Page 36 of Mafia King’s Broken Vow (New York Bratva #5)

CORNERED

MILA

M y breath comes in short, sharp bursts as I press deeper into the shadows of the alley.

The wind cuts through my blouse like a blade, lashing against sweat-damp skin and sending icy tendrils down my spine.

The cold cuts deep, but adrenaline burns hotter.

All I can hear are footsteps behind me, echoing off cracked pavement. Closer. Hunting.

“You can’t run forever, Dr. Agapova.”

Pablo’s voice ricochets between the brick walls, smooth and unhurried, a serpent’s calm before the strike. He sounds amused. Like we’re playing a game.

We’re not.

“Did you really think a dinner with Nikolai’s wife would be private?” he snarls. “I’ve had people watching your every move for weeks. Waiting for exactly this kind of opportunity.”

My eyes scan the alley—narrow, dark, unforgiving. Yakov’s voice loops through my head like a survival mantra: assess your terrain, identify makeshift weapons, use your environment like an extension of your body.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

I’d insisted on dinner with Katarina this evening, despite Yakov’s reluctance to let me leave the mansion for anything that wasn’t essential.

“I need this,” I’d argued, my voice steady despite the storm in his eyes. “I need to feel normal. To see my oldest friend.”

“It’s not safe,” he’d said, jaw tight with frustration.

“It’s dinner with Nikolai’s wife. At a restaurant his people have cleared. I’ll have an earpiece, security detail?—”

“I’ll be there,” he’d said finally, voice like steel. “Close enough to intervene if anything goes wrong.”

The dinner had started normally. Controlled location. Bratva security positioned with surgical precision—Nikolai’s men watching every point of entry, Yakov positioned with the overwatch team, close enough to intervene.

Katarina had been mid-sentence, telling me about her upcoming trip to Hawaii, when the first explosion hit. We’d been laughing—the first real laugh I’d had in weeks—her familiar warmth making me forget, for a moment, the danger that had become my constant shadow.

And then all hell broke loose.

Glass shattered, screams erupted. Bratva security moved instantly, but Colombian reinforcements were already swarming through multiple entry points.

“Mila!” Katarina grabbed my hand as screams erupted around us. Security moved instantly, but Pablo’s men were ready, overwhelming our protection.

As panic erupted, someone grabbed Katarina, pulling her toward the main exit while Pablo’s hand locked around my wrist, dragging me in the opposite direction.

“Kata!” I screamed, but she was already gone, swept away by the Bratva protocols designed to protect Nikolai’s family. Pablo grabbed me in the confusion, dragging me toward a service exit while Bratva soldiers engaged his men.

I fought.

Yakov’s training snapped into muscle memory: the heel of my palm driving into his solar plexus, the twist to break his grip, the sharp kick to create space. It worked…for a moment.

But Pablo recovered fast.

Too fast.

Now I’m here, cornered and freezing in a back alley, pulse hammering, alone and breathing like I’m drowning on dry land.

The footsteps stop.

I freeze, spine flush against the brick wall, praying to vanish into it.

“I admire your fire,” Pablo calls out, his voice closer now, tone almost conversational. “It’s what drew me to you, you know. That brilliant mind buried under all that control.”

My fingers curl around the neck of a discarded bottle near a dumpster. Not ideal. But something. Yakov’s voice again, crisp and steady in my memory, “ When cornered, attack. Surprise is survival.”

“Most women would be paralyzed by now,” Pablo says, his steps resuming—slower, hunting. “But not you. You’re thinking. Calculating. Looking for an edge.”

My heartbeat roars in my ears. This isn’t a drill. This isn’t controlled. But the lessons stick.

“Use their assumptions. Use their arrogance. They never expect a strike.”

I adjust my hold on the bottle, waiting, timing, baiting.

“Your Bratva friends are busy,” Pablo says, his shadow stretching across the slick pavement. “And your lover? He chose protecting Nikolai’s wife over protecting you.”

