Page 2 of Obsessed Bratva King

I haul myself upright, climbing off the dumpster into a stinking alley.

The bitter wind slashes my face, knifing through my dress. Thin satin, useless. My arms are bare, my legs trembling with every desperate step, but I don’t stop—not with Darren yelling abuse as he tries to force his way out the bathroom window.

My lungs burn as I run, my ribs screaming with each breath.

All too soon, I hear voices yelling behind me.

“Find that bitch!”

“Don’t kill her, she’s no good to us dead.”

“I’ll break her fucking legs for her, see how well she runs after that.”

That pig snort again. “She can still fuck with broken legs, right?”

My fingers are stiff from the cold, but I clutch the strap of the bag, refusing to let it fall. This money is my way out. My shot at freedom.

I veer off the main street. Up ahead, a wreck of a building looms black against the Chicago night sky.

Charred ceiling joists stab at the sky. A burned-out husk of something old and forgotten, police tape fluttering uselessly in the wind.

Perfect.

I throw myself inside.

Darkness swallows me whole.

For a moment, all I hear is my own breath, ragged and gasping, the wild hammering of my pulse. My body hums with adrenaline, every muscle locked tight.

I press my back against the wall, forcing my breath to slow.

The building is dead. A skeletal ruin, blackened beams clawing at the ceiling, walls caved inward, burned to their bones. It smells of old fire and damp rot. Scum covered puddles guide me deeper in.

I step forward carefully, breathing in the throat-coating scum of ash. A pile of books, charred and ruined. I pick one up. Psalms.

A church, maybe? Or what’s left of one.

The silence and the acrid tang of burnt wood…

It’s too much like before.

A memory slams into me so fast I stagger.

A different fire. A different building. The same dead silence. The same smells.

I was nine. My parents’ dying screams had long faded by the time I crept through the ruins of what used to be our home. A bakery with apartment above. The fire had eaten everything—walls reduced to skeletons, furniture to soot, their hard work nothing but cinders.

All because they hadn’t paid.

The mob had come, demanding their cut a month after we opened. My father stood firm. My mother shoved them out the door.

I remember stepping over the collapsed beams, peering into what had once been our kitchen, cold ashes shifting under my feet.

No one to save me. No distant relatives. No friends, all too scared of crossing the mob. Just mom and dad, now gone forever.

It didn’t take me long to work out I could only rely on myself. One foster home after another proved it, all wandering hands and not enough food.

So I ran, aged twelve, ended up on the streets. Made my own way in the world as best I could. Been alone ever since. Survived by doing what I had to. Grew up fast. Except not fast enough. Tried to trust again. Fell for Darren’s lies.

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