Page 35 of The Bratva's Forced Bride
I shot two men today. The good news: they both deserved it. Fucking rats everywhere, selling tiny bits of information about things they knew nothing about. Their fate was sealed, signed, and stamped, when Yuri brought them into my office thirty minutes after I heard the news of her escape.
The sad part?
Today, I was trigger happy. And there was no stopping anytime soon.
Yuri eyed the bloodied, lifeless men on the floor and looked up at me over the laptop screen, face hardened. “There’s blood on the carpet. And on the wall too.”
I swirled on the leather chair, my gun in one hand, and my phone in the other. I twitched my brow. “So?”
“It irritates you.”
“You’re irritating me.” I glanced at my watch. “Where the fuck is she?”
He lowered his head, his fingers resuming the rapid click-click on the keyboard. “Haven’t found her yet, but I will soon. If the CCTV footage hadn’t been removed, we’d have found her in no time. It’s obvious she had help. What kind of help? I’m not certain. But it was a clean inside job. Skillfully done too. No worries, though. This is our city; she can’t run far. We’ll get her.”
I scoffed. “You haven’t found her yet and you’re talking about the blood smears on the carpet.”
“Blood pool,” he stated. “You’re angry, boss. And I haven’t seen you like this for a long time. Not even when we were dealing with Ruslan.”
Fuck, Ruslan.
I was not just angry; I was furious and livid.
The blood that boiled in my veins went a different way than when she made it boil. Red clouded my vision, flooded my thoughts, and motivated my every action at that moment. My mind was in a dangerous state.
“Yuri, more people will fucking die if I don’t know where she is in the next few hours.”
“Understood.”
He left my office with a serious expression, and I slumped back in my chair with a mischievous grin as I relived the moments of the night with her. The night I had conquered her. She didn’t know it, but I had left a mark on her that would make me unforgettable. No matter how far away she ran, she would never be able to escape me.
You could have called it something like: Obsession, pure lust, fucking insanity. I didn’t care.
Addison Mae was mine, and mine alone.
Chapter 14 - Addison
“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” – Abraham Lincoln.
“Casserole, Lasagna, Italian pasta ...”
I flipped through more pages of the e-cookbook, Danielle Rogers’ The Kitchen Bible, and my grin widened with each flip. It had to be the best cookbook ever written. My fingers hovered over a recipe for beef stew, and as I tried to copy down the steps, I was overcome with nausea that shook my body down to my toes.
I jumped out of bed at lightning speed, stormed through the door, dropped to my knees, retched, and threw up my lunch with all the strength I could muster. Exhausted, I flushed the toilet and pushed myself off the floor.
It was the third time today.
My reflection stared back at me through the clean mirror above the vanity, and I was suddenly grateful that I had insisted on moving out of the roach-infested motel and into this tiny basement apartment. Even though we were technically in hiding, we didn’t have to sleep with insects.
Cold water rushed from the faucet. I splashed some on my face, gargled my mouth and turned off the tap. When I looked up again and stared at my reflection, I saw the question rising in my eyes.
I straightened up, fear suddenly creeping into me and squeezing my lungs until I could barely breathe. My eyes widened and became as big as squash balls as I shook my head.
No.
I rushed out, grabbed my phone from the bed, and opened my Red Day calendar. Checking through the most recent markings, I noticed I was two weeks late. My phone slipped from my hand.
No.