Page 96 of Brutal Unionn
“Andwow…” I let the word drag from my lips like smoke, stopping just behind him, my voice dipping lower. “Look at you now.”
His chains shudder with sudden motion, jerking beneath my fingers. A wheezing, guttural sound bubbles up from his throat—a mixture of rage and desperation. It makes the gag twist obscenely in his mouth as he tries to speak through it, biting down as if he could chew his words back into power.
But it’s too late for that.
I lean in closer, my lips inches from the slick, crusted edge of his ear.
“Nikolia would love to see you like this,” I whisper, my tone rich with satisfaction. “I should warn you—we didn’t denounce him like you wanted. That fantasy of yours? Where we cut him out of the bloodline like a cancer?” I chuckle under my breath. “Didn’t happen. Because half or full, he’sstill our brother. And unlike you, he actuallyearnedour loyalty, well after I roughed him up a bit.”
I round the chair and squat in front of him, my fingers curling delicately around the twisted wire securing the gag. His eye meets mine—bloodshot, feral, pleading. He grunts again, more frantic now, trying to communicate something through the wet gag that chokes his breath. Sweat pours down his ruined face, trailing through grime and blood.
I tilt my head, studying him. Then, slowly I wipe the soot off his cheek in calm loving strokes, like I am his endearing daughter, and not the assassin he has raised me to be.
“You want to say something, Papa?” I murmur, voice lilting with mockery. “You alwaysdidlove the sound of your own voice.”
The final twist of wire comes free with a brittle snap. I draw the blood-stained cloth from his mouth, careful not to flinch as it peels away from his split, bloated lips with a sucking sound.
His first gasp is ragged—raw like he’s been breathing through gravel. He coughs, spits blood onto the floor between us, and wheezes a breath that sounds half like a sob, half like a curse. When he finally finds his voice, it scrapes out of his throat like it was dragged over nails.
“N-Nadia…” he rasps.
“You said I was weak,” I continue, cutting him off and stepping behind him as I speak low into his ear. “You said I’d never survive without your name, your guidance, your rules. That I would be no better than my mother, conning men into loving me just so I could betray them. That I’d amount to nothing but a ghost of your shadow.”
I step back into view, crouching in front of him, tilting my head as I study his face. His jaw is slack, his lips cracked and bleeding at the corners. The gauze twisted across his mouth is dark with dried saliva and blood, sagging slightly from hours of muffled moaning. I don’t flinch. I don’t feel pity. Not even a flicker. Just a simmering, precise satisfaction.
“Funny,” I say, voice soft now, almost thoughtful. “Because I’m standing here. And you—” I gesture to his ruined form with a flick of my hand “—you’re not even fit to be a jester, let alone the king of the Bratva.”
I reach down and pick up one of the teeth from the floor, warm and slick between my fingers. I let it dangle in the space between us, holding it where he can see the blood crusted into the enamel. He stares at it like it’s a weapon, or a confession.
“Did it hurt?” I ask, one brow arching, my voice deceptively gentle. “When Sho ripped this out? Or did he punch them out because youneverlearned to shut the fuck up?”
Boris closes his one good eye, jaw quivering. It’s not fear of pain. Not anymore. It’s the realization thatthisis the legacy I’m building—not beneath him, butabovehim. With every breath he takes, I get stronger. And it eats him alive.
I straighten slowly and let the tooth slip from my fingers. It hits the floor with a soft tap, barely a whisper, but in the silence of this room, it sounds like a gunshot.
“You think this makes you strong?” he spits, lips curling back over bloodstained teeth. “You think I lost? You’re just parading around in a dress stitched from my name, Nadia. If I gave the order tomorrow, half the Bratva would still kneel.”
I turn to him slowly, eyes narrowing. He chuckles—or tries to—but it comes out as a wet hack, stringy saliva spilling down his chin.
“You weren’tmeantto lead,” he sneers, voice rising despite the damage. “No man in this world respects a girl playing king. I’d rather give the throne to a bastard... to ahalf-blooded son of a whore... than leave it to my cunt of a daughter who couldn’t even keep her legs closed to be worth something.”
I tilt my head, studying him, calm as ever.
Leaning in until my lips almost graze his ear, I whisper, “I am going to kill you, Papa. Me, your daughter, will be the one to end the Demon of New York, and when I am done I will tell that man upstairs that I love him, and fuck him with your blood still drying on my hands, sounds good to you?”
“When they kill you, Nadi,” he whispers, the words slithering from his battered throat like poison through cracked lips. “When they put your strength to the test, I will be there.”
His chains rattle violently as he thrashes, the sound shrill and desperate like the death cry of a dying animal. His single bloodshot eye glimmers with feral glee. His voice rises, raw with spite.
“When they kill you for being theweak girlyou are, I will be there tospit on your corpse, Nadia. Do you hear me?” His body shudders with the force of his conviction, the words spat through his broken teeth. “I will not die. You cannot kill me!”
My blood is already boiling, but then he gathers whatever foul, sour saliva remains in his mouth and launches it at me—a wet, violent glob of blood-tinged spit that lands across my cheek and jaw.
Silence floods the room. I don’t flinch. I don’t blink. I just stand there—his filth streaked across my skin, warm and stickyand unworthy of wiping away. My chest rises once. Slow and controlled like I am swallowing any emotion I had left, any obligation I had as his daughter, down.
My first strike is a brutal, closed-fist punch to the side of his jaw, the crack of bone echoing through the room. His head snaps to the side, a splatter of blood flying from his mouth. Before his chains can swing back into place, I slam my fist into his gut—deep, fast, and sharp enough to lift his body slightly from its hanging position. He groans—chokes—but I’m already swinging again.
“This is forNikolai!” I scream, my knuckles breaking skin as I drive another punch into his mouth. “For dragging him through your war! For making him clean up your messes with blood on his hands andyourname on his back!”
