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BRATVA KINGPIN
BRATVA ROYALTY BOOK 1
3 YEARS LATER
1
KATYA
My fingers trailed over a quote I had scribbled on my notebook. I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.
Truer words to describe how I felt had never been written.
Oh, Charlotte Brontë, had you been alive today, we would have been the best of friends.
My gaze returned to the professor going on about authors in Victorian England and then to the students who clung to his every word. Hardly any of my classmates spoke to me. So, Brontë would probably also be my only friend. It wasn’t that they ignored me because of my looks—my pink highlights, ripped skinny jeans, and white sneakers weren’t out of the ordinary. Neither was my straightforwardness. I should be so lucky for someone to get into a debate with me about obsessive love in classic literature. The kind of love that didn’t seem to exist anymore.
I doodled some flowers around the quote as I thought of Kristoff Romanov, the manIwas secretly obsessed with. Maybe obsessed was a bit of an exaggeration, but he haunted my dreams. We lived underneath the same opulent roof. He was so close to me, yet so far out of reach. Sometimes I wished I was a teenager again, sitting in a classroom with a lab partner who resembled Robert Pattinson.
But I’d bypassed that period of my life, opting instead for chemo treatments and home schooling. The only crush I had before Kristoff was on the vampires in my books. I missed out on fantasizing about my own bloodsucking lover during chem class or English lit. Which was truly sad. Fantasies were good. They were harmless fun, and the more impossible they seemed, the better. No one got hurt because of daydreaming too much about a guy she could never have. It was worse when a guy was real and in your proximity day in and day out.
A chair creaked behind me. Then there were hushed whispers.
“They say she lives with a Russian mobster.”
I stiffened. It wasn’t the first time I heard these words, but I never got used to people talking behind my back.
“What? No way! You’re making that up,” another girl whispered.
I sighed. If only she were.
“His name is Kristoff Romanov. Here, I’ll show you.”
I could guess what she was referring to. There were maybe only two somewhat clear photos of Kristoff online. In both of them, he wore a black suit with a black shirt and tie and was exiting a car.
Another gasp from Girl Number Two. “He’s hot.”
He so was. Kristoff would give any A-list actor a run for his money.
“He’s sexy as hell and rich as God,” the other girl said. There was a hint of envy in her voice. “I bet she’s sleeping with him.”
I stifled the urge to turn around and comment on that. The man barely noticed I was female.
Another whisper followed. “That explains the car her friend, or whatever he is, picks her up in.”
They were discussing Yuri now. The closest thing I had to a friend, whom Kristoff had assigned to me from the first day that I came to live with him. As for the car, they probably meant the Veyron or the McLaren. I wish he’d allowed me to drive in one of them.
I twirled my pen. The whispers had stopped, but I could feel their eyes burning into my back.
Most people avoided me. That’s what you got when you had bodyguards trailing after you. Someone had made up a story about me being in either WITSEC or the mafia. But the stories weren’t entirely made up—Iwasliving with the Bratva. However, befriending me didn’t necessarily mean you’d end up sleeping with the fishes, as I’d overheard someone say once.
Three years ago, I lost my mother. My life changed irrevocably that day. In some ways it was better now, in others it was worse. I had guards watching me and people avoided me like the plague on campus. I tried not to let it get to me, but it was becoming harder. And the fact that Kristoff kept me on a short leash didn’t make things any easier. If I didn’t get to go out, how was I supposed to befriend anyone? I clenched my jaw. It was time for another talk with him.
“Did you make notes on that last part?” a voice next to me said.
I looked up from my musings. A guy with a radiant smile and kind eyes stood next to me. I remembered seeing him in class before, but we’d never talked. In fact, it surprised me he was speaking to me now.
I shook my head. “Sorry, I kind of drifted off.”
