Page 9 of Fractured Ties

Damn, so blue.

Like the ocean right before a storm.

Or a sky on a cloudless summer day.

But her hair was pin-straight hanging over her shoulders, and jet-black.

Like the darkest night.

Like tar.

Like his soul.

She wasn’t particularly dressed up, but she wasn’t dressed down in her outfit, either. Simple straight-leg, tight jeans and a bohemian-style blouse. It told him she had dressed to look appropriate, but not draw attention.

He didn’t blame her.

The only attention a woman like her—delicate, beautiful, and sweet-looking—might find here was the bad kind.

Kind of like him.

Because, yeah, Kolya noticed her.

Something he didn’t do.

“Maya, stop standing there,” Ivan barked, drawing Kolya’s attention away from the woman, “and make yourself useful, yes? Go do anything else but be near me.”

“Sorry,” the woman—Maya—whispered.

Quickly, she scurried off.

“I wanted a drink,” Kolya groused, shooting Ivan a glare.

Really, he just wanted Maya to come back.

So he could tell her to run.

Ivan waved a hand and didn’t even realize with that action and his next words, he just made Kolya’s hesitance to kill him with a woman near null and void altogether. “The cunt will come back—my daughter doesn’t know how to listen. It’s why she belongs in the den with the rest of the mutts.”

Oh, yeah.

And the fact that Maya was the man’s daughter just made it worse, too.

Beyond fucking dead.

Kolya’s favorite knife—a black obsidian blade his brother had given to him when he turned sixteen—was pulled from the sheath at his ankle in his next breath and sliding along Ivan’s throat before the man could protest, or blink.

“You asked the wrong questions, suka,” Kolya murmured, reverting back to the familiar feeling of numbness and nothingness. “You should have asked why I came here first, and then I could have let you beg for a bit. Now, you’re going to learn pain. The boss says hello, in case you wondered, and it’s time to pay up.”

2.

IVAN DIDN’T even get the chance to give Kolya a proper reaction before the two men he probably hadn’t even noticed stepped in his path. Kaz yanked Ivan backwards off the stool by gripping the hair at the base of his skull at the same time Konstantin came to stand behind Kolya.

“I didn’t—swear I fucking didn’t!”

Ivan’s words fell on deaf ears because frankly, Kolya had better shit to do, and orders to throw out. “Konstantin, find something that makes fire, yeah?”

“You got it,” Konstantin murmured before he jumped the bar using one hand to propel him over.