That one word—lover—cuts colder than the wind. He knows. He’s been watching.

The shadow halts. Then moves faster.

“There you are.” Pablo rounds the corner, his smile feral, victorious. “Tired of running?”

He closes in, arrogant in his control, sure of my helplessness. I let him believe it. Let him step within range.

Then I move.

But he’s faster.

His hand snaps out, seizing my wrist with bruising force. The bottle slips from my hand and shatters on the pavement.

“Did he teach you that?” he sneers, twisting my arm until pain shoots up my shoulder. “Your precious Yakov? Trained you to fight like a cornered animal?”

Fear surges through me, jagged and electric. I twist, instinct and training kicking in, but Pablo anticipates the move. He slams me back against the wall—hard. The impact knocks the breath from my lungs, stealing everything but panic and fury.

“I’ve been watching you,” he whispers, his mouth too close, rain dripping from his perfect hair onto my cheeks like poison. “The sessions. The training. The nights in his bed. Did you really think no one noticed?”

A fresh wave of dread rolls through me.

“You’re wrong,” I say, voice strained but level, clinging to the lie with a white-knuckled grip.

He laughs. Low. Dangerous. Certain.

“I’m never wrong, Mila. That’s what makes me so very good at what I do.”

His free hand lifts, brushing my jaw with mock tenderness that makes bile rise in my throat. I jerk away, but the wall traps me.

“What I wonder,” he muses, “is if he actually gives a damn about you…or if you’re just a convenient piece on his board. A means to an end.”

The words strike home, straight to that soft, hidden place I try not to touch. The quiet fear that sometimes whispers in the silence between Yakov’s arms. Am I something real or just another angle in his endless war?

“You don’t know him,” I snap, sharper than I mean to, my anger burning through the fear.

“I know men like him,” Pablo says, his hand shifting from my jaw to my throat. He doesn’t squeeze, but the threat is there, cold and absolute. “I know the lies they sell when they want something.”

I close my eyes for half a second, steadying my breath. He’s trying to get in my head. Undermine me. Fracture the foundation Yakov’s helped me rebuild. I won’t let him.

“What do you want?” I ask, voice low, buying time, scanning for openings.

His thumb strokes down to my collarbone, slipping beneath the edge of my blouse. “So many things,” he murmurs, and my stomach twists. “Information. Leverage. Your brilliance working for my side instead of wasting away with Bratva thugs.”

His smile turns predatory. “And eventually…when you understand where you belong…other benefits.”

The implication curdles the air between us. My pulse spikes, fight-or-flight igniting full force.

I brace, ready to strike, to scream, to claw free.

But I don’t have to.

A shadow separates from the darkness behind Pablo.

Yakov.

My heart lurches as recognition hits like lightning. He’s a ghost in the dark, silent and precise, fury carved into every sharp line of his face. His expression is one I’ve never seen—calm, controlled, and terrifying. Cold rage honed to a lethal point.

He closes the distance in seconds, quiet as death.

“Remove your hand from her throat,” Yakov says. The words are soft. Calm. The kind of voice that precedes violence.

Pablo goes still but doesn’t let go. Instead, he shifts, using my body as a barrier between them, turning slightly to face his new threat.

“Gagarin,” he drawls, and for the first time, there’s a sliver of surprise in his voice. “I didn’t expect you to abandon your post.”

“You have no idea what I’m capable of,” Yakov replies coolly.

Our eyes meet, his flick briefly to mine. A silent question: Are you hurt?

I shake my head once.

He nods, barely perceptible, and refocuses. His body is tense, every muscle coiled. I see the shift in his stance, the subtle recalibration I’ve learned to recognize. He’s ready to strike.

“Let her go,” Yakov says, his voice sharpened glass. “And maybe, just maybe, you leave this alley breathing.”

Pablo laughs, but there’s a tremor beneath it now. “Brave words from a dead man walking. You think Sokolov will forgive this? Leaving your post without permission?”

