Owned by the Badman (Russian Bratva #1) (32 page)

“H
OW DO YOU FIT
into all of this, Gregori?” Sergei asks. Gregori twitches slightly before gulping.

“I am trying to save these women,” he says, but it is with a shaky voice, his confidence blown away. I know he is lying.
He must be.

“Kill him,” Sergei orders. Before the word
him
has even left his lips, I watch as Gregori slumps to the ground, a perfect round dot in the middle of his forehead and a new gun appearing in the hands of Ivan’s son.

The girl screams, but I can’t even move. Gregori is on the ground next to me, dead, and my emotions are void, except for relief. I feel complete and total
relief
that Gregori will not ever be able to manipulate and torture me again, gently or otherwise.

“Come,” Maxim says crouching down next to me. I pull up on shaky legs, launching myself into his arms, the tears flowing down my cheeks again.

“I’m so sorry, Maxim. I didn’t want to do those things, I swear,” I shake violently as his arm tightens around my waist.

“
Nyet, angel moy
, I know
, I know
.” His words are nothing above a whisper as I try to gain my composure. His hands lightly pet my hair as his arms stay tightly wrapped around me.

“You have my son, now give me Emiliya back,” Ivan demands, his confidence shot.

I can smell the fear radiating from his body, replacing the stench of overconfidence. Radimir grabs the girl around the back of the neck from Alex’s arms and pulls her to his side.

“Emiliya will not go back to you, tyrant. She stays with us, where her brother can protect her, where her pussy will not be sold for you to gain power.”

The man’s hand is warm on my neck. Though he is powerful, his grip is loose and he is no threat to me. I don’t understand most of what they are saying because my English is terrible. I chose to give up the language when I reached
gymnasium
, immersing myself in the language of love, in French.

I took French because I had dreams. The dream of finding a lover while on vacation, after graduating school, dreams of a silly girl that would never come true. The day I turned eighteen, all dreams of finding a lover, a friend, a kind, gentle man were squashed by my controlling father. He announced that he would arrange my marriage, my perceived freedoms stripped, and I would remain his prisoner until the marriage would take place—to a man I would probably never meet until the wedding day.

“Emiliya will come home. Her marriage contract is in process,” my father growls. I shiver in disgust.

The man next to me glances down at me and pulls me closer to his side. His body is warm and his hand begins to massage my neck. I am shocked at his tender touch and how my body is reacting to it, my blood warming and my belly clenching. I try not to show it.

“I grow tired of this,” the man I know now as Sergei says, looking at my brother.

I watch in fascinated shock as my brother pulls the trigger of his gun and kills my father. No heated words exchanged and no emotion—just murder.

Plain and simple.

“You did good, son. Now you are richest man in Russia.” Sergei chuckles.

My brother walks over to our father and kicks him, then spits on his lifeless body. I sag in relief against the strong, handsome, terrifying man next to me.

“My first order of business is to release the whores if they wish to be released. My sister will be protected as promised?” He asks Sergei as he nods toward the man next to me.

No kind words are exchanged between Yakov, my brother, and I. Not that I anticipated them; we were not raised to be an affectionate family. However, with the scene laid before me, I would like my brother to say something,
anything
. He just killed our father, for goodness’ sake.

“Radimir is good man, deserving of a good woman, but he will not force anything,” Sergei says in my language.

My body goes stiff understanding his meaning. He is giving me to this man; he is exactly like my father. My brother walks up to me and rests his forehead on my own, finally focusing on me, and it fills my heart with love for him.

“
Nyet
,” I choke out.

I want love, and I want a lover—a best friend.

I do not want to be bartered and sold to a man I do not know.

“You do as I wish, Emiliya. I want you safe, and I know no other way to achieve that than to have this man at your back and at your side. I will be in the middle of a heated war that you cannot be involved in. I trust Radimir. I have known him many years,” he says. My mouth is too dry to respond. Instead, I nod weakly.

I know nothing about this man, other than my brother trusts him, but I trust nobody. My father is dead; a man who was supposed to protect me but only cared to protect my virtue so I could be sold to the highest bidder. Now, my brother freely hands me to a stranger and orders me to trust him. My head hurts, and I am suddenly exhausted from the shift in my life.

