Page 7 of Bratva King

Another pause. "I'll think about it."

The line went dead. Natalia lowered the phone slowly. The silence inside the apartment felt enormous. She tossed the phone onto the sofa before sinking onto the edge of the mattress.

For several minutes she simply stared at the opposite wall. Usually, after a failed contract, a professional would plan, gather intelligence, change positions, and study new angles. Failure was merely another problem to solve.

This time, though, none of that mattered. The worst part wasn't the damage to her reputation, and it wasn't losing a wealthy client. Hell, it wasn't even admitting she'd failed. It was Alexei, and she hated that her body remembered him.

Natalia wasn’t thinking of the frightened teenager from years ago, but the man. Alexei had broad shoulders that stretched the expensive black suit he'd worn with effortless confidence. She even recalled the powerful lines of his chest beneath crisp fabric, the way strength seemed woven into every movement without becoming arrogance.

His face lingered in her thoughts with irritating persistence. The sharp jaw, the faint scar near his temple, those impossible blue eyes. Eyes that sent the bravest men running, and yet somehow, he’d looked at her without hatred despite the fact she'd tried to kill him.

Natalia remembered standing close enough to feel the heat radiating from him, close enough that if she'd leaned forward even slightly ... Natalia abruptly stood.

"No. Stop thinking about him.”

She paced the apartment. This was ridiculous. Professional assassins didn't get distracted because a target happened to be attractive. They certainly didn't lose sleep over men whose names appeared on contracts.

She'd killed far better people, and far worse people. Natalia had targets she’d pitied and despised, and yet she never gave them a second thought. Alexei, however, refused to leave her mind.

Hell, the thought of another assassin succeeding where she'd failed left an unfamiliar ache beneath her ribs.

She pictured someone watching him through another scope. A finger tightening around another trigger. Alexei collapsing onto cold pavement, blood spreading steadily beneath him. His blue eyes staring sightlessly at the sky.

The image twisted something deep inside her chest. It didn't make any sense.

Until this contract had landed in her hands, she'd never once tried to find him or even considered stepping back into his life. Whatever debt she'd owed the teenage boy who'd carried her out of that nightmare had remained exactly where she'd buried it, locked away with the rest of her past. Their lives had gone in different directions, and she'd accepted that years ago.

So why, now that someone wanted him dead, did the thought of another assassin pulling the trigger leave such a bitter taste in her mouth?

Her stomach clenched violently. She turned away from the image and pressed both palms against the wall. It didn't make sense, as it had been ten years. He probably didn't even remember rescuing her.

Why would he? To him, she'd been one terrified child among countless tragedies, but to her, Alexei had become the dividing line between two lives. Before Alexei, and after Alexei.

Everything she'd become had started with surviving that night. Business was business. That was the rule she'd lived by. Contracts didn't care about history, and bullets certainly didn't.

Yet somewhere between looking through the scope and standing face-to-face with the man she'd once trusted without question, something inside her had shifted. The question was no longer whether she could complete the contract. It was whether she wanted anyone else to.

Chapter Three

Alexei sat behind the wide walnut desk in his office. He rested one elbow on the armrest while he drummed the other fingers of his other hand against the polished wood.

The laptop in front of him glowed with spreadsheets. It showed him columns of numbers, shipping manifests, and import invoices. Payments routed through three different shell companies before disappearing into legitimate businesses that washed the Bratva's money clean.

Normally, Alexei could find discrepancies within minutes. That was one reason his father had trusted him with the organization's finances before his death. Every figure told a story if someone knew where to look. Missing funds, employees skimming profits, or even rival organizations probing for weaknesses.

Today, however, the numbers blurred together. He'd been staring at the same page for almost twenty minutes. He couldn't remember reading a single line. With an irritated sigh, he leaned back in his chair.

His office occupied the top floor of Volkov Holdings, a respectable investment company on paper and the beating heart of their Bratva operations beneath the surface. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the city skyline, the morning sun glinting off steel skyscrapers that stretched toward low gray clouds.

Usually, the view helped him think. Today it only reminded him of another rooftop, an alluring pair of brown eyes, and a shot that should have killed him. Two nights had passed since someone had tried to put a bullet through his skull, and somehow he couldn’t stop thinking of her.

The mystery woman who missed on purpose. He could still remember her dark hair pulled back tightly, her sharp cheekbones, the controlled rise and fall of her chest.

He remembered she'd held herself with absolute confidence, not arrogance but discipline. The kind forged through years of relentless training.

Every movement of hers had been economical and measured. Nothing was wasted. She hadn't fidgeted once, or looked frightened. Even cornered, she'd remained calm and professional, which made what she'd done even stranger.

She'd had a clean shot, and yet she purposely missed. Even now, he kept wondering why she'd chosen not to kill him. Did they know each other in the past? That question had lodged itself inside his head like a splinter.