Hunted By The Bratva Beast: A Bratva Stalker/Captive Romance by Jagger Cole (books to read in your 20s .txt) 📕

“How did you get this, Nina?” The man says softly.

I say nothing. Life has conditioned me to say nothing, to point no fingers.

“You can tell me,” he says gently.

“I—” I close my mouth, but eyes slide to the door, where Dima is watching, wide-eyed. The man in the suit slowly turns, following my gaze. I see his jaw clench as he rises to his feet and storms over to Dima. With a snarl, he grabs her and shoves her against the wall, making her scream.

“Was it you!?” He hisses furiously.

“Pozhaluystya!” She sobs. Please.

The man snarls. His eyes drop to the burn marks on her hands and arms, and then to those on her lips, and the yellowed teeth. He shakes his head in disgust.

“You are done pretending to be a mother—foster or otherwise. You are finished with that. If I hear that you’ve fostered another child, I will come back, and I will kill you with my bare hands.”

Dima’s face turns to ash.

“Vy ponimayete?” Do you understand?

She nods.

“Louder,” he snarls.

“Da!” She screams. “Da!”

The man in the suit turns back to me. But suddenly, the man on the floor lunges to his feet. He pulls a blade out of his pocket. With a snarl, he rushes at the bigger man. Without even blinking, or even taking his gaze away from me, the man in the suit suddenly pulls a gun from his suit jacket, raises it to the side, and pulls the trigger.

The dirty man with the knife drops instantly, smoke curling from a hole in his chest. I stare, my heart racing, my mouth dry. Slowly, I blink, and I drag my eyes back to see the man in the suit standing right in front of me. He slowly puts the gun away and sinks to his knees again.

“Nina, my name is Viktor Komarov, and I am your half-bother.”

I stare. My heart thuds inside my ears. I know he’s a stranger. But I still somehow know he’s telling the truth. I don’t know how, but I just know.

“Would you like to come with me?”

My hands tremble. “Where?” I breathe.

“Away from here, forever. To America. To a new life.”

I don’t even need a second to respond.

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Good.”

He takes my hand. I take nothing with me. I don’t even give a final look at Dima or the hell that’s been my world my whole life. He leads me out the door and into a whole new life. And I never once look back.

Present:

Kostya’s eyes flutter, and my heart skips.

“Thank God,” I breathe quietly to no one. He blinks, and his eyes flutter again. Then, they finally open. He winces, and then frowns as he takes in his surroundings… on the floor, with a pillow under his head.

“Nina…”

“How do you feel?”

He frowns. “Alive.” He glances around in puzzlement.

“I was still out, but you must have fallen from your blood loss. I couldn’t move you because you’re so big. So I did the best I could here on the floor.”

He starts to sit up. I wince and go to stop him, but he shakes his head. “I’m okay.” He sits the rest of the way up and leans his head back on the edge of the bed. Then he looks down gingerly, his eyes sliding over his bare chest and the bandages I patched him up with. He glances down at the bandage over his wrist, with the needle catheter sticking out of it.

“I, uh…” I frown. “You lost a lot of blood. So I took a guess on your blood type based off that tattoo…” I point to the little black “O-” near his forearm, surrounded by tons of other tattoos. “O negative?”

Kostya nods.

“Me too.”

He frowns, but his lips curl. “You gave me blood?”

I nod quietly. “I took a few EMT and first aid classes a while ago. Actually, we can take that out.”

Kostya looks at me in silence while I slide it out of his arm and rebandage it, like he’s drinking me in. But the look has a sort of unbelieving reverence to it, too. He’s so dangerous looking and so gorgeous. It’s like there’s a magnetism to him that I can’t pull away from. A force of nature that draws me to him, making me ache to be closer.

“You are here,” he says quietly.

I frown, and he smiles. “I mean, you’re still here. You didn’t run.”

“I wasn’t going to leave you.”

His brow furrows. “Why?”

I look down. “You saved me. Twice.”

His mouth grits. “You still could have run.”

“I know.”

“Maybe you should have.”

I tremble with heat as his eyes burn across my skin.

“Why?”

“Because I am what I am, Nina,” he growls. “Because I am the bad, dangerous man you see me as.”

“I don’t see you as bad,” I whisper softly. “I see you for what you are. And if you wanted to hurt me, you would have.” I rake my teeth across my lip, letting my eyes absorb him in silence.

There’s still something so familiar to him—a place I can’t quite remember him from. A memory he keeps invading, but then disappearing from before I can focus.

“I…” my mouth closes. I peer at his face, trying to remember. My eyes center on the heat in his blues ones, desperately searching for a clue.

“Moscow,” he growls quietly.

I stiffen, and I frown.

“There was a little girl,” Kostya says softly. “A flower who didn’t deserve to be hidden from sunlight, or to be hurt the way she was.”

My pulse skips.

“A little angel, forced to live in a hell she had no business being in. And yet still, she found the beauty in the darkness.”

“Kostya…”

He lowers his gaze to his bare chest, then over to his shoulder. I follow his gaze, but suddenly, my breath catches. There’s a tattoo hidden within the rest of them I hadn’t noticed before. But now that I see it, there’s no missing it.

It’s blue and green butterfly, made to look like it’s been cut out of paper.

My heart stops. Oh my God.

“Fire fights fire,” Kostya