Page 19 of BRATVA'S Avenging Bride
Her hand is smaller than mine, her fingers cold. She has chipped off most of the glittery silver varnish from her nails. I wrap mine hand around hers and feel something settle in my chest. Something dangerous and permanent.
"If you're taking me up there to kill me," she says, "I'm haunting you. Forever."
"Noted."
We take the elevator to the roof. Private access, keyed to my penthouse. No one comes up here except me.
The door opens into the night.
Wind hits us immediately, cool and sharp, carrying the smell of rain and exhaust and a thousand different lives happening below. The city spreads out in every direction, a constellation of lights and movement and chaos barely contained.
Katherine steps out onto the rooftop and stops. Her head tilts back, eyes on the sky. The moon is half-full tonight, competing with the light pollution but managing to make itself known.Stars are harder to see, too much brightness drowning them out, but a few stubborn ones persist.
"It's beautiful," she whispers.
I'm not looking at the sky. I'm looking at her.
The light wind catches her hair, pulling strands loose from the elastic. The city lights paint her in gold and shadow, all those sharp edges softened by distance and darkness. She looks small up here, fragile against the vastness of it all.
But I know better. I've seen what she's capable of.
"Come here," I say.
She follows me to the edge where I rest against the safety wall. It’s close enough to feel the height, the drop, the reminder that we're suspended between earth and nothing. She stands beside me, arms wrapped around herself.
"Cold?" I ask.
"A little."
I shrug out of my jacket and drape it over her shoulders before she can protest. It swallows her, the sleeves hanging past her hands. She looks like a child playing dress-up in adult clothes.
Except there's nothing childlike about the way she looks at me.
"Thank you," she says quietly.
"You're welcome."
We stand in silence for a moment. Two people sharing space without needing to fill it with words.
Then she says, "Tell me about your brother."
The question catches me off guard. "Why?"
"You mentioned him the other night. Said your father broke his arm." She glances at me. "I want to know."
I consider deflecting. Changing the subject. But she trusted me enough to take my hand, to come up here with me. The least I can do is give her the truth.
"Jakub. Two years younger than me." I push my hands in my pockets and rock onto the balls of my feet. "He was softer than me. Gentler. Wanted to work with animals, not be a soldier in the Bratva."
"And your father didn't approve."
"My father doesn't approve of anything that isn't violence or profit." I sigh, watching my breath curl into the night. "Jakub defended one of the junior men from a beating. My father said he was being weak. That the man deserved it. Broke his arm to teach him a lesson about loyalty."
Katherine's jaw tightens. "Jesus."
"There is no Jesus in the Bratva,zhar-ptitsa. Only blood and obedience." I lift my fingertips to her chin, where there was a bruise when I first brought her here. Now it’s mostly gone. "I held him while my father did it. Didn't say a word. Didn't intervene. That's what we're taught. Family loyalty above everything. Even when it's wrong."
"That's not loyalty. That's fear."
