Aboutwhat?
I have no idea what the hell these idiots are going on about, and based on thealpharemark, they clearly have me confused with someone else. I’ve been a goddamn ghost for over a year and a half. If someone wanted to find me, they would have by now. Why the sudden interest in me and my nonexistent shit? Especially when their facts aren’t exactly right.
“Gonna tell us everything, right, Dimitri?”
My stomach drops as my most pressing question is immediately answered. They do have me confused with someone else. Someone who’s name alone has panic setting in.
Mr. Clean nods as I hear more boots coming toward us. “The money. The guns. The little girl. You’re going to tell us everything.”
“Little girl?” I rasp, my throat like sandpaper as my sister flashes through my mind. I swear to god if anything happened to Tati… Hell, her or my asshole mate who tried to kill me. If anything happened to them, heads are going to fucking roll.
“Don’t play stupid, boy. It’s fucking insulting for everyone involved.” His grin grows as a high-pitch screech joins more footsteps in the distance, squeaking in a rhythm that definitely belongs to something on wheels. “And to make sure you don’t fuck around and keep acting the fool, we’re going to show you our little insurance policy.”
I watch in absolute horror as what can only be described as a medieval stockade is wheeled out, stopping on the edge of the light across from me, and locked in at the neck and wrists, is my girl.
“Liv,” I growl as I jerk against the ropes, anger flaring through every inch of my body as her grass green eyes latch onto me. “I swear to god, if you fucking hurt her?—”
Mr. Clean backhands me in the face, smiling like he just shut me up for good, but when I spit a mouthful of blood at him, his entire demeanor changes. “You’re going to make us do this the hard way, aren’t you?”
“Fuck off,” I grit through clenched teeth.
“Hard way or not, this is a little more like what we expected from the son of a Bratva king.”
There are so many issues with what this dumbass just said, but the most prominent is the fact that he really thinks I’m Dimitri.
I don’t know what that dickhead has gotten himself into, and frankly, I only care on some sort of baser, previously bonded level. Whatever shit he’s pulled, whatever problem hehas, Dimitri created it on his own, and now Liv and I have been dragged into it.
Liv.
My heart hurts looking at her. It hurts but I’m so fucking angry, I’m not sure there’s an accurate enough word to convey it.
Aside from the stockade, we’re in the same position except she’s completely naked, and completely vulnerable. She seems more out of it than I am, though. I have a feeling they might have drugged her, based on the glassy look in her eyes, and I’m real fucking pissed about the split in her forehead and obvious bruises on the parts of her body I can see.
I’m sorry.
I haven’t bitten Liv just like she hasn’t me, but I’m going to try to send her my thoughts anyway. Dimitri and I weren’t together and bonded long enough to see if the bond-link shit works, but years of phantom pains in my chest lead me to believe it would have. I can only hope that sharing a soul bond and being intimate with Liv is enough for her to at least understand how fucking sorry I am. She’s in this situation because of me, and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to forgive myself for it.
“I’m not Dimitri,” I grunt, my eyes never leaving my girl. “Dimitri Volkov, right?”
The dumbass nods.
“That’s not me.”
He reaches into his back pockets and pulls out the photo, unfolding it as he steps closer and then holds it up in my face. “This isn’t you?”
I barely refrain from rolling my eyes.
It is me. It’s me and Dimitri from about five years ago on a hit in Illinois, I believe. I can tell by the visible tattoos and the pub we’re walking out of where we were and why. I don’t know who took this picture, most likely someone from Boris’ organizationkeeping tabs on us, and while this idiot isn’t wrong about the fact that I’m in it, he’s drastically incorrect about who is who.
“Dimitri is on the right,” I say as I watch one of the big guys by Liv get up on the platform behind her. “I’m Nikolai Koslov. No blood relation to any member of a Bratva. You have us confused.”
He looks at the photo again, scanning the two of us for a few seconds before he snorts. “Of course you’d say something like that to get you out of trouble. Nice try, boy.”
“Look a little closer, dipshit. Which one of us looks like thealphaBoris Volkov gave his genetics to?”
Another backhand to the face is all the answer I get.
“Since it’s clear you’re going to be uncooperative, you’re leaving me with very little in the way of options,” Mr. Clean says as he crumples the photo and tosses it on the floor. “Hard way, it is.”
