Page 47 of Bratva Sacrifice

Finally, he senses he has caused offense. His shoulders slump. A mottled flush climbs into his face.

“Two weeks ago,” I tell them, “you looked with lust at something that belongs to me.”

Piotr’s chin falls, his head bowed as if in acceptance of this. He understands.

Ivan does not. Maybe because he looks at every woman with a decent pair of tits with lust.

“Catalina Russo,” I sneer at him. “The woman whose tits you stared at, whose ass you leered at. The woman you fucked with your eyes in my fucking house.” My voice has risen to a roar that makes Piotr flinch again, makes Ivan rear back in his seat. “My fucking woman!”

Ivan stammers through the abrupt tightness of his throat, “I—I didn’t know—”

My lips curl into a snarl. “You didn’t know.” My head turns toward my shoulder. “Anatoli, you did not tell him?”

“Everyone was told,” Anatoli says. His tone is bored. Probably his head is down over his phone again. He is not offering Ivan the excuse he seeks. He does not care enough to intercede on Ivan’s behalf.

Piotr may be a different story.

“I made a mistake,” Ivan rasps. He is trembling. I would not be surprised to find he has pissed himself. “I won’t again.”

Fury jerks me out of my chair. My hands slam down upon the table before me. “You think you get a second chance to disappoint me, you worthless fuck?” My bellow reverberates around the room. “I will cut off your cock and shove it up your fucking—”

“Alyosha?”

My head snaps to the doorway, where Katya lingers uncertainly. I see she has rifled through my drawers again. She wears one of my shirts that is far too big for her and a pair of flannel pajama pants I have never worn, rolled up to her ankles so she does not trip over the hem.

I fucking told her to stay in the bedroom. And now I must shove my rage back down in my chest before it burns her. I duck my head and take a sharp, cleansing breath through my nose and sink down into my chair once again, slapping one hand down upon the surface of the table.

With the other, I thump my chest. “Come, Katka.”

She knows already that I am angry with her for disobeying once again, but she takes those first steps into the room anyway, because she is braver than she looks. Foolish—but brave. It is only when she takes note of the gun resting on the table, inches from my hand, that her steps falter.

“Come,” I insist again.

She made her choice already the moment she left the bedroom in direct opposition to my command. Now she must learn another harsh lesson.

Some orders are for her own good.

Chapter Twenty Two

Catalina

Alexei is furious. More so than I’ve ever seen, his green eyes sharp and cutting. The heat of his anger rolls off of him in waves, like he’ll singe me if I get too close.

But he was already shouting before I left the bedroom—in Russian, so loud that his voice traveled all the way across the house, up the stairs, and through the closed door—so I know not all of his anger is meant for me. I just don’t know what caused it.

His fingers steeple on the surface of the table as his jaw tenses. The slash of his brows is forbidding, severe. I’m already regretting my decision to intrude, but I know if I don’t go to him, he’ll come for me instead.

My knees are trembling. I don’t fear that the gun that rests on the table near his hand is meant for me, but I know…I know it’s meant for someone.

Someone is going to die tonight. That’s why I was meant to stay in the bedroom.

Anatoli, who stands some distance beyond Alexei’s left shoulder, looks straight at me as I approach and gives a tiny, disapproving shake of his head as if to say, Stupid woman, and in this moment, I can’t help but agree.

The moment I’m close enough to reach, Alexei reaches out and grabs a fistful of the shirt I borrowed from his drawers and yanks me down to him. I land in a sprawl across his lap, my legs draped over the arm of his chair. His left arm comes around me and his hand curls around the nape of his neck. He says nothing as I readjust myself, striving to find a more comfortable position.

When I’m settled, he drops his chin to the top of my head and draws in a deep breath. I wonder if he can smell my fear, my anxiety. I can hear the beat of his heart. Calm and steady, despite his anger.

He speaks to me as if I’m the only person in the room, as if the two other men at the table are inconsequential—and given the presence of the gun on the table, I’m guessing that they are. “I told you to stay in the bedroom,” he says into my hair. His voice is rough, deep, his accent more pronounced than usual. “You never fucking listen, koshechka.”