Bratva Beast: A Dark Romance

“That’s the family. Doyle, Morozov, Lionetti, they’re all the same. They take and they break. You can’t get away from it.”

“I know you’re right but that doesn’t make it any easier.”

He tilted my chin up and made me stare into his eyes.

“Don’t take on more than you deserve. You didn’t do that to him. You didn’t get that boy killed. You didn’t drive your father to beat your brother. You didn’t pull the trigger to end that miserable bastard. None of it’s on you.”

I rapidly blinked away the welling tears. “You know just what to say to make a girl feel better.”

“Taking you home, rubbing your feet, and feeding you bacon’s what I’ll do to make you feel better. But you need to hear this first.”

“I still hate this.”

He kissed me savagely. “It’s not on you.”

I kissed him back then let him get me into the truck.

Nobody ever bothered to tell me that before. I took on so much over the years, pulled more and more responsibility inside of me and nobody once ever thought to say none of it was my fault.

And finally, here he was.

Mack, my monster.

It wasn’t my fault. He was right, he had to be right.

It wasn’t my fault.

20

Mack

That night, I treated the girl like a princess. Then I treated her like a toy. And in the morning, I cooked her breakfast, made her coffee, and sat her down on the couch.

“We’ve got to talk about something.”

She nodded, breathing the smell of the coffee deep. I loved the way she did that, like she couldn’t help but savor it. “About what?”

“A lot of stuff. Mostly about this shipment.”

“I’ve been wondering what you were going to do about that.”

I paced around my living room, vibrating with uncontrolled energy. I felt like a little kid again bouncing off the walls and too manic to sit down for ten seconds. Evgeni beat that out of me over the years, but I could feel it sliding back.

The house felt small. Back when I lived alone, it didn’t matter how big it was—but now that I had Fiona staying with me, suddenly I was intensely aware of how shabby everything was. I had money, plenty of money, but I never cared about any of it, never wanted to spend a dime, never wanted to for attachment to things that might not be here one day.

All of this felt temporary to me.

My life was a question mark. It wasn’t the end of a sentence—it was the potential of more, the promise of an answer, but never the answer itself. Every day I woke up wondering if it would be my last free day on this Earth.

Last day alive. Last day out of prison.

So I never bothered filling up my house. I wanted it to be empty, like Evgeni taught me. Attachments were distractions.

Fiona was the biggest attachment yet, and the most delicious distraction I’d ever seen.

I was tumbling and I knew it, rolling down a hill and gaining momentum with each passing moment, and it was much too late to stop. I was an avalanche for her, poised to tumble down over the entire city, prepared to flatten it all if it meant another night with my arms wrapped around her body, my lips on her smooth skin, her incredible, sensual, breathy moans in my ear.

For the first time ever, I wanted paintings on my walls.

“Let’s get out of here. Let’s go sit down somewhere outside.”

She frowned at me. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” I shook out my hands, unable to find an outlet for all this damn energy. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“Okay,” she said, sounding concerned, but she grabbed her sandals and slid them on, then wrapped her hair up into a bun. She had just enough time to dump her coffee into a to-go mug before I shot out of the house and stood out on the sidewalk, practically tearing the pavement up with impatience.

“Easy, Mack. What’s going on?”

“Come on.” I grabbed her wrist and marched off.

I didn’t know how I could explain all this to her. How for so long, I was a dead man, existing only for the pleasure of my Pakhan. Evgeni was my master, my puppeteer, and I was his little doll dancing on strings.

Now, I felt free, and it was overwhelming. The world was open to me—I had money, I had means, I had skills and abilities that few men possessed, and suddenly I could do anything at all and wanted everything.

The choice was overwhelming.

I took her to a small park next to an elementary school. It was barely more than half a block with a few big shade trees, a small paved path, and a few benches scattered around. In the back left corner, a small fountain bubbled, simple but hypnotic, and I grabbed a shade-strewn bench away from the families of children and the dogwalkers and the couples out on dates.