Page 11 of Nobody Wants Me (Volkov Bratva #5)

V ictor

“This the suspect?” The Butcher asked.

I told her to finish spending time with Freya until my wife went to bed, or did something else.

The maid was not even a newbie. She was someone who had been hired nearly three years ago.

Everyone said she was a good girl. She came from a good family.

Loyal to the Volkov Bratva. Her father was a trusted soldier and had already been alerted to what his daughter had done.

The father did surprise me. He didn’t ask me to give her a free pass, or offer to pay a debt.

He told me to simply do what I had to do. They all knew the rules.

“Yes.”

“She’s the one that set the trap,” The Butcher said.

I nodded. I was not going to keep repeating myself. “It’s surprising as her father is a soldier. A damn good one.”

“Don’t you think this is a little odd?” The Butcher turned toward me.

“What? That she had money transferred into her bank account within ten minutes of turning off the camera? No. I don’t think that is odd.” I did think it was fucking boring.

I didn’t like the way I was feeling right now.

I was angry. My wife was in danger, and that grated on my last nerve.

Ivan had gone to do whatever the fuck he had to do, and that irritated me.

Also, her father running off to a private fucking island or location, or wherever the fuck he went to, pissed me off.

Putting his daughter up for auction and then disappearing were the actions of a coward.

Now, I had a woman who had been sobbing for the past couple of hours. She had already pissed herself.

“You talked to her?” The Butcher asked.

“No.”

The Butcher sighed. “You know this is a death sentence, right?”

“I’m not the one that told her to do the shit she has done,” I said.

I wasn’t going to try and justify this piece of shit’s existence.

If my wife had been taken, she would have been an organ donor by now, and there was no way of me getting her back.

Not that I gave a shit about it, but she was still my fucking wife.

I had made a vow to protect her. Her life was owned by the Volkov Bratva and because of that, I had no choice but to see this through.

I was annoyed, and the truth was, I just wanted to kill this woman because she’d been giving me a fucking headache. I should have known the last five years had been a fucking dream, and that peace wouldn’t last.

Life within the Volkov Bratva was not easy. Ivan had warned me times would be tough. That the stronger he became, the more people would want to hunt him down and kill him. I hadn’t thought it was real, and he was being paranoid.

The man was not wrong. Anyone who was in any kind of power, no matter how good they were, always had someone trying to bring them down.

Ivan was not a good man. That I knew. He’d done a lot of bad shit in his time, but he was actually a fair man and a good leader.

“Fine, you don’t want to talk this through.” The Butcher rolled her eyes and stepped into the room where the girl was still sobbing.

“Please, please, I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said.

Her name was Amelia, and she was sobbing. Her mascara had run down her face, and there was snot dribbling down.

“Why did you turn the cameras off?” The Butcher asked.

I couldn’t help but wonder if the rumors about The Butcher were false. Watching her now, she seemed sad about what we were about to do.

Ivan had given me an instruction, to allow The Butcher to deal with all manners connected to The Grid. I didn’t know why, but I had a feeling it was a deal he struck with her.

The Butcher didn’t look like a killing machine. She looked like a weak woman who was gripped by a sob story. This, I found so fucking boring.

I had her ass caught on camera. The girl looked toward me, and then turned to The Butcher.

“You don’t need to look at him,” she said. “You look at me.”

“He’s going to kill me.”

“The guy you let in. He was heading to his wife’s room, with the intention of killing her,” she said.

Amelia shook her head. “No, no, no, that is not what was supposed to happen. He said he was not going to harm her. That he was going to kidnap her. That someone wanted her.”

The Butcher had a twitch. I couldn’t exactly describe it, but it was like I saw the monster come over her. The soft expression was there on her face, but there was something different in her body, a tension.

“So, you knew Freya was going to get kidnapped?” The Butcher asked.

“I didn’t have a choice. He said if I didn’t do this, he was going to kill my whole family. I didn’t know what to do.”

“You could have come to me,” I said.

Amelia looked toward me, and that was when I saw it. Just fleeting, but it was there. She was cornered. Her story was fucking false. Anyone who was doing this to save their family didn’t have twenty million dollars transferred into their bank account.

