Page 38 of Sold to the Russian (Nikolai Bratva Brides #6)

Maeve did exactly as Fedya asked her to. She stayed low in the passenger seat, covering her ears with her hands to block out the bangs of gunshots echoing behind the car.

It was minutes later when she began to worry.

She couldn’t just sit there while Fedya was being ambushed by God knows how many men her father had brought with him.

What was she supposed to do? Just sit there while he fought for their lives?

And what if something happened to him? She was confident enough in Fedya’s ability to come out alive in any given scenario, but this was different.

She’d taken a peek the moment his tire got shot, and she’d seen the drama her father had brought with him.

Just because Fedya was skilled didn’t mean he couldn’t be outnumbered.

So, even though she’d never in her life taken a man’s life, she concluded that sitting in the car uselessly was the last thing she needed to do. It was her life after all, her baby’s life. She had a role to play in protecting both.

She opened the door slowly, crouching low as she scanned the shadows. She could spot men fighting, but she could barely single Fedya out from the blur of black and the shots firing into the quiet of the night.

For a split second, she contemplated going back in, since it was stupid to throw herself into the middle of a fight. But then she heard his voice, like a trigger warning, rattling against her ears, turning her blood to ice.

“Found you, A stor .”

Cormac stepped from the shadows like a nightmare made of flesh and bone. He was alone, like he’d personally come looking for her, while he left the rest of his men to tackle Fedya.

Maeve scrambled back towards the car, heart pounding as she struggled to steady her breathing. But her father was faster than she was. He grabbed her by the arm and yanked her back until she heard a pop in her bones. She barely let out a scream before he pressed a cold gun barrel against her ribs.

“You never fail to amuse me, Maeve,” he laughed darkly, his breath hot and rancid against her neck. She never thought a day would come when her biological father would press a gun to her body. “It’s always adorable, watching you attempting to run from me. I always find you, remember?”

He pointed the gun towards Fedya’s smoking car. “My men put a tracker on your boyfriend’s car the last time you both were there. There was no place you could go in that car that I won’t know about.”

Anger slicked every inch of her body with heat. “He’s my husband.”

Cormac laughed as if she’d cracked the funniest joke. “Yes, yes, of course, he is.” Then the humor in his voice died, followed by a barely restrained rage that made her body tense. “You fucking idiot. You think this is love? You think that bastard would ever protect you when it matters?”

He fisted a hand in her hair and shoved her face forward, his grip tightening around her roots as he forced her to look in the direction that Fedya was—fighting off three men alone, blood already spreading through the side of his shirt.

Maeve struggled against her father’s hold, tears prickling the corners of her eyes. “Let me go—”

“You were meant to help this family,” he hissed, gripping her tighter. “You were supposed to bring the enemy to his knees. Not be a fool and carry his child.”

Maeve’s muscles came to a standstill when he pressed the gun to her stomach.

“You disgust me, A stor , truly. I constantly regret the day I had you. I should’ve forced your mother to flush you out the moment we discovered you were a girl.

” He pressed the gun deeper into her stomach, speaking with hate.

“I ask you to do one thing for me, Maeve. One fucking thing. And there you go, giving yourself to him like some cheap whore. I don’t understand why I trusted you, why I risk putting my faith in you when all you’ve ever done since your birth is disappoint me. ”

“You treated me like trash my entire life,” Maeve spat, shaking with rage as she forcefully turned around.

She wanted to kill him, wanted to ruin him for the acidic words he just uttered, words that were corrosive to her flesh.

“You’ve used me like a tool my entire life, when all I wanted was for you to see me.

I’ve been nothing more than a pawn to you. ”

“You don’t deserve to be seen, A stor ,” he said, a bitter scoff leaving his throat. “I should’ve locked you up when I had the chance. You’re my biggest failure, my worst achievement.”

His hand cracked across her face in a slap that sent her reeling, her vision flashing white.

In the back of her mind, she was sure she heard Fedya yell her name, and she spun around in her dizzying state just in time to see him drop to his knees, blood pouring from his side.

