Page 3 of Trapped by the Bratva (The Valkov Bratva #5)

HANNAH

T he next day after an even longer shift, I came home to loud music playing from Melissa’s room. The heavy bass didn’t match the tempo of my pulse.

“I can’t get a break,” I muttered to myself as I closed and locked the apartment door. I didn’t need a break from this life. I wanted a whole new one, far from her.

Spotting Devin’s shoes on the floor near the entrance, I knew why the music was cranked up to the decibel that would make someone call the landlord on us.

Whenever they “partied” and screwed all night, the headboard would bang against my wall and keep me up.

So did her porn-star-like screams and moans that I bet she did just to make him think he was some studly man of erectile might.

I wouldn’t know. I’d never had sex. Still a virgin and not in the mood to change that status anytime soon, I could admit a fair amount of naivety. It just sounded stupid, theatrical, and weird, like she was trying to amuse him.

I shook my head and headed to my room. If any neighbors planned to come and knock on the door to complain about the noise, Melissa and Devin could deal with it. After I reached my room, I grabbed my things for a fast shower and got that over with.

Back in my small safe space, I rooted out the protein bars I'd stashed in my closet. It wasn’t a balanced meal, but I’d missed lunch and dinner, so it would do. The less chance I had of seeing my sister, the better for all of us.

I couldn’t stand Devin. He leered at me so creepily, and his attention on me pissed off Melissa, who’d go off on a rant that I had designs on her man.

I didn’t trust myself to see her, either. She used the money I gave her for the electric bill on who knew what, probably clothes, and I got a text that the rent payment was short two hundred dollars too.

“I hate you,” I mumbled as I slipped in earplugs to block the sounds in the next room. Between the music and her strange shouts that were supposed to be sexy, I wished I were deaf.

“Get a job. Move out. And find your own place to be loud.”

Whispering to myself wouldn’t solve anything, but it beat thinking it and letting the negativity seep deeper in my mind.

Melissa got this apartment after our parents died, and because she was an adult while I was a minor, she had to be on the lease.

She scraped by with odd jobs that she quit or got fired from too quickly, and I was the one who made the money.

Under-the-table wages for washing dishes.

Dog walking. And most often—babysitting.

I made the money, and Melissa… did nothing. She wasn’t handicapped or disabled. She wasn’t stupid or illiterate. In short, she was lazy and selfish, using me all these years.

Just leave. Run and start over somewhere new.

That made it worse, knowing I was stuck in an abusive relationship and feeling like I had nowhere to go. If I left, I’d need to have a credit report and references, and I had none.

Becca would have been a great reference. All my other babysitting gigs had ended far too soon because Melissa always snuck in to steal shit from their homes.

I shook my head, rolling it on the pillow as I stared up at the ceiling. Going through these moody, depressive spiels wasn't fun. As a rule, I tried to be both as optimistic and pragmatic as possible, but sometimes, those felt like the silliest oxymoron.

But I have no clue where she is.

Closing my eyes, I thought back to how I’d watched Emily for her. She was always tired and overworked, just like me, and that kinship had always made me feel closer to her.

I hope she’s safe and happy. Which was the opposite of my situation.

Only when I was in Becca’s apartment, taking care of Emily, did I feel peaceful and content.

It stung to know it was all a sham. I was only there for a job.

She’d hired me to spend time in her home with her baby.

I hadn’t actually “belonged” there, but while I was with Emily and tidying the apartment, I felt like it was my home away from home.

I should’ve tried to find out what happened to her and Emily.

After the night when someone rushed in to kidnap Emily, I got a text that said the baby was safe and sound with her.

Becca had updated me only with that much, a one-time message, even attaching a picture of the smiling little girl, but that was from weeks ago.

Months, even. It’d been so long since I’d been ripped out of that pretend homelife.

Yet, the ache of losing it still hurt. It was the closest I’d come to mattering, to being a part of something bigger than my own existence and productive worth.

“Hannah! Get the door!” The music didn’t stop, and Melissa’s fist pounding on the wall added too much noise.

“Fuck. You,” I grumbled as I rolled over to smash a pillow over my head.

Eventually, despite the noise, I fell asleep. It was a miracle that I’d managed to tune out the loudness, but then again, my body could only stay running on fumes for so long.

“What the hell…?” I rubbed my face, confused and alarmed with the pounding in my heart.

I’d been dreaming—again—of him . The guy who’d rushed after Emily when she was taken. The rugged, tall man with dark hair and glittering green eyes who’d startled me when I woke from being hit on the back of my head.

I thought of him often, especially when I had downtime at work or when I was idle and not concentrating. I dreamed of him, too. Whether I was awake or not, he was burned into my mind.

“Who are you?” I wondered aloud as I tried to snuggle back into bed and get comfortable enough to fall asleep again.

I had no name. All I remembered was the strength in his arms as he helped me up. The firm, raspy timbre of his voice as he ordered me to calm down. The forced patience he showed when he insisted that I would not need to babysit Emily anymore.

I furrowed my brows. Sleep wouldn’t come back to me. Now, I was wide awake with thoughts of him, but this time, I pondered the abrupt mystery of it all.

He’d told me not to contact the police, and at first, I readily agreed because I assumed he meant that Becca would handle talking to the police. Her father was a member of the NYPD, and if she needed to report anything, surely, she would’ve gone to him.

“But why did you tell me to forget about it all?”

