Midnight Oath (Tasarov Bratva 1)

EMERY

Adrik stands in front of me like an angel. I’m not quite sure which kind, though.

Either a guardian angel…

Or an angel of death.

Pietro has made it clear which camp he falls into. The moment I got his cell door open, he smashed me against the cement wall, stole my knife, and held it to my throat.

“My turn,” he whispered. His rank breath made me gag. “Play nice or I’ll kill you.”

Pietro digs his fingers into my arm now, drawing a whimper out of me.

“I admit, I wasn’t sure this plan would work,” Pietro says. “It hinged on you having some kind of concern for your wife’s life. And as we both know, you have a history of the opposite.”

“Fuck you,” Adrik spits.

“Tsk-tsk.” Pietro smooths a hand down my hip. “You sent a tender piece of flesh down for me. If I hadn’t heard the banging around up here, I would have spent a few minutes showing her how a real man fucks.”

I cringe away from his awful breath and his even more horrid words.

“She’s a little old for your tastes, isn’t she?” Adrik’s voice is shaking with rage. His entire body is like a string stretched too tight. One flick is all it will take to make him snap.

Pietro chuckles. “I’m not picky.”

“Let her go and I’ll kill you,” Adrik says.

“That’s not much of a deal,” Pietro points out.

“That’s because you don’t realize how much worse things will be for you if I keep you alive.” Adrik’s eyes are entirely black. He looks like a man possessed. “You’ll be begging for death by sundown.”

Pietro hums unaffectedly. “Why do you care so much about her? She was in the dungeon, after all. Are you just worried I’ll kill her myself and steal all your fun?”

“I didn’t kill Sofia.”

“Liar!” Pietro roars. Up until this moment, he has sounded surprisingly sane for a man trapped in a dark cell for a decade. But now, he sounds unhinged. A raw, feral beast. “You killed my sister. Admit it! Tell me the truth or I’ll saw open your new wife’s pretty little throat. I’ll do it, I fucking swear I will.”

I swallow. The blade presses painfully on my windpipe. “Sofia was… she was your sister?”

“You know about her?” Pietro asks me. “And you still married him? Perhaps you really are just a stupid whore.”

Adrik doesn’t meet my eyes. He’s staring straight at Pietro, almost as if I don’t exist.

I’m not sure why he isn’t shooting. What does it matter if the bullets hit me? I’m not important to him. I’m a spy. I’m the enemy. I’m property that has outlived its purpose.

“This sick fuck killed my sister,” Pietro continues. “He ran her off the road and left her for dead.”

“And you molested my brother,” Adrik bellows back.

I gasp. “This is… this is Yasha’s trainer?”

There’s so much Adrik didn’t tell me. So much I didn’t understand. All the little jagged pieces are starting to coalesce into a single picture now, though.

And the picture is horrifying.

Adrik’s face is red. Veins in his neck stand out like tension cables. I’ve never seen him so angry, so deadly before.

“You’re lucky you and your entire family didn’t die a worse death for what you did.”

Pietro straightens up. “Is that your admission? Are you finally confessing to killing Sofia because—”

“She drove off the road,” Adrik interrupts. “Sofia died because she was driving too fast and didn’t know how to handle her car. She killed herself with negligence.”

“Because you were chasing her down!”

“Because she needed to know the kind of person her brother was!” Adrik yells back. He takes a step forward. “When I locked you up, Sofia thought I was doing it to punish her for spying on me. For seducing me. She died having no clue what kind of pedophilic, predatory monster her older brother was. If anything, you should thank me for granting her that mercy. She died blissfully ignorant.”

“Even if that is true, you’re telling me you would have let her live after finding out she was a spy?” Pietro asks. “Your Bratva would have ousted you if you’d let that pass.”

“You and your sister both snuck into my house doing the bidding of the Volandri mafia. If I had killed her, it would have been justified. Because that’s the risk she took playing spy.” Adrik shrugs. “But I never wanted this war. Your family brought it on themselves. And anything that comes next, whoever I have to kill to end this feud, it won’t be my fault. The blood is on your hands.”