“Come, beautiful girl, you need rest,” Radimir whispers, his hand still gentle on my neck. My body heats again from his touch, betraying my mind.

I begin to walk with him and glance at the pretty American woman standing next to the man called Maxim. He is whispering softly to her as he rubs her protruding belly, his lips so close to her skin that they brush her temple every so often, depending on the words he speaks. Her eyes are teary as she nods and then they look at each other.

I can see the love pouring from them. He loves her as if his life depends on it, as if he would stop breathing if she were to ever leave him. She looks like, without him, she would not be able to stand on her own.

I want that; I want a man to look at me as if his life depends on me being at his side. I swallow the lump in my throat and close my eyes for a moment, mourning what I will never have. I will
never
have what they have.

My mind is reeling from what is happening around me. Gregori is dead and so is Ivan, who apparently is some big deal in the political and business world in Russia, along with the underground in the prostitution world as well. I actually have no clue, and as soon as I am able, I will be asking Maxim for clarification on all of the men gathered in my living room, and the poor young girl who so obviously is scared out of her brain.

“How are you,
angel moy
, the baby? Do I need to take you to hospital?” Maxim whispers, his hand caressing my belly.

I shake my head.
This man.
I was ready to throttle him just hours ago, and right now, after everything he has found out, he is concerned, so very concerned.

“I am all right. I fell on my hip. If I start feeling bad, I’ll let you know, but we must talk, Maxim.” My voice wavers, but I need to talk about Gregori. He needs to know …
everything
.

“We will talk once this mess is cleaned up.” His voice is harsh, but his eyes are soft as he gazes down at me.

I love him
so much
at this moment. Even with two dead men at my feet, I cannot feel anything but love for this man. I know I am a fool to love him the way I do; to continually forgive him for his sins, for the danger he brings to our family just by being who he is, but foolishly, I don’t care. I am his, completely, and he is mine.

“Take her to bed, friend. We take care of this mess without the women,” Alex whispers.

Without another word, Maxim slides his hand around my shoulders and we silently walk to our bedroom. He doesn’t speak, locking the door and going to the bed in silence, and it is killing me.

“Gregori was my friend. Well, as much as a friend as I could have in this life, and I find out he is nothing but a betraying bastard?” Maxim’s cold words are like ice being dumped on my body.

“I am sorry, Maxim. He told me we were being watched and that it was expected, that he was trying to save me and the women like me, that he was trying to stop them,” I admit with fresh tears streaming down my cheeks. Maxim nods but his eyes looked weathered, worn—the blue so dull, he does not look like my Maxim.

“I know,
I know
. He told me those things as well,” he says, his voice softening, and his eyes focus on me. I sit closer to him and place my hand on his thigh, my face dipping down to look into his eyes.

“Tell me who this Ivan man was. What exactly is happening here, Maxim?” I plead. He shakes his head, and just when I think he is going to tell me to just go to sleep, he begins to speak. What he says rocks my world.

Maxim was indeed the son of a couple of druggies and was sold at a young age to the
Bratva
for services rendered. It was his initiative and talents that made him climb the ranks instead of staying a lowly soldier.

These were all things I already knew, but there is more. There is always more, isn’t there?

“When Maryia mentioned that she had been kept by Ivan I started to dig around. I found out that our fathers were brothers. Ivan is, technically, my uncle. My father was not good or honorable. Their father, my grandfather, was always a successful businessman and passed his companies and money down to Ivan. My father hated that his brother got everything. From the time they were children, Ivan had always been the favored child.

“My father schemed, stole from his own family, and with the money he took, he started a whorehouse. He specialized in virgins and young girls for a steep price. One of his girls was my mother, along with dozens of underage women.

“Eventually, my father began to pay back the money he stole, and once the money was back, he and Ivan seemed to be good,
square
, at least on paper. Ivan and their father, Vasily, pretended to forgive him and actually approached my father for the business deal,
combining forces
. Vasily was part of
Bratva
. It was how he made his fortune and how he was able to invest in his businesses and become such a success. It was together they started taking young children and raising them as either
Bratva
or bartered them for whoring as a way to pay back whatever debts you owed them,” Maxim takes a breath and scrubs his face with his hands in frustration. This was his family that began all of this, abusing these children and taking them from their parents and he never knew.