Page 30 of The Russian’s Forced Bride (Kamarov Bratva #2)

The tactical jacket I wore clung to me like a second skin. It had been years since I had worn one, considering I was pushed back to become a businessman. But today, I wore it like a badge of armor, reminding myself that I had to do this.

It wasn’t that I was afraid to go back into the art of killing I had been so cruelly dragged out of.

I was worried that I’d be too blinded by my anger and get caught up in it.

I knew myself, and I knew there was a darkness that lurked in my subconsciousness—a bloodlust that gripped me hard as I stared ahead at the Kamarov building where they had taken her.

I was prepared to get my hands bloodied if that meant getting Arlette back.

It didn’t matter if she saw me differently after what I was about to do.

As long as she survived, I didn’t really give a fuck about anything.

Maxim tossed a Glock to me, which I skillfully caught, strapping it into my waist belt.

And just then, through the comms which Diego had given to me, Matvey’s voice tore through—authoritative yet leveled with understanding.

I didn’t want to have to listen to him this time, but it was because of his help that we knew where they had hidden Arlette, so I decided to at least pay attention to whatever he had to say.

“Just get her out of there, Rafael,” he instructed me. “That’s your main priority. Seeing as she’s carrying a Bratva child, you shouldn’t consider doing anything else.”

I scoffed in annoyance. Of course, he wasn’t going to give me the go-ahead to kill that fucker.

“I know you want to kill Joaquin and his nephew, but leave them to me. I promise you’ll get your revenge. Do you copy, Rafael? Don’t disobey me.”

I tried to clear my head and actually listen to him, but all I could think of was killing that man. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to get Arlette out. She was my main priority. Nevertheless, I agreed to Matvey’s instructions, even though I knew I was certainly going to disobey him.

Right after I was done with Matvey, Diego led Maxim and me through the black iron gates, using hand signs to point out an entrance through the back of the house where we could get in without being noticed by Joaquin’s men, whom he claimed were swarming all over the place like flies.

“It’s a suicide mission,” he had claimed, explaining there were about twenty men in total in the building, with five on each floor and one in the room with Arlette, perhaps keeping her from escaping.

But in my opinion, killing off twenty armed men was akin to child’s play. It had been years since I had fought against trained killers, yes—but that didn’t mean I lacked experience. And besides, I had Maxim with me.

I wasn’t being egotistical, but brutally honest. I was confident we could take them all out.

The problem, though, was reaching where Arlette was being held in time.

If our gunshots echoed through the building, I reckoned it could set off Joaquin to kill Arlette.

So we had to be swift and as stealthy as possible.

When we got to the mansion’s backyard, Diego explained that there were no men positioned directly, as they were all busy guarding the front door and each floor.

I patted Diego’s back in thanks, letting him go and signaling to Maxim with my hands that we move in through a trapdoor hidden within the field of poppies and flowers adorning every inch of the backyard garden.

The garden, which had not been tended to in years, had become swallowed in vines and weeds, hiding the trapdoor in plain sight.

Following my lead, I pushed back the massive grass blades until I found the metallic trapdoor, whose metal gleamed slightly with the sun. With a shared look of agreement, I opened up the trapdoor, slipping inside, and Maxim followed right behind me.

The tunnel leading to the underground bunker was dimly lit, reeking of stale, moldy air, with the sound of dripping water echoing into the distance. The concrete walls were sludgy with moss and creeping insects crawling around.

Silence settled over Maxim and me as we navigated through the bunker tunnels.

And just when a shadow approached in the distance, Maxim walked the curve and immediately fired a headshot at one of the suited-up guards, who fell with a thud, spraying the walls with crimson.

The comms in my ears crackled as Diego’s voice came in: “Three heat signatures. On your left, approaching fast.”

I immediately raised three fingers to Maxim, signaling that three other men were approaching.

And right after they rounded the corner, Maxim fired his gun at two of them while I shot one in the arm, ducking when he fired at me.

Upon nearing him, I threw a punch at his face, once again firing at his slumped body on the ground.

“Any more?” I spoke into the comms, certain that the gunshots had alerted others on different floors, and it was only a matter of time before Maxim and I were swamped.

Diego answered almost immediately, confirming my theory.

“A swarm of them is approaching, sir. But the room where we suspect the victim is being held is just a little further. If you’re fast enough, you might get there before they do.”

Maxim spared me a glance after. “What’s wrong?”

“We have to keep moving. They’re about to come pouring in like bees,” I said, patting his shoulders and jogging ahead, my heart thumping at the revelation that Arlette was being held just a bit farther into the bunker.

Maxim and I kicked down each room we passed by, which included cell rooms, a storage room, and even a cellar, but they were all empty, covered in dust and cobwebs.

But right as we pushed through the hallways with flickering lights, a sudden gunshot popped into the air, aimed straight at me.

I dodged out of the way just in time, the bullet grazing my arm.

I immediately retaliated, firing back as the shooter came into view, before others came rushing in, firing sporadically at Maxim and me.

Some bullets grazed my exposed skin, a few missing my head by a strand. But Maxim and I were faster, shooting down as many of them as we could all at once. But it was getting overwhelming, and with all the noise we were making, I was certain Joaquin had already been alerted.

Through the firing and constant ducking, Maxim nudged me by the shoulder as he yelled into my ears, “Go, I’ll cover you,” all the while punching one of the men who came rushing to him, holding a bat. “Go find her before they take her somewhere else.”