The mystery man had said those words to me, ordering me to forget about what happened.

“Forget you ever saw me.” He’d spoken that exact order, and it seemed like it’d become something of a reverse psychology experiment. Because he told me not to remember him, I did. Because he’d declared that incident and his presence there something I should dismiss, I couldn’t.

Instead, I fantasized about hearing his comforting tone. I wished for his strong arms to wrap around my back and guide me to lean on his hard body.

I couldn’t forget anything about him. I didn’t want to, either.

“Oh, yes,” Melissa moaned in the next room.

I groaned. Covering my head with the pillow didn’t muffle the sounds, but I squeezed my eyes shut tight and prayed for her to just be quiet.

I wasn’t a prude, but I didn’t want to be reminded of my lack of a love life.

When would I ever have time to meet any guys? I huffed a bitter laugh.

Even if I did, would I compare them to him ?

That had to be the hardest sticking point of this obsession about the mystery man I couldn’t forget or dismiss.

Those weird, danger-filled moments after someone broke in to grab Emily set the stage for seeing that man.

It hadn’t been the time or place to be romantic. That was no damn meet-cute. Not at all.

Something had to be very wrong with me to cling to the memory of the stranger who’d shown up and acted with such authority during a crime.

He had to have been bad news. Somehow.

Normal, decent guys didn’t associate themselves with kidnappers, right?

He probably wouldn’t even remember me.

Even though details were blurry that night, I couldn’t shake the thought that he’d been eager to leave me at the hospital with parting orders to stay quiet.

Is he a cop friend of her father’s?

I was really alert now. Sleep wouldn’t be coming back to me, not easily with Melissa’s headboard banging on the wall again.

Giving up on the attempt to fall back asleep, I reached for my phone. I rolled my eyes at the texts from the landlord about the neighbors’ complaints.

Go on, then. Evict us. That’ll sever this dependence she has on me. Kick us out, and I’ll be able to go off on my own. I dare you. Kick us out.

I didn’t reply to a single one of his texts. Melissa could handle the aftermath of it. After all, as she loved to remind me and throw it in my face, her name was on the lease, not mine.

After I unlocked the screen, I searched the best I could for any posts by Becca. She was an artist, always worried about keeping up her presence on social media for the purpose of spreading word of her artwork, but I found nothing.

She was my only connection to my mystery man, but looking for recent posts shared by her was a dead end. Nothing showed up, nothing new, at least. Since before the night I’d last babysat her baby girl, zilch.

“But I got that text…” I whispered. I swiped my finger on the screen to reach my messages.

Pulling up the old thread that I had with her, I saw the picture of Emily smiling up at the camera.

Her toothy little grin. She was so fussy when I babysat.

Her first teeth were cutting, and she wasn’t a happy camper about it.

But she’d clearly gotten past that initial pain.

I studied the picture again, really paying attention to the rest of the background. I felt like a detective, sleuthing for clues. All because I wanted to see that strange man again. The guy who’d appeared and left so abruptly.

The carpet behind Emily looked plush, clean, and so thick that it almost resembled a blanket. Something… nice. It looked expensive.

So, she took this picture somewhere nice.

Not her old apartment. And I’d checked that anyway once my headaches faded.

Her apartment that she’d shared with Emily was vacant and empty, ready for new renters.

That home hadn’t held much in terms of expensive goods—and that was why Melissa never bothered to “show up” and see what she could steal.

Becca and Emily were poor, too, and they’d been spared my sister’s greed because of it.

But it looks like she took a picture of Emily somewhere nice and fancy…

“You couldn’t have just disappeared…”

Nothing else about the photo offered details about where it could’ve been taken. Just Emily, the baby pen that she held on to, and the carpet.

Frustrated, I set my phone back on my nightstand and plugged it back in so the crappy battery would hold charge until lunchtime tomorrow.

It seemed like I’d never have a chance to see my former friend again. Her or her baby. The only almost-family that I’d wanted to be a part of.

And if I can’t find Becca…

I had nowhere to start looking for that mystery man who’d rushed in after the kidnapping.

Even if I had the means to find him or contact him, I had no clue what to say. Having the opportunity to see him again was becoming an obsession.

Whoever he was, he represented such a profound moment of security for me.

I wanted to belong with someone and be needed.

I wanted to matter and deliver on a purpose for someone.

Working as an LPN was like being a glorified nurse’s assistant, expected to do the dirtiest dirty work and handle anything those with higher pay grades didn’t want to deal with.

I started nursing school with hopes to enter the therapy field, something more than changing bed pans and cleaning up puke.

Of course, I wanted to help others, and the reward of doing so made me feel good.

But this gnawing hole inside me, this feeling of being used and stuck in a rut, wouldn’t ever be filled no matter how altruistic I was on the clock at the hospital.

I want to belong with someone. Someone strong and caring—like that man.

I sighed, doubting it would ever happen.

But I could make something else happen. I couldn’t keep living like this .

I had to strike out on my own. If I had to be independent and single, fine.

I couldn’t live like this, under Melissa’s control, any longer.

She had always been strong in a cunning, psychological way, but she never cared.

It was past time that I cared enough about myself to choose to leave for something—anything—better. Just because I couldn’t belong with anyone, I had reached the low point of knowing I had to look out for myself once and for all.

I fell asleep to the beginning of a plan to escape my sister and this place.