Page 18 of Nobody Wants Me (Volkov Bratva #5)

“No, to be able to take care of myself. If by some miracle, Ivan is able to do this, and I live, that means I’m going to be married to a Brigadier.

I don’t even know what that means, but I think it means my life will be a giant pain in the ass.

There are going to be people that want to kill me and Victor. I want to be able to have his back.”

The Butcher smirked. “I take it things are going well with you and Victor?”

“We’ve agreed to be friends. That’s it.”

“Sure.”

“We’re not going to love one another, Butcher,” I said. “No one ever loves me.”

This made her tilt her head.

“I’m not saying it out of pity. It’s true.

Come on.” I get to my feet, because I am not going to cry about the truth.

I might not like it, but it is the truth.

“Teach me how to fight. Teach me something that means I can have Victor’s back and he doesn’t have to worry about keeping his wife alive.

” I hold my hands up into a fist, and move them back and forth.

The Butcher sighed.

“Come on, if you had a good teacher, surely that means you could teach me.”

She got to her feet, and before I even knew what happened, she slapped my face. It wasn’t a strong slap, it was light, but it took me by surprise.

“Hey!”

“You’ve got to be able to block.”

“Shouldn’t we go out onto the sand so this will be easier?”

“Soon,” The Butcher said. “I want to see how fast you are.”

She hit me again.

And again.

And again.

I was no match for how fast she was. Each hit made me angry, though. I hated pain. I didn’t like to be hit.

And then, she hit me, but this time it was harder. I reacted, shoving my whole body against her. I don’t know how it happened, but I was not the one on top. The Butcher had made sure we hit the sofas, she had my arms above my head and pinned down. I felt the strength in her body.

She was like a rock. And she was heavy.

“Do not lose your temper,” she said. “That is a surefire way to lose every single time.”

“Get off me.”

“No, you’ve got to learn to take the hits. You want me to help you, then I will, but that will require you accepting pain. Do you think you can handle that?”

The alternative was not good. I couldn’t just sit back and do nothing. Victor was out there right now, dealing with men and women who wanted to kill me.

“Yes,” I said.

“What?” The Butcher asked, tilting her head to the side, as if she didn’t hear me, but I knew she had.

This pissed me off.

“Yes, I heard you.”

The Butcher smirked. “Did anyone ever tell you that you’ve got a short temper?” she asked.

I did not find this funny.

“No, I’m usually very patient and calm.”

“Perhaps when you’re sewing and doing your stuff, but take you out of your comfort zone, and you’ve got a little anger management problem.”

She tutted and climbed off the sofa, holding out her hand. The petty side in me wanted to push that hand away. I was the one to ask her for help, not the other way around, so I took the hand she offered and got to my feet.

“Now, while we’re inside, I want you to focus on blocking me. That is all we’re trying to do. Block. Not hit.”

“I think hitting would be fun,” I said.

The Butcher laughed. “Don’t worry, I will let you hit me at some point, but until then, you’ll have to learn to take it.”

She never hit me hard, but even the light taps were enough to drive me crazy. There were several points where I wanted to scream at her, but I knew she was just trying to help me. Slowly, and it did feel achingly painful, I started to finally get it.

At no point did she let up. She made me work for it, and I don’t know how it happened, but I eventually started to dodge the slaps.

My face had started to hurt, so I no longer had a choice but to try and pull away.

I’m not exactly sure how long we’d been working at this, but eventually The Butcher nodded and stepped back.

“That’s good for today,” The Butcher said.

“What? Why?” Was she going easy on me? My face stung from all of the slaps, but I didn’t want her to think of me as a weakling that couldn’t take it. My life was in danger.

She shrugged. “We’re not in a rush.”

“My life is in danger. I’m stranded on an island because people are trying to kill me. Right now, I’d say that is very much a rush.”

“To get back home to be locked away in Victor’s house?” The Bucher asked.

“I wasn’t locked away. If I could go out ... I would.” I shrugged.

“I’m stopping, Freya, because even The Butcher has got to eat.” She smiled.

“Oh, yes, food, right. What are you fancying?” I asked. I’d taught myself to cook many years ago. Living alone on my father’s land, he wouldn’t allow me to hire a chef, so I taught myself.

“Anything you want to make.”

Going to the fridge, I opened it up. The Butcher had brought us back a fresh stock of supplies. Pursing my lips, I looked inside. There had been fresh as well as frozen food bought. The chicken breasts and parmesan looked so good. So, that is what I decided to go for.