It wasn’t fair for me to leave him all alone, but I was sure he could handle them by himself. So I gave him a nod in agreement, right after shooting at the throat of one of Joaquin’s many henchmen, whose blood sprayed all over my face while he doubled back, trying in vain to clutch at the injury.

And just before I left Maxim to finish off the rest that were still incoming, I grabbed a bat that lay beside one of the bodies, which loitered across the ground, their bodies angled grotesquely.

I made my way to another hallway, checking with Diego if I was going the right way, and he replied positively. Apparently, all the guards that had been stationed at this particular hallway had run off to engage with the intruders—Maxim and me.

I kept knocking down doors to empty rooms, my chest thumping in anticipation as I approached a huge metallic door at the end of the hallway.

The room was familiar. It was once an interrogation room Father had used to question his victims—and the same room I would always be locked up in whenever I disobeyed him.

An odd feeling of nostalgia swept through my entire being as I now stood in front of it. Memories burned through my skull. My first kill had been in this room, and it had been in this same room that I had learned to channel all my emotions to a quiet rage that showed itself in the form of violence.

A part of me wanted to walk past it, but then a muffled sound from inside caught my attention, just as Diego’s voice once again tore through the comms.

“She’s right in there, sir.”

I drew in a sharp breath just as the door opened on its own accord, revealing a surprised Mateo Saavedra. Blocking off my emotion, I pulled the trigger—but he was quick to dodge, slamming the door shut in my face and dropping a spiked bat, which I picked up.

I kicked the door back forcefully before it could be successfully shut and stormed into the room, immediately meeting the woman I had been searching for the past eight hours.

My breath hitched, and my eyes widened in accordance with the sight of her. She was broken, strapped to a chair, her skin eerily pale with a visible bump protruding from her stomach. Her head hung limply by her side, her once fiery hair now washed to a dull color that was sprawled over her face.

And her face. Her face was almost unrecognizable. It was swollen, and blood trickled down her nose in drops onto the ground.

My grip tightened hard on the gun in my hands, my right hand tightening around the bat as well. I could already see myself bashing his head in as I lunged toward Mateo, who seemed to be loading a gun while panicking.

I immediately fired a gun at his hands in an attempt to destabilize him, and he let out a sharp cry of pain as the gun he was trying to load fell to the ground beneath him with a thud while he inched closer to a dusty storage shelf situated at the right side of the room.

My ears rang—a sharp tone that resounded all over my body—and my eyes had become covered by a red veil as I tossed my Glock to the ground, certain he wouldn’t be able to use his fingers that were now blown off to shoot me.

I lunged toward him, swinging the bat at his head.

The bastard once again dodged my attack, holding his bleeding hands and sweating profusely.

But I wasn’t in the mood to play tag with him, so I quickly reached for a table knife from my tactical jacket and swung at his shoulder.

“Fuck!” he groaned in pain as the knife wedged itself between his shoulder and the deteriorating wall, coated with smudges of dried-up blood from the past. And while he screamed, his eyes widening in fear as I approached him, I once again swung the bat to his head.

The cracking of bones echoed through the room as the bat met his skull, Arlette’s muffled scream resounding in the room just as I hit him.

“Please!” she cried out. “Don’t kill him.”

Her strained voice yelled, and I wished she didn’t stress herself so much over him, because it didn’t matter what she thought of me after now. I had already set my mind on killing the fucker, who seemed surprised as well that Arlette was begging for his life.

Regret flashed through his eyes, wide and damp with tears, as they stayed trained on Arlette’s tied-up form, who kept begging that I let him go.

But as much as I wanted to for her sake, I simply yelled back to her to close her eyes—because as I had said, I was going to bash his head in.

“Please…” he begged, almost unconscious, blood trailing from the open tear on his forehead. But I never planned on showing mercy, even as his cheekbones jutted from his purplish skin.

He began muttering how sorry he was. His words didn’t seem directed at me, but at Arlette, who kept wailing.

And if anything, his apologies for betraying Arlette in the first place only fueled my anger.

I dropped the bat, grabbing a fistful of his shirt as I stared into his squinted eyes, wearing a malignant smile on my face while I swung my fist into his face continuously—relishing the sound of his bones popping beneath my flesh and his blood gushing all over me until he went limp, his body slumping onto the ground and his breaths coming out ragged and erratic.

“I told you all you’d die if you as much as touched her,” I sneered, straddling his half-dead body before delivering the final blow that pummeled his disfigured face and ended him.

Satisfied, I left his body, wiping off the smear of his blood that trickled down my face like sweat, my chest heaving as a metallic stench hovered over the room, intoxicatingly.

And though I wanted to revel in Mateo’s death like the psychotic man I was, the sound of Arlette sobbing caught my attention.

Furthermore, Joaquin hadn’t been in the room like I had hoped. So I had to get Arlette out before finding him and ending him just like I did to his nephew.

I wasted no time as I rushed to Arlette’s side, my blood-soaked hands cupping her cheeks and trying to soothe her.

“You’re okay, kroshka ,” I rasped, pressing my lips against her forehead. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I had to kill him.”

She leaned against me, still tied up, and her tears soaked my shirt while I reached over, untying the knot of the rope and setting her free. She immediately collapsed in my arms, sobbing about Mateo. I let her cry, all the while wondering why Joaquin had not come in yet.

The sooner we ended this, the better.