don’t want that.

I want to stay with Andrei.

Soon, we’ll be flying back to Boston, back home, back to the city. At that point, I should have had a plan in place to keep us both safe.

I no longer know what my half-brother is capable of and from the reality check I just had, nothing good can happen if he’s involved.

“Don’t scream, Tia,” a deep, familiar voice grates through the air.

I spin in fright to face Van, clasping my hand over my mouth.

It was he following us. All this time, it was him, and my instincts were right.

Shock bolts through me like lightning and my eyes are wide with fear.

“Do you hear me—don’t make a sound,” Van snarls.

I glance inside, to the stairs that lead up to the bedroom, to Andrei.

Van laughs coldly. He holds up his hand to show me a device.

I don’t know what it is. But it doesn’t look good.

“Have you ever seen a detonator before?” he whispers.

I shake my head, swallowing hard.

Van looks down at the thing in his hand and smiles. “This little button, right here, will end your boyfriend’s life in a split second.”

I stare from his hand to his face. “Why?” I stammer.

“It doesn’t matter why. The point is that I am in control right now. If you make any moves, or if you decide you aren’t going to do exactly as I tell you to, then I press this, and the bomb goes off, and he dies. It’s that simple.”

“We’ll all die,” I hiss. “You’ll kill yourself too.”

“No, sweetheart. Just him. I have plenty of experience with explosives. But if you want to take the risk, that’s your choice.”

“Van, please—Boris would be furious if he knew you were doing this.”

He snorts with laughter. “The boss gives the orders, sweetheart. I follow them. Are so fucking stupid that you don’t know that? Now decide. I don’t have all night. Are we blowing up your boyfriend, or are you coming quietly?”

I clench my jaw and fight tears of anger, frustration and fear. There is no choice at all. I refuse to risk Andrei’s life. Especially seeing as Van will take me anyway.

“I’ll go,” I whisper, my words are a betrayal because Andrei will think I ran away. He’ll wake up and find me gone and he’ll think that I left, and that everything that happened between us wasn’t real.

Inside my chest, my heart is filled with pain as I step towards Van and nod. “Let’s go.”

He smiles, and it’s so cruel it makes me scrunch my face in disgust. “Wise choice,” he says, wrapping his steel grip around my arm, and he tugs me close to his face.

His breath is hot against my skin as he snarls, “This has an incredibly long range. We can be back in Boston and I can still set it off.”

I nod again. “I get it. I won’t fight.”

He’s satisfied with my answer, so he gestures for me to get moving.

Van lets me walk ahead of him out of the villa and towards the cars. I open my own door and climb into the back seat, not wanting to sit next to that asshole of a man.

The windows are tinted dark, and it feels claustrophobic inside.

I turn to look at the villa as we drive away.

My heart is breaking for Andrei and how disappointed he will be when he thinks I’ve left.

I wish there was some way I could leave him a message—but I can’t take any risks. Not when the risk involves his life.

To my surprise, Van does not take us to the airport; he takes us to a hotel nearby. Parking outside, he tugs me out of the car, and I swear at him, telling him I’m coming willingly. There is no reason to be rough.

He ignores me and drags me up to the penthouse and shoves me inside, to where my half-brother is waiting. The smile on his lips when I step inside is so smug, I want to slap it right off his face.

“What is wrong with you?” I shout angrily.

He laughs. “Oh, darling little sister. You waste of oxygen, brat. We don’t have enough time to discuss my psychology. There is so much to do. We have to find a use for you.”

“Olivia, get in here,” Boris snaps, and one of my housekeepers from back home comes scuttling into the living room.

“Find some clothes for her to wear. She can’t be wandering around in that.

” He waves his hand over my red dress, the one I wore last night.

The one I walked on the beach with Andrei.

The one I wore when I snuggled next to him on the sofa for hours.

Tears spike at the back of my eyes and I swallow, pushing them away.