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A grunt sounded when I raked my nails down the forearm, a low laugh as I was pulled deeper into the shadows.
A string of gruff Russian words were said behind me, followed by a response from a second man I hadn’t known was there. More laughing, more pulling me further from the crowd until I was tossed aside and fell to my knees.
Another harsh cry left me as my palms and knees connected with the unforgiving cement. They started laughing and speaking in Russian again, and I quickly pulled myself off the ground and faced them, keeping them both in my line of sight.
They’d pulled me into some alcove. I could see the lights from the main room pouring into the opening. I could hear the shouts and roars from the crowd, but they blocked the entrance, and trying to move past them wasn’t going to be successful.
“You’re making a mistake,” I said with more conviction than I thought I could muster. I opened my mouth to tell them Nikolai was my husband, using my husband’s status and power to put the fear of god—and the Bratva—in them.
But before I could utter another word one of them came at me, hand wrapped around my throat, and used his strength to push me back against the wall.
He said something low and deep and no doubt disgusting. When he leaned in closer I turned my head and started fighting him again.
I managed to lift my leg and knee him in the groin, and was satisfied when a grunt of pain left him. He growled something nasty abasing the side of my face, and I braced for the hit that would surely come, but a rough grunt and groan in the corridor had both of us tensing.
I heard something hit the ground, a meaty, wet sound following. And then the man who held me abasing the wall was off of me and the motion was so sudden I sagged.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, but then I saw a massive body standing five feet from me. I felt his gaze on me, this beast.
Razoreniye.
I could smell the sweat and blood that clung to him, and heard it dripping onto the floor.
A heartbeat passed of us staring at each other before he took a step closer. I pressed my back to the wall, about to scream, when he bent and picked up the man who’d been pulled off me.
Razoreniyehad a huge hand wrapped around his neck, and the entire time he stared at me, I knew he was squeezing hard and harder.
He let the body fall to the ground and I thought he’d killed the man, but when he groaned and tried to rise, I snapped my focus back to the one they called Ruin.
He stepped aside just as another body moved closer.
Nikolai.
Nikolai stepped into the corner, his hands in his pockets as he looked at me and then at the man who was still groaning on the ground. He stopped when he stood right beside the wounded asshole.
Nikolai stared down at him for so long I didn’t think he’d ever speak, but then he murmured low and deadly, “you thought you could touch my wife?” There was this deceptive calm in his tone that was more frightening than anything else right now.
My fearsome husband looked at me then, his gaze lingering on my neck where the man had grabbed me. It throbbed and stung, and I knew it was red, and would possibly be marked come morning.
“I didn’t know she was yours—” The man said in English, responding to Nikolai.
“—You didn’t know she was mine?” Nikolai cut him off and produced a knife from his pocket, the blade catching the filtering light from the main part of the room for just a second. “You didn’t know she was mine,” he said again, low, his voice even, as if he was asking the question in a conversational manner.
The man pulled himself off the ground finally and stumbled backward until he had nowhere to go. A beast at his side, a wall behind him, and my husband stalking him from the front.
“You touched her.” Nikolai stopped and looked down at his knife, smoothed a finger over the blade. “And for every mark you left on her body, I’m going to cut into you, take a piece from you.”
And that was the only warning Nikolai gave. He had his hand in the man’s hair, yanked his head back, and proceeded to take chunks out of him, bits of flesh he tossed to the ground so they made a disgusting wet slopping noise as they hit the cement.
The man screamed, begged, pleaded and cried. But his sobs couldn’t be heard over the roaring coming from the crowd. But I had a feeling he wouldn’t have gotten help anyway, not when Nikolai was calling the shots.
I didn’t know how long this went on, but long enough that I tasted blood in the air, a coppery flavor that coated my throat and had me gagging.
And when the man was a ruined, barely breathing mess on the ground, as his blood pooled around him and snaked its way toward me, I watched in stunned–sick–fascination as Nikolai grabbed one of the man’s hands and started cutting off the pads of his fingers.
He did this to all ten digits, the man giving one last gurgled sound as his throat was cut open, his eyes staring up at nothing.
Nikolai wiped his blade on the other guy’s jacket, pocketed it, and faced me. I was so stunned by what I’d just witnessed I felt like I was swimming underwater, unable to breath, my body feeling almost detached.