Grabbing them, I got to work on making me a very not authentic chicken parmesan. As for The Butcher, I expected her to go and enjoy the view. Only, she came and sat at the kitchen counter, after grabbing herself a beer. I didn’t drink.

“Do you want one?” she asked.

“No, thank you. I’ll stick to soda.”

“So, what was it like to live with a multibillionaire father?” The Butcher asked.

This made me pause and frown.

“What?”

“You spent a lot of time with Harris. You’re twenty-five years old, and you’re rarely written about in the papers. No one knows who your mother is. Your dad went through a lot to protect you.”

“And now, he is the one making sure I’m killed.”

“Yeah, that part doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me,” The Butcher said. “He went to a lot of trouble to keep your identity a secret, and then, it’s like, he needs you dead. I just wonder if you know something.”

I wiped my hand on a towel as I had just tenderized the chicken. “What are you saying? Do you think I know something about my dad?”

The Butcher shrugged. “I don’t know. The more I think about your situation, the shittier it is. Also, weird. I mean, I get dads not liking their daughters and stuff like that, but he kept you on his property.”

“My dad wasn’t trying to protect me. I was an embarrassment to him.” I told her about the trips to the plastic surgeons. “He was constantly trying to change the way I looked. Besides the fact I refused, the doctors did as well.”

“They did?” The Butcher asked.

“Yeah, which is strange, I know. My dad could have bribed them, or something. I’m not sure.”

The Butcher pulled out a little notebook. “Do you want to do me a favor and write that down for me?”

“What?”

“Write down the name of the plastic surgeons you saw, and their names. I’d like to go and talk to them when Victor gets back.”

“You’re not going to kill them, are you?”

“What? For not operating on a woman that didn’t want it? No, I just want to talk to them about Harris, that’s all. We’re all working to get this target off your back.”

“Is it really that hard?” I asked.

“Yeah, it is. Once The Grid has been initiated, there ain’t no pulling it.

” The Butcher sighed. “It’s like one of those .

.. blood debt kind of things. The only way to end it would be with Harris’s death, or he might have put some other agreement on the table.

Again, I don’t know what he has up his sleeve. I’m just guessing.”

“This—The Grid—I guess you’ve worked for them before?”

The Butcher nodded.

“And they’re as bad as they seem. The people there are worse than monsters, Freya. They’re a group of men and women that don’t give a fuck about who they are told to hunt. It doesn’t matter if they deserve it or not.”

“Why are you not taking this job?” I asked. “I’m guessing it is worth a lot of money.”

“I’m a wealthy woman.”

“Yeah, but you’re also a killer.”

The Butcher nodded. “You’re right.”

And then I tensed up. Was I attempting to convince The Butcher to kill me? I don’t even know why I was questioning her motives.

“A long time ago, I always assumed The Grid’s kills were legit.

That everyone on their list was meant to die.

I guess you could say they were. Then, one day I took the call for a hit.

It was for a guy, thirty-something, recently divorced.

I figured he had some shady shit in his life, and I snuck into his house and waited.

It was while I was waiting to kill him that he came home with his three kids.

All of them were under ten years old. I listened.

This guy was not a bad guy. That day, I stayed, and then I went and did a little digging.

It turns out he was a wealthy guy and his wife was a whore.

She had slept around, but those kids had been his children.

He got the paternity test done. His only crime was being wealthy, having finances in place, and being a damn good dad.

She hired the hit. He was innocent. I took this information to The Grid.

They didn’t care. They refused to listen.

While I tried to plead his case, one of the other hitters took the hit, killed the dad and the three kids. All the money went to the wife.”

“Wow,” I said.

“So, I started to dig, and that was when I realized The Grid doesn’t give a shit if it’s a good guy or a bad guy. They follow the money. I had killed a lot of people who were good guys.”

“Did you do anything about the wife?” I asked.

The Butcher smiled. “She didn’t get the chance to enjoy the life she had made for herself.

Karma was a bitch, and trust me, by the time I was done with her, she wished she hadn’t even met the guy.

” The Butcher took a long swig of her drink.

“I’ve been trying to find ways of ending The Grid.

From time to time, they go quiet. It’s only when a really wealthy person puts out a hit, that they come out of the woodwork. ”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For everything you must have gone through. That couldn’t have been easy, realizing what you had done and who you had been working for.”

The Butcher pressed her lips together. “Yeah, it fucking sucked.”

It was the first time I saw how upset The Butcher actually was. This did bother her more than she let on.