I see the flicker in Yakov’s stance, weight shifting, center lowering, calibrated violence in motion.

“I think,” Yakov says, voice smooth as a blade drawn slow and sure, “that if you believe I’m worried about Sokolov right now…then you’ve made a fatal miscalculation.”

Pablo’s grip tightens instinctively, just for a second, but it’s all I need.

I drop my weight, twisting toward his thumb—the weakest point of his hold—exactly as Yakov taught me. His fingers slip. His control breaks.

And Yakov is already in motion.

What follows is a blur of brutal grace. Yakov moves like a man born to violence, every strike measured, efficient, devastating.

Pablo lashes out, surprisingly skilled, but he’s outmatched before the first punch lands.

In seconds, he’s on his knees, blood streaming from his nose, Yakov’s hand wrapped around his throat.

“Yakov.” My words are soft but urgent. “We need him alive.”

Understanding crosses his features. A war between fury and restraint, between the man I know and the monster he keeps caged. For a breathless moment, I’m not sure which one will win.

Then his gaze finds mine.

The shift is subtle, but it’s there. His grip loosens slightly, though Pablo stays pinned beneath him, furious and humiliated.

“Are you alright?” The brutality of his hands doesn’t touch the gentleness in his voice.

I shake my head, stepping closer, drawn to him like gravity has rewired itself around his presence. “You found me.”

A faint smile touches his lips, softening his entire face.

Pablo makes a sharp, derisive sound. “Touching,” he sneers. “The monster finds his heart.”

Yakov’s grip tightens again, cutting him off mid-breath. “Speak to her again,” he says coldly, “and it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”

It should chill me. It should cross a line.

But instead, I reach for him, my hand resting on his shoulder, grounding him. Grounding us.

“The Bratva will want him alive,” I say quietly. “For interrogation.”

Yakov nods, the tension in his frame easing slightly beneath my touch. “They’re on their way. I alerted Aleksander before I left my post.”

Right on cue, the sound of engines rumbles through the alley. Headlights cut through the dark, followed by the slick professionalism of armed men moving into position. Aleksander is first to step into view, Volk at his side.

He surveys the scene. Yakov, crouched over Pablo. Me, standing too close.

“Well,” he says dryly, taking it all in, “this is…illuminating.”

Yakov rises, still holding Pablo in a vice grip, but his tone is measured. “He was going to kill her.”

Aleksander’s eyes sweep over us again, sharp and calculating. “And you left your assigned position because…?”

“Because he had to,” I cut in, stepping forward. “Yakov found me. When no one else could.”

There’s a beat of silence. Then something shifts in Aleksander’s expression—less judgment, more reluctant understanding. He gestures for his men to take Pablo. Only when they’ve fully secured him does Yakov let go.

Pablo spits blood, glaring as they drag him past. “This isn’t over,” he snarls. “Not by a long shot.”

Aleksander steps in closer, lowering his voice. “Igor’s going to be livid. You abandoned your position. Left the team?—”

“I found her,” Yakov says simply, reaching for my hand. Our fingers lace together, unflinching. “That’s all that matters.”

Aleksander sees it—the connection between us—but he says nothing. Just exhales and shakes his head.

“We’ll deal with the fallout later,” he mutters. “For now, get her out of here.”

As we move toward the waiting vehicles, Yakov keeps me close, his body angled between mine and the world. Shielding. Anchoring. I should be spiraling, reeling from the violence, the near miss, the way it could’ve ended.

But all I feel is him.

The way he found me.

The way he looked at Pablo.

“You came for me,” I whisper as we reach the car, the words nearly lost in the rain.

Yakov turns, framing my face with his hands, his touch uncharacteristically gentle. “I’ll always come for you,” he says, tone low and fierce. “No matter the cost.”

When his lips find mine, the last of my fear dissolves into devastating certainty that this man would walk through fire for me.

Whatever consequences await us, I know this: I would do it all again to end up here.

With him.