His face contorted in pain that he was trying hard not to feel, and he was about to stagger to his feet when a blow landed on his face from one of Cormac’s men.

His head whipped to the side, fury burning in his eyes as he spat out a thick glob of blood.

Cormac raised his gun again, this time pointing to her child.

He looked like a demon. “I should rip that disgusting Nikolai filth out of you before it poisons what’s left of that thing you call a brain.”

Red blurred her vision, anger thrummed in her chest, beating alongside her heart. She looked at her father, at the gun in his hands, the sneer on his face, the hate in his eyes as they narrowed on her stomach, pointing a pistol at his own grandchild.

She couldn’t put a name to it, that primal, maternal rage that exploded through her body.

Time seemed to slow as her body moved on pure muscle memory, her training— his training—coming back to her as if it had never left.

She elbowed him before he could blink, knocking both the air out of his lungs in a sharp exhale and the gun from his hands.

Cormac faltered, surprised, his brows shooting up to his hairline. “I didn’t think you had it in you. Didn’t think you remembered—”

Maeve barely let him finish before yanking the gun from the floor. Her face was blank as she pulled the trigger once, twice, watching as he stumbled back, his mouth falling open, silent around her name.

Blood—it was everywhere. Blooming across his chest, pouring from his mouth.

But she wasn’t satisfied. His words rushed back to her at full speed, his gun—the one she was holding—pointed at her stomach, at her child. Fedya, on his knees behind her, fighting for his life.

She raised her gun again, her lips pulling into a sneer as she shot at the monster before her, one she no longer saw as a father.

She shot until she ran out of ammunition. And then a crippling silence fell over the clearing.

Maeve was numb for another two seconds before her eyes fell on the crumpled, bleeding mess of what her father used to be. She froze, the gun shaking in her hand, her breathing ragged as she tossed it away as if it had burned a hole in her palms.

She took a step back, staring at her father’s lifeless body laid in front of her, her own eyes wide in disbelief. Her whole body was shaking as she stumbled back, unable to fully process what had happened, what she had done.

She heard familiar voices behind her, cars pulling up, gunshots firing through the air all over again. Then she felt someone—no, him , Fedya, reaching for her from behind, taking her face into his bloodied hands as he forced her to look at him.

“Breathe, Maeve,” he said slowly. “Look at me and breathe. At this rate, you’re going to pass out.”

She blinked, and her gaze shifted to him. Fedya. He was alive, weak but alive still, holding her close, making sure she saw only him.

“I killed him,” she said, the words loosely falling off her lips. “I killed my father.”

“You saved our baby,” Fedya said, shaking his head. “Hey, look at me. You did what you had to do, do you understand me?”

She shook her head violently, feeling the urge to vomit. “I didn’t—I—I didn’t mean—” She was crying now, her hands shaking. “He was going to—”

“It’s okay,” he said, pulling her towards him just as her knees buckled. He held her against his chest, ignoring the pain in his ribs. “He was going to kill you. He already tried to kill me. You did the right thing, Maeve. You saved me, saved our child, saved yourself.”

Viktor burst onto the scene then, his men fanning out with guns raised. But the worst was already over. Cormac’s convoy lay in smoking wreckage behind them.

“Aleksander’s dead,” he announced, sparing a glance at Cormac’s dead body. There was pity in his eyes as he looked at Maeve. “The rest are either dead or captured.”

Fedya responded, but Maeve had completely zoned out, barely registering when he lifted her into his arms and whispered softly into her hair.

She heard him say she was safe, and yes, she believed she was.

The part that had once loved her father, that had once been desperate for his love, that had craved his approval like a starving child, began to break into pieces as she watched over Fedya’s shoulder, as Cormac O’Rourke’s corpse was zipped into a body bag.

And the initial grief she’d felt after she realized that she was his killer was replaced by a bitterness that clung to her lungs like smoke.

Her own father had tried to kill her, her child, the man she loved.

Whatever part of her that had loved him died with him now.