I’d also gone through her belongings. She only had until this evening to make it out alive, and she had a plane ticket. She had already attempted her escape.

This is what her father knew. I had covered all her tracks. She had a choice—to be loyal to the Volkov Bratva, or to go for the easy route. She picked the death route, which some might consider an easy one.

“There she is,” The Butcher said.

“Fuck you,” Amelia snarled and spat in The Butcher’s direction.

“Why did you do it?” I asked.

The Butcher already had her knife in hand and was getting into position.

Amelia looked at me, and the facade had been dropped. She must have known there was no way out of this. She was going to die.

“Do you think I was going to be a maid forever? Scrubbing floors? My dad said it was a good job, an honorable job, and I’d find myself a man.

A man with a good paying job, but that is not what I want.

I want to have fun. I want to have money, and this is the easy way.

” She threw her head back and laughed. “Your wife doesn’t deserve this life. She doesn’t deserve to be free.”

I moved closer and crouched on the floor so Amelia had no choice but to look at me. I gripped her chin and held her tightly, causing her pain, but I didn’t care. She needed to feel the pain. She tried to pull away from my grip, but I was not going to let her go.

“My wife is going to live because I am going to do everything in my power to give her a good life. Whores like you die. If you had come to me, told me what was going on, what you’d been asked to do, I would have rewarded you, Amelia. Instead, you made the wrong choice.”

I stepped back and nodded at The Butcher.

The fear was only fleeting, and in my humble opinion, it was too quick of a death. One she didn’t deserve.

And with that, The Butcher sliced the blade across Amelia’s throat, digging in as she did, so there was no prolonging her death. She was dead instantly. And The Butcher wiped her blade on Amelia’s clothing.

“We need to check every single person who works for you. You need to scale back the staff. Limit those that come in and go out. The Grid are coming, and trust me, they never fail.”

“You think they’re going to succeed in taking my wife?” I asked.

The Butcher looked at me. “The Grid has never failed.”

“That is not answering me.”

“That is me answering you. There is a difference, though,” The Butcher said.

I was not in the mood to be talking riddles.

“The Beast and I are not working for them. We’re working for Ivan, and that is what makes this different.”

“Why?” I asked.

The Butcher was already heading toward the room. “Why what?”

“Why are you willing to work for Ivan? What has changed?”

“A lot changed,” The Butcher said. “And some stuff, you don’t need to know.”

“You worked for The Grid,” I said.

She didn’t stop as she kept walking up the stairs.

“And you think I should trust you?” I asked.

“Ivan trusts me, and believe me when I say all I want to do is bring down The Grid, and make Harris pay for his part in it.”

And with that, she was gone, leaving me alone with the dead body.

Pulling out my cell phone, I called the cleanup crew, then left the basement and made my way toward my office.

Only, I came to a stop as I bumped into my wife.

She wore a cute pair of pajamas that had little puppies all over them.

The moment she looked up at me, she took a step back. I deserved that.

She also averted her gaze so she was looking down at the ground. Amelia had been jealous of my wife. So jealous, she had chosen to help kill her.

I didn’t want to be married to anyone.

Freya was not at all like the woman I imagined being married to. In the beginning, Ivan had me engaged to a dumb bitch with lots of Daddy’s money to waste. Ivan changed his mood. One by one, the women we were all previously engaged to, went by the by, and Ivan came up with another plan.

One by one the Brigadiers had fallen, leaving just me. I was content to not have a woman.

“What is your fucking problem?” I asked, watching as she flinched. Grabbing her arms, I moved her out of the way. “Learn to watch where you’re fucking going.”

And with that, I headed straight toward my office, where I could start dealing with work.

****

F reya

The past week had been kind of shocking.

I spent a great deal of time with The Butcher.

She didn’t mind sitting in my sewing room as I worked on a new quilt.

I did want to attempt to make some dresses, but a quilt was challenging in a whole new way.

She either read a book, or actually helped me cut out squares for my project.

She helped me to move rooms. I did try to sleep in the room where she had killed someone, but there was no way I could.

Someone had died in that room, and as I laid in bed, I was convinced I heard them speaking to me.

My imagination was driving me crazy, and rather than stick around to see the end result, I simply changed bedrooms.