Page 36 of Nobody Wants Me (Volkov Bratva #5)

“I don’t know when I started to love you, only that I did, and lying on that cold floor, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.

I couldn’t stop wondering what might have been if I had told you how I felt in the beginning.

” I took a deep breath, and there was so much I wanted to say, yet I didn’t have the words at that moment.

Victor didn’t say a word. Slowly, he put the drink down and moved toward me, and then he sunk his fingers into my hair and pulled me closer to him.

I went to him. And he kissed me, his lips pressing against mine. At first, they were so soft, gentle, almost as if he was too afraid to deepen the kiss for fear I might break. I was not going to break. I was strong. I felt it.

I wanted to be with him, and I wrapped my arms around him, pressing my body against him and not letting go. I loved this man and wanted to spend the rest of my life proving it to him. He was my soul mate. The love of my life.

And The Butcher had given me a second chance, and Ivan was right.

Squandering it was not the answer. Being hopeful at finding her was the answer.

Living my life, because she had sacrificed hers for mine, if that was what I was supposed to believe.

Then, I had to live my life. I had to do everything so it was worth it.

“I love you,” Victor said, and I sank against him, knowing that no matter what we faced, it was going to be all right.

****

T he Beast

I held the schematics and all the details Ivan had asked me to acquire.

It was hard. Eric The Tool didn’t keep people who built property for him alive.

Those that helped to build his underground fortress were all dead.

However, Eric had to leave a trail, and like little breadcrumbs, I was able to pick them up.

Ivan looked toward me. We hadn’t left Victor’s property, and I knew it was because he wanted to stay close to Freya, to help her. There was a lot more to Ivan than met the eye.

“Here it is,” I said. “You know you can’t just go sending teams in to try and grab a body,” I said.

“I’m not after a body,” Ivan said.

He took the rolled-up details and moved them toward Victor’s main bench in his shed. Victor didn’t know what we were looking at. No one did. Ivan’s instructions had been clear. Anyone who gave me these details had to die. Any trail was gone. I cleaned up after my mess.

The hunt used to give me a rush. Only now there was nothing.

I used to think The Butcher was a royal pain in my fucking ass, but she wasn’t.

I missed her, and I never in a million fucking years thought I would say that, or even think that.

She had been a pain in the ass from the start.

Always there, everywhere I turned. I didn’t realize her death would matter to me.

Ivan didn’t believe she was gone. Neither did Freya. Only Victor and I were willing to accept the truth, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

“This is where she blew up. The main entrance, right?” Ivan asked, pointing to the start of the building. We didn’t even get to that point. The Butcher had blown the entrance, just like she told Ivan she was going to, in order to lead Freya out to safety.

“Ivan, you know there is one entrance and one exit, and they’re gone.

She set explosions throughout, and they went off.

They detonated.” I tried to be the voice of reason, but Ivan was not listening.

The Butcher knew what she was doing, and blowing up that building was her fail-safe.

It was her way of guaranteeing her death.

“You told me Eric was a selfish little bastard. He was obsessed with himself and his own abilities, right? He couldn’t be told what to do.”

“And? He was a sick fuck. You know what he was capable of.” I didn’t need to point out that he loved to torture people, and strip them apart little by little.

The guy had taken years of college education to learn the human body, to know what bone to take, what vein to nick or avoid.

For all intents and purposes, Eric The Tool had been a qualified doctor.

Only, he wasn’t interested in “doing no harm” and all that shit.

He was interested in fucking people up. Hurting them, destroying them. It was what he did.

Freya had been on that list of people he was going to hurt. She had taken a beating, lost her baby, and I’m not going to lie, I know a piece of her had died along with The Butcher.

“Don’t you think someone who thinks that highly of themselves would have multiple escape plans?” Ivan asked.

He was hopeful again. I did not envision Ivan as a dreamer. I thought he was like me, a realist.

“Ivan. There is no way anyone else made it out of there alive.”

Ivan glared at me, like I was not making sense to him.

I wanted to tell him to just stop, and he looked at the map, tracing paths with his finger.

Each room, each section was labeled and carefully detailed.

I wasn’t even surprised that Eric could afford something like this.

He had taken some of the sick jobs that paid a fortune.

I didn’t even realize how much husbands, wives, family, or enemies would pay to see others tortured and slowly killed. Yet, there was a market for it.

The world was not a good place. Evil lived and rotted in this place. I no longer believed in Heaven and Hell, because we lived it every single day.

When you had seen the things I had seen, and done the things I had done, you stopped believing in the good and in Heaven. The Butcher and I were the same, and death was going to come for me soon enough. I didn’t know when, but I knew it was going to come.

“What’s this?” Ivan asked.

It had been over an hour since he started to look over the details, and I was tempted to leave. Watching Ivan attempt to make this right with The Butcher was tiresome. It was a waste of time.

He looked up at me, and I glanced down to where he was pointed, expecting to see some kind of dead end. Only, there was no dead end.

I frowned. According to the details, this led to nothing. It just stopped, and yet nothing on the schematics led to anything.

Moving around the table so I was standing side by side with Ivan, I looked at the details and checked the map. It was unfinished.

“The Butcher was taken,” Ivan said.

“You don’t know that.”

“Well, why don’t we take a little trip?” Ivan asked. “Because I’m telling you, The Butcher didn’t die on that mountain.”

But we both had a feeling we were going to wish she had.