Page 84 of Fractured Ties

“Brand her properly,” his father had said while Kolya’s mind was still thick with sleep, and Maya slept comfortably and naked under the sheets with him. “Brand her, and make it clear where she belongs. It has to be done, otherwise, she’ll be free game to anyone. I am trying to make a statement to the Albanians about her—they cannot have what doesn’t belong to them. You’ll have her branded, Kolya, and you’ll have it done soon.”

Fuck Vadim.

Fuck his father straight to hell.

Fuck him for being right, in a way, but also asking something of Kolya that made him want to put his fists through the ceramic tiles of the shower’s wall. Vadim had a damn good point—with no visible mark to label her safe under the protection of the Boykovs, and no real status like a wife or a daughter might have … she was no one.

To everyone else, anyway.

To Kolya … he was learning she was quite a lot of things to him.

Even if it fucked him up sideways.

“Are you even listening to me?”

Konstantin’s voice drifted through Kolya’s haze and the constant downpour of the shower. He glanced at the screen of his phone that he’d set on the edge of the shower where the water couldn’t touch it.

“No,” he admitted. “I’m not.”

“Wait—are you in the fucking shower?”

“You called me.”

“You didn’t have to answer, no?”

Kolya leaned forward until his forehead pressed against the cold tile. It did very little to soothe the ache beating in his skull, not to mention the stress tightening his shoulders. He would give anything to go back to when he woke up just so he wouldn’t pick up that goddamn phone call from his father.

Brand her.

“Do you just wake up in a bad mood?” Konstantin asked.

“I woke up to Vadim.”

His brother made a harsh noise in the back of his throat. “That’ll do it.”

Kolya let out a hard breath and smacked his head against the wall once or twice. “He told me to do something.”

“He tells us to do lots of things. Be specific.”

“Brand her—he said to brand her.”

Konstantin’s silence answered Kolya back but he wasn’t offended. His brother was probably trying to come up with something appropriate to say, but really, there was fucking nothing. Kolya had been trying to come up with something, too—he was going to have to tell Maya, after all.

And he had nada.

Not a fucking thing.

“Is that exactly what he said?” Konstantin asked after a long pause.

“Yes.”

“Just—”

“Brand her, yeah.”

“Nothing else?”

“Konstantin.”