Page 12 of Trapped By the Bratva

She shrugged. “I mean it. You’ve had how many come through here in the last two weeks? It’s like a revolving door.”

“I don’t need your input,” I snapped.

Ivan swatted the back of my head. “Watch your attitude.”

He didn’t addwith her. He didn’t let anyone talk crap to his woman.

“I’m not offering input,” Becca argued. “I think I know someone we could call.”

I groaned as I sat on my bed. “No. Please no. I don’t want another stranger hovering over me and trying to tell me what to do.”

“You need help,” Alek said. “And I’m not saying that to mean you’re helpless.”

I reclined on the bed. As soon as I did, Emily wiggled to be let down and toddled over and crawled up next to me.

I watched her rub her hand up and down my arm.

“Boo-boo.”

“Yeah, I got a lot of them, huh?” I let her check me over then faced the three of them at the door. “I don’t want to be a burden. Don’t waste time looking for a nurse who won’t last.”

“You’re not a burden,” they said in tired unison.

“And I don’t want to be slowed down,” I added.

Ivan smirked. “Slowed down? Falling on your ass and being unable to get up is a hell of a way to be slowed down whether you like it or not.”

Becca nodded. “Yeah, I’ve got an idea.” She smiled at Emily snuggling against me. “I know someone who could help. Someone who’s exactly what you need.”

I grunted.Oh, really?

All I needed was the chance to seek revenge. At this rate, it was all that motivated me to want to live.

5

HANNAH

It was all gone. Vanished. Stolen.

No matter how many times I checked back on my balance, it remained low. Startlingly low. Almost empty. The zeros that I’d been so excited to see building in the balance now showed after the decimal point instead of in the several spots before it.

“I can’t believe it,” I repeated to myself as I walked out of the hospital after my shift’s end.

Head down, eyes glued to my phone, I exited my workplace with a haze of anger fueling my every tired step.

It was all gone, and every time I uttered those works of pure shock, I wanted my screen to show me something different. I wanted to believe my eyes were playing tricks on me.

But they weren’t.

The bank account that I started separate from the one I used as a checking account for the purpose of paying rent and bills was gone.

Practically depleted.

I glowered as I swiped my thumb to the call log, showing all the times I'd tried to file the withdrawals as fraud.

No one helped me there. Because Melissa had been cunningly sneaky about it. She’d taken out the money each week, changing up the amounts so it wouldn’t be flagged. She’d also gone onto my account settings and changed the account notifications to go to her email instead of mine.

All while I was sleeping.

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