Owned by the Mob Boss: A Dark Mafia Romance (Ivanovich Bratva), Nicole Fox [book recommendations for teens txt] 📗

that Erik must’ve run around the corner, aiming at Fyodor, and Fyodor must’ve fired the shot that hit Rob.

I blink away tears and gun smoke and blood as Rob whimpers like a dying animal. No, not like a dying animal.

He is a dying animal.

“Stay with me,” I whisper. Nothing else matters. I barely wince when a bullet grazes my arm. The pain is far away, somebody else’s problem. I have no idea what’s going on around me. All I know is that Rob’s eyes are getting glassy. He’s fading fast.

“Rob!” I cry, knowing that he’s going to die, knowing that he’s bleeding too much, knowing there’s nothing I can do.

I tear off his heavy hoodie and use it to try and stop the bleeding, but after a few seconds it is sodden and heavy.

“Rob!”

“You—you’re bleeding, sis,” he says in a dreamlike voice. It should be quiet with the air cracking like yapping hyenas, Erik screaming something, Fyodor roaring something else, but I hear him clearly. “Need to … um, fuck … need to … get that … taken care of.” He smiles. “Tell Mom I … I love her, all right? I always did. I know I wasn’t the best …”

The fighting has moved onto another part of the house. The kitchen, it sounds like. And then it moves even deeper, maybe into the garden. I don’t care, not about the blood dripping down my arm, or what Rob tried to do, or any of it.

“You’re not dying!” I hiss. “Do you hear me? You don’t get to do that! Rob, keep your fucking eyes open!”

He mumbles nonsense through lips that don’t want to cooperate with his fading brain anymore.

“I’m getting the first aid kit,” I tell him, tears making everything blurry.

“Don’t … leave … me …”

His voice is like a shadow now. I have to lean down just to make out the words. He clutches onto my hands so weakly; he feels like a little boy scared by a storm. His smile spreads across his face slowly, but it looks like it takes him all the effort he has left.

“You were always the best big sister I ever could have—”

His head slumps and his eyes stare lifelessly at the ceiling, his smile fixed in place.

I shake his shoulders.

“Rob, wake up,” I sob. “Stop screwing around. This isn’t funny. Wake up right fucking now!”

I collapse on top of him, shaking him fiercely, his blood smearing across my belly and then my face as I bring my hands to my cheeks to wipe the tears away. My entire arm is slick now, his blood and mine mixing together.

I have to stare at him for a long, long time just to convince myself that he’s really gone.

Then I get cold, ice-cold, murder-cold.

For the first time since Rob was hit, I look up.

The hallway is a mess, the ornate mirror smashed, shards of glass scattered like reflective rose petals across the floor. The wall is caved in and bullet casings lie everywhere.

As soon as I spot the gun—lying next to Kurill in a pool of crimson—I jump to my feet and run over to it. I grab it and spin around wildly, my head feeling too heavy. Blood loss, I know, and yet I don’t care about bandaging the wound.

Fyodor has to die.

Deeper in the house a bullet goes crack, but then there is silence.

“Camille!” Erik comes pounding down the stairs. He glances at Rob and his face goes tight. “Shit, I am so sorry—your arm! Come here!”

“Where is he?” I snarl, squeezing the gun so hard it digs painfully into my hand.

“He had more men in the house,” Erik says, jogging over to me. “Oleg has them trapped in the library. I have called for a car. It will take you to safety—”

“No!” I hiss. “I’m coming with you. I’m not letting that monster get away with this.”

“This is no place for a woman,” he says, raising his hands as though I am unhinged. Maybe I am. “Any second now it will start again. I cannot have you here—”

“Look at me, Erik.” He freezes and stares back into my eyes, unblinking. My words come out icy cold: “I’m going with you.”

He stares at me for a long moment. It feels like he’s weighing something in his mind. Checking me against what he knows, what he wonders, what he can trust. I don’t know whether I pass or fail his tests, because after a few endless seconds have passed, he says, “Camille, your arm … Just wait here.”

Then he jogs away in the direction of the kitchen.

I try to listen for the sounds of fighting upstairs, but there is nothing.

All I hear is the thump-thump-thump of my heartbeat in my ears and Rob’s voice, whispering. He’s telling me I’m a terrible big sister. He’s telling me that it’s all my fault he’s dead. I press my hands to my ears to try and blot the phantom words, but they go on and on.

The room stinks of death. Like an out of body experience, I watch myself: this student nurse, this Good Samaritan who always sees the best in people. I hate her. She’s naïve and she’s got no clue what the world is really like.

And, like throwing a switch, I let go of that idea of myself, right here, right now.

I promise myself that I’ll never be this stupid again. The time for being a little bright-eyed girl has passed. With my little brother’s dying scent in my nose, with adrenaline pulsing through me like cocaine, it all becomes clear.

Erik returns with a roll of bandages.

I’m barely aware of him binding my arm, too busy grinding my teeth together and picturing Fyodor on his knees, the pistol buried between his eyes. I imagine the moment he dies: eyes widening for a fraction of a second, wondering how it all came to this.

“Now you have to get out of here,” Erik says.

“We’ve been over this.” I shift my arm to feel the stabbing pain.