Hunted By The Bratva Beast: A Bratva Stalker/Captive Romance, Jagger Cole [good books to read for 12 year olds .txt] 📗

“Is it confusing for you, Fiona?” I snap furiously. “Is that why you’ve married my brother?”

Her lips thin. “Nina, come on, that’s not—”

“That is exactly what this is!” I glare at my brother. “I’m sorry, but how is this different? You took her,” I nod at Fiona. “In case you’ve forgotten that little meet-cute of yours.”

“Nina, you’re under a lot of—”

“I’m fine,” I snap. “And I don’t need to be lectured or treated like a child. Vik, you took Fiona. I understand you two are amazing and soul mates and all that happy shit. But it started with you taking her. Kostya didn’t even do that, he pulled me away from danger. He saved me, Viktor. From Dimitri, the other man you probably found at the warehouse.”

Viktor’s mouth thins.

“Is Dimitri…”

“Dead,” he growls. “Very, very dead.”

“Good.”

He looks away, then back at me. “There were pictures of you, at Kostya’s place, Nina. Maps of your route to work, the key codes to your building’s front door. And then there was a bunch of shit about all of us—me, Fiona, Lev, Zoey, Nikolai.” He brow furrows. “He had everything on us, Nina. I mean it was like a one-man FBI surveillance room in there.”

“He…” I trial off. I know I’m trying to find a way to gloss over Kostya’s original interest in my family—in wanting to hurt them, before he understood the truth. But I don’t know how to word that.

“There were diagrams that I understand, Nina. They were kill zone maps. He had places marked near all of our homes that are perfect sniper spots. He had the rifle, the scope, the—” Viktor snarls. “He was at that rooftop party, wasn’t he?”

I look away. Fiona sucks in a breath of air.

“Nina?”

“Yes,” I whisper. I turn back to them. “He was. But it’s… it’s complicated.”

“Un-complicate it, Nina,” Viktor growls. “Because I’m very, very close to going down to the room where he’s being worked on right now and putting a fucking bullet in his head.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “You do that, and you will never see me again.”

His mouth thins, and we stare at each other. He finally takes a breath. “Please, Nina. Make me understand.”

I nod slowly. “The shooting wasn’t him. Neither was the car crash, or the hospital shootout. That was Dimitri, trying to finish what Kostya wouldn’t do.”

“Which was?”

I bite my lip. “Kill you. All of us, actually.”

Fiona’s hand flies to her mouth. My brother grimaces. “You’re not making this much better, Nina,” he hisses quietly.

“It’s hard to explain, Viktor. Fyodor Kuznetsov was like an abusive father to him. Him breaking out of prison in Russia was for vengeance, even though the man Nikolai killed spent most of his time abusing, gaslighting, and using Kostya.”

“And yet he decided to break out of a fucking inescapable prison, come here, and kill us for it?!” Viktor snaps.

“You’re the one talking about Stockholm Syndrome, Vik,” I retort. “That’s kind of what it is when you live like that. That man was awful to Kostya. He made him what he is or was. But Fyodor was still the only family Kostya ever knew.”

I look down at my hands. “Vik, I know you had it beyond rough growing up. But when you’ve got someone who’s supposed to be family…”

“Bogdan,” he growls quietly.

I nod. “Yeah.” I look up at him. “Look, I had you, at the end of the day. After everything, I got to find a family. Kostya didn’t. He had Fyodor, and then he had prison. So, when he heard about Fyodor…”

Viktor hangs his head and shakes it. “Nina, it’s just… it’s a lot. There’s a lot weighing against him.”

“Viktor, he saved me.”

“Nina—”

Tears well in my eyes. “I don’t just mean the last few days, Viktor,” I whisper. “In Moscow, when Bodgan…” I choke. Fiona takes my hand and squeezes. Viktor put his on my shoulder.

“Nina, you don’t have to—”

“That was Kostya.”

The room goes silent.

“What?” Viktor breathes.

“The man—the stranger from that day…” I look up at my brother. He’s heard this story, of course. So has Fiona. But they’re about to get the missing piece of the puzzle, like I just got.

“It was him, Vik. The day he was going to prison for that robbery. He ran, he came to our apartment block, and he freed me from the monster I lived with. That’s the man I hugged when the police were going to shoot him. He went to prison instead, for the last ten years.”

Viktor stares at me. “Kostya—”

“He saved me, Viktor. He’s saved me again and again, and I—I—”

I look down.

“Nina—”

“I love him, Vik,” I whisper. I look up. My brother’s face is grim.

“It’s not fucking Stockholm Syndrome. It’s that I get him, and he gets me, on levels that most people won’t understand. You might not understand, but I need you to at least understand that it makes sense to me, in a way nothing ever has before.”

He looks away, taking a deep breath.

“I love him, Viktor. And sometimes, how you got there—”

“Nina, come on, he—”

“Hey Viktor,” Fiona takes his hand in hers. She pulls him around to look at her. “Tell me that doesn’t sound familiar?”

He frowns. But I see the corners of his mouth turn up. He glances at me. “I don’t like it.”

“I know.” I swallow. “Is he…” I take a breath. “Is he going to live?”

My brother looks down. He takes my hand in his. “I don’t know, Nina. But I will promise you this. If he does…”

“You won’t kill him?”

“I’ll at least hear him out before I do,” he grunts.

I smile and squeeze his hand. “Thank you.”

“Only because he saved you, though.”

I nod as I sink back into the sheets. I feel weak, and tired.

“Rest, baby sister,” Viktor says gently. “Rest for now.”

19

Kostya

For a while, all I know is darkness and pain. Then, slowly, I see light. At first, I think it means I’m dead—entering the light of wherever the next place may be.

But then