Page 53 of The Bratva's Forced Kidnapped Bride
“Well, I guess all those rumors about you being some computer genius were kind of true,” she said.
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Kind of true?”
She smiled. “You know you’re amazing if you could get all this.”
“Maybe I still like to hear it from my wife,” I said. Her cheeks turned a deep shade of red under the fading bruises, and she looked down, uncharacteristically shy. We stayed another two days in that motel, until I could no longer come up with any more excuses to keep her hidden away, all mine and only mine.
Her bruises were faded, her movements were strong, and she was practically champing at the bit to get revenge.
“Honeymoon’s over, I suppose,” I said as she lay in my arms on the lumpy mattress for the final night. “We can leave first thing in the morning.”
“Was this our honeymoon?” she asked, faking a scowl before curling up and closing her eyes. “I think you can do better.”
“I think you’ll have to wait and see,” I said, falling asleep to the soft sound of her breathing, my new favorite music.
We boarded the plane at first light and were back in Los Angeles by mid-morning. We were all on high alert as we wound our way up into the hills to Julio’s secluded hideaway. The extra days I spent in Mexico with him were useful in getting a handle on when he was home. According to the messages I was able to intercept, I also knew where most of his key men would be.
Despite there only being seven of us, we decided to go big. I was pissed off enough to want to make a real dent in the Collective, and it went without saying that Masha did too. The plan was to split up and hit Julio and his top guys in one blow, hopefully bringing along plenty of underlings at the same time.
Yury, my longtime pilot, would head his team of two guys and lace Julio’s second in command’s home with explosives. One of the guys he brought in was heading to another building where we had fairly good intel that a group of high-level people would be gathered there for a meeting that very morning.
And Masha and I were taking care of Julio. I almost felt sorry for him when we arrived, and Masha reached behind her for a rifle.
“Like we discussed,” I said. “We wait to hear from Yury.”
She nodded. “And then no hesitation.”
We took out one of the perimeter guards and snuck onto the property, hovering below one of the back windows. As soon as I got the text from Yury and the other team saying their bombs had gone off, I gave the sign to Masha. She stood up to cover me as I shattered the window with my gun and sprayed the room with bullets before climbing up and over the sill.
She followed me, nimble as a squirrel, taking out two guards who rushed in at the commotion. We stormed down a hall, aiming our guns into empty rooms until we spotted Julio scrambling to get into a panic room behind a bookshelf. Masha shot him in the leg, and he fell to the ground, squealing like a pig.
As soon as he recognized her, he spewed a stream of curses, which Masha ignored as she disarmed him. As she rolled him onto his back, I noticed he was reaching behind him. In another blink, he had a gun trained on my wife.
As much as I knew she wanted him for herself, I acted on instinct and ended him with a bullet between the eyes. His arm dropped, and the gun clattered against the parquet floor.
“Sorry,” I said. “I know you wanted him.”
She shook her head, pale at the close call. “He’s not going to be a problem anymore, that’s all that matters.”
She was right. With Julio dead, his second in command and a big group of his top-ranking people up in flames, the Collective was going to need a good long time to recover, at least in this area.
We had to deal with a few more armed men, but soon we had the house locked down. Or so I thought. As we were on our way out, more people spilled in, a veritable army. There was no way we could fight our way out past all of them, but I was damn well going to try. As soon as I raised my arm to start shooting, Masha suddenly slapped it out of the way, throwing off my aim so my spray of bullets landed uselessly on a wall.
“Dan?” she asked incredulously.
Damn it. Apparently, the Fokins were also keeping Julio’s properties under surveillance. Her cousin led the pack, in full riot gear, with at least ten men around him, aiming guns at us.At me. One of them ducked around Daniil and grabbed Masha, dragging her behind the row of armed men as if she were in danger from me. She looked a hell of a lot better than she did after I pulled her out of that shack almost a week ago, but the evidence of a beating was still clear on her face. As soon as he noticed, he turned a death glare on me.
“Get the fuck down on the ground,” he shouted.
I didn’t, looking past him at Masha, who appeared stunned, her arm held in a tight grip by some asshole I didn’t recognize. Was she going to fight him, make a stand for me? Tell her cousin to lower his damn weapon from where it was currently aimed at my face? I raised my own gun in a standoff, but I couldn’t even kill any of them. She’d never forgive me.
All I could do was wait for Masha to clear up the confusion. As I tried to catch her eye, there was a sharp blow to the back of my head, then what felt like the weight of a pygmy elephant crashing into my back to bring me to my knees. My face smashed into the floor at the same time I realized I might have been played by Masha one last time.
The pain of that was worse than the next blow to the head, which made everything go dark.
Chapter 39 - Masha
It all happened so fast. I barely stopped Anatoli from filling my cousin Dan with lead because it was clear he didn’t recognize who he was under all the protective gear. For a moment, I was too confused to utter a sound. One of Dan’s men lunged forward to pull me over to their side, and I realized then that they hadn’t seen Anatoli and me working side by side to take out Julio and clear the house of his minions.
