Page 52 of Sexting the Bratva Beast

It’s hypothetical, but I can’t let it go.

Could I be with a man who’d taken a life? Could I kiss him? Spread my legs for him? Beg him to fuck me if I knew that someone was dead because of him?

And what about Leonid? He’s the older brother, which makes him the heir to the family business. The Pakhan. I don’t have much idea about the hierarchy, but the eldest son always takes over from his father. It’s the way it has always been.

Has Leonid killed people?

Does Gianna know what her husband is?

I think back to when Mika and I waved goodbye to Gianna at the airport in Montenegro. She was flying back to the States to marry her fiancé. What was his name? Sean? Seamus?Not Leonid. She never mentioned anyone called Leonid in all the time we worked together in Montenegro.

But now that I think about it, she never spoke about her fiancé either. I remember saying that she didn’t look like a woman who was traveling home to get married. She looked like a woman who was resigned to her fate. A woman who’d forgotten why she fell in love to begin with.

Then, the next time we heard from her, she was marrying Leonid, and she wanted us here in Chicago for her wedding.

She said it was love at first sight.

And we believed her.

Because it’s obvious that they’re crazy-in-love with each other.

But we’ve never found out what happened between her boarding that flight and falling in love with a man who wasn’t her fiancé.

Or how she feels about being the Bratva boss’s wife.

She sure kept that quiet.

I wriggle in my seat, trying to get comfortable, as I hear my own voice in my head telling Yuri Asimov that my best friend Gianna is married to Leonid Ivanov.

Shit!

Why did I say that?

Have I put her in danger? Her babies are only a few days old.

My heart races as I slide my cell phone out of my pocket and power it up. I turned it off because I didn’t want Andrej to track my location, but now that my thoughts are a little more lucid, I’m certain that it would make no difference if my phone was on or off.

I need to call Gianna.

Need to let her know where I am. It’s her business that I’ve abandoned while she recovers from childbirth.

I’m such a shit friend. I’m the shittiest friend in the history of time.

I’ve turned my back on Mika and Gianna because a bad boy made me come with his tongue. Repeatedly. In multiple positions, and in various locations around the city. And I’ve barely known him for forty-eight hours.

My phone is taking too long to power up.

All sorts of scenarios are playing out inside my head. Yuri Asimov breaking into Gianna and Leonid’s house dressed like a ninja with a rifle in his hand; a whole Bratva mob sieging their home and kidnapping the babies; Leonid bleeding from multiple bullet wounds while he singlehandedly protects his family.

And me, sitting on a stiflingly hot bus on my way to North Carolina.

Then, the bus lurches to a stop, tires screeching, and my forehead hits the back of the seat in front of me.

“What’s going on?” I realize that the woman sitting in the next seat is talking to me while she leans into the aisle to get a better view of the driver.

Gripping the headrest of the passenger in the next row, I heave myself out of my seat to peer over the top of heads to the front of the bus.

The door hisses open.