Page 49 of Mafia King’s Broken Vow (New York Bratva #5)
CHOOSE ME
YAKOV
I move silently through the shadows, each step bringing me closer to her. The lodge’s polished floors yield nothing beneath my weight. Pablo’s men are skilled, but I am better. Two lie motionless in the shadows—dead or unconscious, it doesn’t matter.
The sight of her stops my heart. Mila, bound to that chair, seeping from her split lip, a crimson thread marking where Pablo’s blade has marked her neck. Fury detonates through my chest, burning away everything but focus.
Pablo grips her hair, steel pressed against her skin. The image sears itself into my brain—his hands defiling what belongs to me, threatening to steal what I cannot live without.
Our eyes meet across the room. Relief wars with terror in her expression—not for herself, but for me. Even bleeding and bound, she fears for my safety. Her devotion steals my breath.
I’ve found you. Hold on.
She reads my unspoken vow and does the impossible. She starts talking—loud, insistent, pulling Pablo’s focus from my approach. My brilliant, fearless Mila, creating chaos when terror should have rendered her mute.
I advance in increments, mapping exits and angles. Six men positioned throughout the space. Aleksander unconscious but breathing near the far wall.
Pablo’s voice rises, accent thickening with rage as he yanks her hair tighter. “Don’t test me, Doctor. When he arrives, you’ll watch him die. Then we’ll discuss your future with the cartel in great detail.”
Ice floods my veins at his words. In this moment, I shed every pretense of redemption Mila sees in me. I am the nightmare that haunted Bratva strongholds, the tactician who toppled empires, the killer who never faltered.
And I have never been more certain of my calling.
“Let her go, Pablo,” I cut through the tension.
Every weapon swivels toward me, their shock gifting me precious seconds. I’ve chosen well—wall at my back, clear shots on all threats, direct path to Pablo.
The bastard recovers quickly, hauling Mila upright as armor, blade steady at her throat. “Yakov, my old friend. Predictable as always, rushing in for your woman instead of thinking.”
“You miscalculated,” I answer with deadly calm, hands raised and apparently empty. “You touched my woman.”
“Drop everything,” Pablo commands. “Every weapon. Or I paint these walls with her blood.”
I comply with deliberate theater, placing my Glock on the floor. The boot knife follows. Then the blade from my sleeve. All visible sacrifices while his men creep closer, believing themselves in control.
They don’t understand that the deadliest weapon here isn’t carried; it’s who I am.
“Now we negotiate,” Pablo says, tension easing. “You shattered our arrangement, Yakov. Chose this woman over business. Do you understand what that cost me? My reputation? My standing?”
I edge forward incrementally. “The arrangement died when you made this personal.”
“Personal?” His laughter cuts sharp and cold. “This is commerce. Pure economics. She’s simply a variable in a larger calculation.”
Another step. His men track my movement but ignore the darkness where death waits.
“You’re correct about one thing,” I concede, holding his stare. “I am predictable in specific ways.”
“Elaborate.”
“I always stack the deck in my favor.”
The explosive charge I set on the transformer during my approach detonates in the distance. Backup power will engage soon, but these seconds belong to me.
Darkness swallows the room.
I’m familiar with every inch of this space.
In absolute darkness, I become unstoppable.
Three calculated steps close the distance to Pablo.
Mila’s sharp intake of breath cuts through the chaos as I tear her from his grip, pushing her toward the floor harder than I want, but she needs to be clear of what’s coming.
Pablo’s blade slices air where I stood seconds before. My fist drives into his kidney, folding him in half. His counterstrike catches my shoulder, igniting fire through old scar tissue. The pain sharpens my focus to a razor’s edge.
Emergency lighting floods the room in hellish red as his men grasp the situation. Gunfire explodes around us, but they can’t risk hitting their boss while we’re locked together.
My elbow crushes Pablo’s windpipe, cartilage collapsing under the impact. He retaliates by burying his knife in my ribs, shallow but enough to wound.
“She dies next,” he rasps, crimson foam on his lips. “I’ll gut her while you bleed out on this floor.”
His words detonate something primal. The civilized facade Mila sees in me disintegrates. Only the savage remains—merciless, calculating, hungry for destruction.
I trap his knife hand, bending fingers backward until tendons pop and bones splinter. His agonized scream feeds the darkness in my chest as I drive him against the wall.
“You made a fatal error,” I growl, fingers closing around his throat, feeling his frantic pulse. “You assumed she makes me weak.”
I slam his skull against the wall once, twice, blood coating my knuckles. The wet sound of impact drowns out his gasping.
“She’s not my vulnerability,” I continue, watching terror bloom in his expression. “She’s the one thing that was keeping me from becoming exactly what you’re about to meet.”
His reinforcements advance, but they’re seconds too late. I snap his forearm at the joint, bone cracking audibly. Pablo crumples, sliding down the wall in a broken heap.
“Should have put a bullet in my head when you had the chance,” I tell him, retrieving his blade, getting ready for the kill.
“Yakov.” Mila’s voice slices through my bloodlust. She’s somehow freed herself, kneeling beside Aleksander, her gaze locked on mine. “Don’t.”
For one moment, I teeter on the edge. Every instinct screams to end him. But Mila watches with unwavering faith, not in what I am, but what I will choose to be.
I drive the knife into the wall beside his head instead of through his throat.
“That mercy came from her, not me,” I tell his broken form.
Heavy footsteps announce Nikolai and Igor’s arrival, weapons drawn as they assess the wreckage. Pablo’s surviving men surrender immediately, recognizing certain death when they see it.
“Cutting it close,” I tell Nikolai, but my attention is already consumed by Mila. I reach her in two strides, pulling her against me with a desperate need to confirm she’s real, whole, mine.
She melts against me. I breathe her in—copper and terror, and underneath it all, that intoxicating essence that belongs to her alone. My palm cups her skull, fingers tangling in her hair as I catalog every injury with ruthless precision despite my hammering pulse.
“Tell me where else you’re hurt.” The command scrapes raw from my throat.
“I’m fine,” she breathes, fists twisted in my blood-soaked shirt. “You found me. I never doubted you would.”
“Never question it,” I vow, pressing our foreheads together while chaos swirls around us. “I’ll tear this world apart before I lose you.”
Nikolai’s team restrains Pablo and his broken crew while Igor tends to Aleksander. The room pulses with the aftershocks of brutal violence, but reality has compressed to this: her ragged breathing, her pulse syncing with mine, her body shaking with relief.
“You pulled back,” she whispers for my ears alone. “When killing him would have been easier.”
I trace the shallow cut marring her throat, fury reigniting at Pablo’s mark on her skin. “Not restraint,” I correct, tone granite. “Selection. I chose the man you see in me over the butcher that lives within.”
She looks at me, blazing with something that devastates me more completely than bullets ever could. “That’s exactly why I love you. Not in spite of your darkness, but because you fight it. For me. For us.”
I claim her mouth desperately, tasting salt and iron and her. The kiss brands us both, a savage declaration that death has failed again to tear us apart. She arches into me with instinctive recognition, as if even here, drowning in violence, we can’t resist the gravity pulling us together.
When we break apart, I keep her close, memorizing every breath. “I love you beyond reason,” I admit, the words strength instead of weakness. “More than power, more than survival, more than everything I’ve ever wanted.”
Her smile cuts through pain and terror, igniting something in my chest I’d assumed was dead. Something the monster can’t comprehend, but the man would kill to protect.
Redemption.