“How about I get some real blood on my hands?” Pietro seethes. He places a hand on my forehead, pinning my head against his shoulder. The knife bites into my skin.

I think I feel hot blood pouring down my neck, but it might be all in my head. I’m half-crazed with fear and I’m not sure what is real anymore.

“Hurt her and I’ll slaughter every member of your entire family like rabid dogs,” Adrik growls. “I won’t stop until the Volandri line is nothing but a memory. Blood-soaked dust in the wind.”

I don’t even have a moment to be confused about why Adrik is so concerned about me. Because before Pietro can respond, there’s another loud bang and then Adrik jerks back hard.

I’ve never seen that particular motion before—not in real life, at least—but I know what it is as soon as it happens.

That telltale twitch. The spray of blood. The horror in Adrik’s eyes.

He’s been shot.

My world narrows down to the trickle of blood surging down his side. I can hear men approaching behind us, but all I can focus on is Adrik lying on the floor. Not moving. No rise and fall of the chest.

That’s when I start to scream.

Stefan steps out of the shadows to shield Adrik, his eyes rake over the darkness behind me for where the bullet may have come from.

“That’s my cue,” Pietro whispers. Then he hurls me away from him and races towards the front door.

I fall flat on my face on the marble, smashing my already bruised cheek on the floor.

The footsteps are closer now. They pound against the floor, thumping through my body like a second heartbeat.

I roll over onto my back and look up into a sea of unfamiliar faces. All of the men are dressed in black, weapons slung across their torsos. One who looks no older than twenty-five leans down and presses a gun to my forehead.

“Stand up,” he barks.

I had no idea there could be so many villains in one story. First Malcom. Then Adrik. Then Pietro. Now… whoever the hell these men are.

“Why does everyone want to kill me?” I whimper, standing up on shaky legs. “What is happening?”

The man holds me by the arm, the gun pressed to my head, and spins me around to face the Tasarov front line.

I feel a relief that makes no sense when I see Adrik standing up. There is blood blossoming like roses from a wound on his shoulder.

But he’s alive.

His men are forming a line behind him, more and more of them joining the ranks, emerging out of the dust and shadows with violence written across their faces.

This is a war, no doubt about it.

And I’m smack dab in the center.

“Let us leave and we won’t kill you,” the man behind me calls over to Adrik. “We won’t kill her, either.”

Adrik stares back at the ringleader for a while, not saying a word. He gazes at each of the black-clad men clustered around on all sides.

Finally, he looks at me.

His face is paler than it was a moment ago. Blood loss, probably. But his expression is as unreadable as ever.

I stare back at him, and I don’t even know what to say. I don’t know what to ask of him.

Do I want to leave with these men? Do I want Adrik to fight for me? Do I want to end up with him?

And where in the hell is my daughter?

The world as I know it has turned upside down. I’m stuck in a waking nightmare, and I’m not sure there is a way out.

So I say the only thing I know to be true. “I didn’t want any of this to happen, Adrik.”

His eyes burn into mine. I want so badly to know what kind of man lives behind those dark irises.

Is it the man I’ve told myself I’m capable of loving?

Or is it the monster he insists on play-acting every chance he gets?

Each peek behind the curtain over the last days and weeks and months has only made it harder to decipher. I’ve seen him love me. I’ve seen him worship me. I’ve seen him cradle my daughter in her sleep as if disturbing so much as a single hair on her head would be the greatest sin in the history of humanity.

I’ve seen him do horrible things, too. Kill and maim and lash out with unbearable cruelty.

It feels like all that has come to a boil. The storm in his eyes raging, raging, peaking to something final and definitive.

And then he says, “Take me instead.”

My jaw drops. I suddenly forget every word I’ve ever known. All I can do is gawk at him as those dark clouds part and the man I love shines through.

“No!” Stefan yells, drowning out my voice.