Page 50 of Mafia King’s Broken Vow (New York Bratva #5)
AFTER THE STORM
MILA
T he hospital room blazes with fluorescent hostility, too clean for the violence we’ve survived. I trace the bandage wrapping my arm where Pablo’s blade carved through flesh. Minor, the doctor said. A few stitches.
Nothing about the last twenty-four hours deserves that word.
I close my eyes, and the memories detonate—Pablo’s steel kissing my throat, Aleksander crumpled and bleeding, Yakov materializing from shadow to destroy everything in his path.
The images blur together through adrenaline and terror—his fluid movement through darkness, bones snapping under his hands, the lethal certainty burning in his eyes when he found me.
My hands shake as I open my eyes. Not from fear, from something more dangerous. Relief and shock and crushing gratitude that we both walked away breathing.
This bed feels wrong, but I can’t leave yet. Aleksander lies in intensive care down the hall, shattered ribs, concussion, internal bleeding they barely controlled. He’ll survive. We all will because of Yakov.
My Yakov, who unleashed the beast to save me, then chose humanity when it mattered most.
The door swings open, and Katarina flows in, designer perfection cracking around worried eyes. She reaches me in three steps, wrapping me in careful arms that steal my breath.
“Mila,” she whispers, voice fracturing. “When Nikolai called, I thought?—”
“I’m fine,” I lie, the words hollow. Am I fine? Will I ever be, after watching Pablo work? After seeing Yakov nearly kill a man with his bare hands for my sake?
Katarina pulls back, studying me with the intensity of someone who’s known me since childhood. “No, you’re not,” she corrects softly. “But you will be.”
The certainty in her voice offers comfort I desperately need. She’s survived this—the violence, the fear, accepting that loving a Bratva man means embracing darkness. If anyone understands, it’s her.
“Where is he?” I ask, need bleeding through my voice. “Yakov, is he?—”
“Getting stitched up,” she says, settling on the edge of my bed. “Knife wound to his ribs. Not serious, but he needs medical attention.”
Relief crashes through me, followed by desperate longing that makes my chest ache. I want to see him, touch him, confirm with my own hands that he’s alive and whole.
“I need to see him,” I say, already pushing upright. “Katarina, please?—”
Her gentle hand stops me. “I know. Nikolai’s bringing him once the doctor finishes.”
I sink back, tension draining slightly. “Thank you.”
“So,” she says, voice deliberately light as she adjusts flowers on my bedside table. “You and Yakov are the real deal?”
Heat floods my cheeks despite everything. “Is it that obvious?”
Her laugh comes soft and genuine. “Only to everyone with working eyes. He watches you like you hung the stars, Mila. Like you’re the first sunrise he’s ever seen.”
The description makes my heart stutter. It’s achingly accurate, that intensity in Yakov’s gaze when it finds me, hunger and wonder and disbelief mixed together, as if he can’t believe I’m real.
“I love him,” I admit aloud, the words terrifying and liberating. “All of him, Kata. Even the parts that should scare me.”
“Especially those parts,” she corrects gently. “Because those parts kept you breathing yesterday.”
Before I can respond, the door opens again. Nikolai enters first, his expression grave but softening when he sees Katarina. But it’s the man behind him makes my heart stutter.
Yakov fills the doorway, broad shoulders blocking the light. His skin looks pale beneath its natural bronze, a testament to blood loss and exhaustion. Butterfly bandages close a cut above his eyebrow, and I know beneath that fresh shirt lies a properly dressed knife wound.
But his eyes, when they lock onto mine across this sterile space, ignite something primal in my core.
“Mila.” Just my name, but it carries the weight of blood and violence and desperate devotion.
Katarina and Nikolai dissolve into background noise as Yakov crosses to me in three strides. His hands frame my face with shocking tenderness; these same hands that shattered bones hours ago now touch me as if I might break.
“You’re whole,” he breathes, voice raw as his thumb traces my bandaged cheek. “They told me, but I had to see.”
“I’m whole,” I confirm, my hands capturing his wrists, feeling his pulse hammer beneath his skin. “Because you came for me.”
Darkness flickers across his features. “Because I failed to protect you. Because I let them take you.” Self-hatred bleeds through each word. “I should have been faster?—”
I silence him with my mouth, not caring about our audience, caring only about the consuming need to touch him. His lips respond instantly, one hand sliding to my nape, holding me against him as if I might vanish.
The kiss transforms, becoming hungrier, more consuming. His tongue finds mine, claiming me with primal intensity, and I respond with equal ferocity. My body recognizes his, craves him with frightening desperation. Even here, even now, we burn for each other.
