Broken Bride (Belaya Bratva 2)

CHAPTER 1

Jon

I tacked up the photos I had taken earlier and then stood back to admire my masterpiece. Before me was a careful catalog of what I liked to call Naomi’s wall, years in the making. Every movement she’d ever made in the last year was up there. The places she liked to eat. The clubs she frequented. The paths she took day in and day out. When she went to the gym. Where she went to the gym.

Everything.

It turned out that my quiet, submissive Naomi was quite the popular person when it came to places I thought she had given up, places that I had scoured for months after our breakup, only to find her nowhere to be found. She hid from me, kept her distance, and whenever I got too close, I was forced to back off because she threw herself into the wind again.

Every time she did, I would spend months tracking her down. Why she ran, I didn’t know. It did her no good whatsoever.

I always found her and always would.

Scratching my chin, I turned my attention back to the photos on the wall, each cataloged with the date and time I’d taken them. There were tons of photos. Some, I had taken off her social media accounts. Others, I had taken personally. But each picture captured another tiny sliver of my Naomi.

A picture of her with those ass-hugging leggings as she pushed through a brutal workout to accentuate the tantalizingly curvy lines of her body.

Another picture of her entering and exiting her apartment building—carefree smile on her full, kissable lips.

Another picture of her stepping out of her car—skirt riding dangerously high up along her thigh as she did so.

Every photo taken without her realizing that I was there. That I was always there.

Naomi Spencer had lived an exciting life since we were last together, but everything was going to change.

Today, I had found her again. Today, I had gotten so fucking close that at a moment’s notice, she could have been back in my arms where she belonged.

It wasn’t time yet for that, but it was coming. All my careful planning, all the dreams I had—they were about to come true.

Giving the wall a smirk, I sat down at my tiny desk, the window overlooking the parking lot of the studio apartment I rented. It was a shithole, a far cry from the mansion that Naomi currently resided in, but it suited my needs just fine.

Here, nobody would ask questions. Here, nobody could hear us scream. And once Naomi returned to my life, I would give her something better—something that would make her eyes shine with the gratitude she would feel toward me. I would lavish her like I always had and not just with attention.

I knew how she liked the attention.

And besides, the grimy walls and paper-thin walls didn’t bother me that much. I wasn’t in the place all that much to begin with, preferring to spend my time away, either working or tracking Naomi. This place hadn’t been the plan, but it was giving me what I needed right now.

Once my plans fell into place, I would be moving on with Naomi at my side.

I flipped up my laptop and powered it on, staring at the picture that was my background, had been for a long time. It was one of my favorites of us together, back when we were nineteen and invincible. Naomi was smiling for the camera, her arm wrapped around my waist, and I was looking at her, drinking in every inch of her fucking face. We were both wearing green for St. Patrick’s Day and holding beers in our hands that would lead to a wild night of partying.

Our last night together.

Before she ran.

Before that bitch Ilsa Petrova turned what was supposed to be a fucking special gift into a nightmare.

I fought to suppress my rage and focused back on the smiling faces.

That was how we were when things were good. Naomi never disappointed me, never made me question that she didn’t belong to me. From the first moment we met in college, I knew she was the one for me. She had given me a good chase, playing coy and deciding that she wasn’t going to date me for months before I eventually wore her down.

I treated Naomi like a fucking queen once she let me in, doing things for her that I had never done for any other chick in my life. She held me by the fucking balls and left me panting for more, more of her smile, more of her touch.

With her, I felt like my life was complete.

Then, somehow, it had all gone sideways, and I found myself without Naomi in my life. The colors dimmed around me and my life lost meaning. I had lived half my adult life without her, in a dismal black hole that just didn’t feel right to me.

I needed Naomi in my life. She was my other half. She completed me in ways nobody else ever could. And like the photo on my background, I’d be fucking invincible to the world. With her, I could do anything and everything.

I was going to get her back.

My jaw set, I opened a new file folder on my desktop and hooked my phone up to my computer, downloading the photos I took earlier at the dock.

Never in a million years did I expect to have followed her into some shit like this. It was surprising, but not at all unwarranted. I knew who held Naomi, who was keeping her from me.

But I needed to see it for myself.

Gavril Kirilenko. Pakhan to the Belaya Bratva and on everyone’s hit list for years. They all were: Orlov, Marchetti, even cartel leader Guzman had been up on the most wanted splashed all over LA.

That was until both Orlov and Guzman had met an untimely demise, and Marchetti was flapping in the wind somewhere.

Now, only Kirilenko was left, and no one right now could understand what his plan was.

Not that it mattered. I planned on taking him down, and the photos I’d gotten today were one step closer to doing just that. Then Naomi would have no one else to turn to, no one to save her.

Except me.

Clicking through the photos, I stared at the man that stood between Naomi and me. Those photos alone were enough to have the Feds sniffing up his ass for months to come. Knowing Naomi, she wouldn’t want to stick around for the shit storm that was going to happen. Why she was with him, I didn’t know.

But I intended to find out.

Maybe he had taken her from me for a reason, one that I could use to get her to come to my side. A man like Kirilenko didn’t keep women around. I had learned that much from the files I had pulled. He didn’t have any close relatives here in LA, no one that could be used for ransom or a trade.

I was on my own with getting Naomi away from him, but I had a plan.

I always had a fucking plan.