Page 82 of Bratva Prisoner
The woman I’m falling for thinks I’m just another controlling bastard who can’t tell the difference between protection and possession. She probably spent last night planning her escape route, figuring out how to get as far away from me as possible. The thought makes me want to put my fist through the nearest wall.
I pour another three fingers of whiskey and consider calling her, but what would I say? That I’m sorry for proving every fear she had about dangerous men? That I understand why she can’t trust me when I’ve shown her exactly how quickly I can turn into the kind of person she’s spent her life running from?
But then the front door slams so hard the sound reverberates through the entire house like a gunshot, and I sit up straight. Footsteps pound across the foyer, followed by Harrison’s voice calling for help.
I vault from my chair and sprint toward the commotion, taking the stairs three at a time. What I find in the main hallway stops my heart cold.
Diane is standing in the center of the living room, swaying on her feet like she might collapse at any moment. Blood streaks her face and arms, her clothes are torn, and her eyes hold the kind of terror that comes from staring death in the face and somehow surviving.
“Diane?” I reach her just as her knees buckle and catch her before she hits the ground. “What happened? Who did this to you?”
“They took her,” she gasps, clinging to my shirt. “Maksim, they took Alyssa.”
The words punch through my chest like a bullet. “Who took her?”
“Some man named Troy. He… He had me tied up in some warehouse, using me as bait to get her to come.” Tears stream down her face as she struggles to get the words out between ragged breaths.
“Start from the beginning,” I command, though every instinct screams at me to grab my weapons and start hunting. “Tell me everything.”
Harrison appears with a first aid kit and begins tending to the cuts on Diane’s arms while she explains how Troy grabbed her outside her studio last night. How he used her as leverage to force Alyssa into some twisted reunion, and Alyssa agreed to go back to him in exchange for Diane’s freedom.
The timeline makes bile rise in my throat. While I was drinking myself into a stupor and wallowing in self-pity, Alyssa was making the most difficult decision of her life.
“She saved my life,” Diane whispers, and her voice breaks on the last word. “She sacrificed herself to protect me, and I couldn’t stop her.”
“You said Troy grabbed you last night? When exactly?” The details matter now; every timeline could be crucial for tracking them down.
“Around eight o’clock. I was leaving the studio late, working on a new piece for the gallery show next month. He was waiting in the parking lot.” Diane shudders at the memory. “I thought he was just some random mugger at first, but thenhe said your name. Said he knew exactly who I was and what I meant to your family.”
“What else did he say?”
“That Alyssa belonged to him and that she’d made a mistake thinking she could build a life with someone else. He talked about her like she was property.” Fresh tears spill down Diane’s cheeks. “Not like someone he loved, but like something he owned.”
Rage builds in my chest like a wildfire, consuming everything rational in its path. Troy has taken the woman I love, threatened my family, and turned Alyssa’s compassion into a weapon against her. The bastard signed his own death warrant the moment he laid hands on someone under my protection.
“Where?” I grind out between clenched teeth.
“I don’t know exactly. Some industrial area near the docks. I was blindfolded most of the way there, and I was in such a hurry to leave that I didn’t really pay much attention to where I was.” Diane grabs my arm and pleads, “Maksim, you have to help her. She was terrified, but she went with him anyway because he threatened to hurt more people if she didn’t.”
The warehouse district. Of course that’s where a coward like Troy would take her; somewhere isolated, somewhere he could control every variable. Somewhere, he could play his sick games without interference.
“She should have come to me,” I snarl, though even as I say it, I understand why she didn’t. After our fight last night, after I proved I could be just as controlling as the man she was running from, she probably thought I’d make everything worse.
And maybe I would have. Maybe she was right to handle this on her own, right to think I couldn’t be trusted with something this delicate.
“Call my brothers,” I tell Harrison. “All of them. Tell them it’s an emergency and they need to get here now.”
“Already done, Sir. They’re en route.”
The guilt eats at me while we wait for my family to arrive. Alyssa was handling threats against people she cared about, and instead of being someone she could turn to for help, I became another source of pressure in her life. The woman who trusted me enough to learn combat techniques, who integrated so beautifully into my world, felt like she had to face this nightmare alone because of my stupidity.
Within thirty minutes, my living room looks like a war council. Aleksei paces near the fireplace while Grigor studies maps of the industrial district on his laptop. Dmitri coordinates with our contacts in the police department, and Akim reviews surveillance footage from traffic cameras. Nikolai tends to Diane’s remaining injuries while she provides every detail she can remember about her captivity.
“The warehouse where they held me was old,” Diane continues, pressing an ice pack to her bruised cheek. “Rusted metal walls, broken windows, smelled like motor oil and decay. There were shipping containers stacked outside, and I could hear water in the distance. Maybe the harbor?”
“That describes half the buildings in the industrial district,” Grigor complains as he highlights potential locations on his screen. “We need more specifics. The Serpents have a dozen warehouses they’ve used for various operations over the years.”
“We’ll hit them all,” Aleksei declares. “Simultaneous raids to prevent them from moving her if they spot us coming.”