When we break apart, we’re both gasping. Katarina’s throat clearing penetrates my haze. “We’ll leave you alone,” she says, dragging Nikolai toward the exit. “Take your time.”
The door clicks shut. We’re alone. Yakov’s forehead presses against mine, his breath hot on my skin.
“I thought you were gone,” he confesses, vulnerability stripped bare. “When Pablo called, when I heard his threats…I’ve never known terror like that, Mila. Not even when Ana died.”
The admission undoes me. I know what Anastasiya meant to him, know the grief that forged his darkness. To hear him say this—to understand what I’ve become to him—it overwhelms everything.
“You found me,” I remind him, my hands sliding beneath his shirt, needing his skin, his heat, his proof of life. “You always do.”
His hands mirror mine, pushing past thin hospital cotton to trace my waist, my spine. Each touch sends lightning through my nerves, my body responding with trained hunger.
“Always,” he vows against my lips. “Distance means nothing. Time means nothing. I will tear apart the world to reach you.”
I kiss him deeper, pouring myself into this connection. His hands tighten on my waist, and I feel his hardness against my thigh—proof that his desire matches my own, even in this impossible place.
“I need you,” I whisper against his mouth.
His eyes go black. “You’re hurt,” he reminds me, voice strained with barely leashed control. “We’re in a hospital?—”
“I don’t care,” I insist, fingers threading through his hair to drag his mouth back to mine. “After what we survived, I need to feel you inside me.”
With careful but insistent movements, he guides me back onto the bed, his body covering mine with perfect, familiar weight. His hands trace every inch of exposed skin, cataloging the bandages, the bruises, the evidence of what Pablo did.
“He hurt you,” Yakov murmurs, lips tracing the edge of the bandage on my throat. “I should have killed him for touching you.”
“But you didn’t,” I remind him, arching into his touch as his hand slides higher beneath my gown. “You chose mercy. You chose to be the man I fell in love with.”
His eyes lock with mine, vulnerability and ferocity mingling in their depths. “For you,” he says simply. “Always for you.”
His fingers find me wet and ready, and I gasp at the first contact, my body already wound so tight that even this gentle exploration feels like torture. He knows exactly how to touch me, how to make me fall apart beneath his hands.
“Yakov,” I breathe, unwilling to be passive in this moment. I reach between us, finding him hard beneath his pants, stroking with deliberate intent that makes his breath hitch against my throat. “We’re alive.” I push his pants lower, desperate to feel him inside me.
He captures my mouth in a kiss that’s equal parts tenderness and possession. With careful movements mindful of our injuries, he positions himself between my thighs.
“Look at me,” he commands softly, and I obey, eyes locking with his as he pushes inside me with exquisite slowness.
Our bodies move together with a mutual desperation that nothing can soothe.
I pull him closer, deeper, so tightly that it’s difficult to differentiate where he ends and I begin.
He draws my lower lip into his mouth, sucking hard, leaving no doubt that I belong to him, that nothing can tear us apart, that no matter what comes next, he won’t abandon me.
His pace quickens, each stroke sending him deeper into that untouchable place within me. But it’s not enough. I cling to him, urging him to move faster, harder, unable to sate this wild need.
“Please,” I gasp, knowing I’m close, knowing I can’t reach the edge without him there with me.
“Mine,” he whispers against my lips, the word both possession and surrender. “My Mila.”
“Yours,” I echo. “Only yours.”
That’s what does it. The final claim shatters me, and I fall over the precipice with a helpless cry, dimly aware of his harsh growl and fingers biting into my hips.
For a single frozen moment, we are suspended, connected by something more binding than pleasure, more transforming than any oath we’ve ever taken.
And when it’s over, and the aftermath washes over us in slow, pulsing waves, I know with certainty that I made the right choice. No matter what the future holds, no matter what monsters remain for us to fight, nothing will ever change that.
For endless seconds, we remain connected, his forehead pressed against mine, our breathing slowly returning to normal.
“I love you,” I whisper into the sacred space between us.
The vulnerability in his eyes would bring me to my knees if I were standing. “I’ve never deserved you,” he says, voice rough with emotion. “Never will. But I swear on everything I am, I will spend every day trying to be worthy of what you see in me.”
As we lie together in this hospital bed, bodies entwined, heartbeats syncing, I understand something fundamental about love—real love, the kind that survives crucibles like what we’ve endured.
It’s not about deserving. It’s about choosing, every day, to see the best in each other, even when darkness threatens to consume us both.
And I know, with bone-deep certainty, that I will choose Yakov Gagarin every day for the rest of my life.