Page 1 of Stalked & Bred by the BRATVA (Bred by the BRATVA #6)

I keep my head down when I walk through the halls. It’s not obedience exactly, more like self-preservation. The men who live and work in this mansion are sharp around the edges, rough and powerful, and far too big for someone like me to make eye contact with.

Besides, it’s not like anyone notices me.

That’s the lie I tell myself every day. It helps me keep my spine straight and my hands steady when I change sheets or scrub floors.

It makes it easier to breathe when I pass the massive dining hall, where Maksim Vasiliev sits at the head of the table like some kind of dark god, his brothers scattered around him like wolves in suits.

I’ve been here a month now. Long enough for the bruises to fade from my arms, though the ones on my ribs still bloom with pain if I move the wrong way.

My brother sent me here to be punished, to work for the Bratva as if it’s some hellish penance for the embarrassment I brought on our family.

I never even knew what I’d done wrong. Just woke up to a suitcase at my feet and the back of his hand splitting my lip.

The Vasiliev mansion was supposed to break me. He said I’d be run ragged, used, chewed up. But instead…

Instead, it’s quiet. Sometimes too quiet.

I sweep and mop and dust. I iron expensive shirts and press linens that smell like cedarwood and smoke. No one yells. No one touches. No one hurts me.

But someone watches.

I feel it. Like a second pulse. Like eyes pressed between my shoulder blades.

It started on my third night. I was polishing the brass railing on the staircase when I felt it. A tug in the air, the kind of tension that makes your skin prickle. I looked over my shoulder so fast I gave myself a crick in the nec, but no one was there.

Since then, it’s been happening more often. When I’m bent over making a bed. When I’m drying dishes alone in the kitchen. When I’m in the garden in the early mornings, picking herbs for the chef.

The air thickens, my hands go clammy, I tell myself it’s paranoia.

I tell myself I’m just tired.

But I don’t sleep well here, and tonight is no different.

By the time I finish my duties and make it back to the narrow little room tucked at the back of the servant’s wing, my feet are sore and my hands smell faintly of bleach. The door is silent when I push it open, and I immediately notice something is off.

Nothing dramatic. Nothing anyone else would notice. But I do.

My perfume is out of place.

It’s a tiny little bottle of designer perfume I brought with me. A free sample that was being gifted at Christmas time. I always keep it to the right of the sink, tucked behind the soap dish. Now it’s centered. Neatly aligned. Like someone was in here. Like someone touched it.

The fine hairs on my arms rise. I swallow hard and glance over my shoulder, as if whoever moved it might still be standing behind me.

There’s no one.

Still, I close the door quietly and press the lock until it clicks.

I go to the chest of drawers. The third one down holds my nightwear. Threadbare t-shirts and faded cotton shorts. I pull it open with the same tired rhythm I do every night, only this time, I freeze.

Lying on top of my clothes is a silk nightgown.

Sapphire blue and as soft as water. And definitely not mine.

My stomach twists into a knot.

I reach out and touch it, the fabric pooling like liquid between my fingers.

It’s beautiful. Too beautiful. Too expensive for a girl like me.

The lace trim is delicate. The tag still attached declaring not only is it new, but it cost an eye-watering sum of money.

There’s no note. No explanation. There must have been a mistake.

I glance around the room again, even though I know no one’s here.

My heart won’t stop racing, as I push the delicate fabric aside and pull out my trusty old tee and move into the bathroom to change.

Someone’s been in my room. Someone moved my perfume. Someone put that nightgown in my drawer.

And worst of all…

I think whoever it was is still watching… Not just watching me. But waiting .

I change quickly in the cramped space of the bathroom, telling myself I’m just being paranoid. Who would waste their time watching me? Following me? Unless my brother has put someone up to it, maybe? To keep an eye on me and make sure I’m behaving myself.

The thought instantly angers me. I’ve had to deal with Thom’s meanness ever since I can remember.

Even when we were kids, he’d find ways to hurt me without getting caught.

A shove when no one was looking. A cruel nickname hissed into my ear at the dinner table.

He was older, faster, meaner. And no one ever believed me.

Not when I told them he broke my doll. Not when I said he took my birthday money.

Not when I came home with bruises and said he’d grabbed me too hard.

“You must have fallen,” they’d say. “She’s always been dramatic.”

Eventually, I stopped telling. Learned to keep my mouth shut and stay out of his way. Learned to tiptoe. To flinch first and speak second. To lie about how I got that scrape, that bruise, that black eye.

And Thom only got better at hiding it. More careful with where he hit me. More clever with his punishments. A missed dinner here. A locked door there. My phone taken away so I couldn’t talk to anyone but him.

When I got a job waitressing without his permission, he showed up and dragged me out by the elbow in front of the entire restaurant.

Said if I was going to play at being grown up, I could learn what real work looked like.

The next day, he packed my bag, slapped me so hard I saw stars, and told me I was going to work for the Vasilievs.

“Maybe they’ll break that snivelling attitude of yours,” he sneered, like he was sending me off to a labor camp.

I didn’t cry.

Not in front of him.

I waited until I was alone in the back of the car that picked me up. Silent tears. Tiny, burning ones that I blinked away before the driver could see. That was the first time in years I let myself cry. It didn’t last long.

He doesn’t deserve my tears.

I wrap my arms around myself now, just thinking about him. My skin prickles in that way it always does when I remember too clearly. The hot throb of a slap. The way he’d snatch my wrist and twist, just to watch me wince.

Even when he wasn’t touching me, he had this way of making me feel small. Like I was something to be endured. A stain he couldn’t scrub out. His favorite phrase was, “If you weren’t so pathetic, I wouldn’t have to be like this.”

Like it was my fault he was a monster.

I stare down at my bare feet against the varnished wood floor. My chest is tight, stomach hollow. I shake my head to clear it. That life is behind me now. He can’t reach me here. Even if he tried, I don’t think the men in this mansion would let him through the gate.

The Vasilievs might be dangerous. But they’re not cruel.

Not to me.

At least not yet.

Still, I can’t stop thinking about that nightgown. The delicate fabric. The price tag. The invisible hands that placed it there without a sound. Was it meant for someone else? A mistake? Or was it a gift? And if it was… who gave it to me?

I think again of the way I feel sometimes. That prickle on the back of my neck. The shift in the air when I think I’m alone. The way I never feel truly alone anymore, not even in my sleep.

Someone is watching me.

And I don’t think it’s Thom.

I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.

I peel off my old shirt and pull on the clean one.

It smells faintly of laundry soap and safety.

I look at myself in the mirror and press my hand to my ribs, where the bones are still healing.

The skin there is yellow and green now, nearly gone.

But I know I’ll feel the echo of them for a long time.

Thom meant for me to suffer here. But I haven’t.

Not really.

Except now, I’m starting to wonder if I should be afraid after all.

Not because I’m in danger. But because part of me… part of me wants to know who slipped that nightgown into my drawer. Part of me wants to understand what it means. Why I feel safer here than I ever did in my own home.

Why, for the first time in my life, I feel seen.