Page 51 of Sexting the Bratva Beast
I don’t know where I’m going yet, but I can’t stay here.
Outside, I catch a Lyft to the bus station on West Harrison Street.
I stare out of the passenger window without seeing anything, while Yuri Asimov’s voice plays on repeat inside my head.
The Ivanovs killed your parents.
Andrej Ivanov is my enemy.
They’re Bratva, Cartier. You know what that means.
I don’t know what that means. In the movies, the mobs are portrayed as gun-wielding monsters who deliver bloody horse heads as warnings and sleep with a gun underneath their pillow. But in the real world, people don’t just go around killing entire families because their history makes themthe enemy.
I wish more than ever that I could remember my parents. If I knew who they were, I could’ve shut down the man in the café earlier and laughed about the conversation over a coffee with Mika in our comfortable office.
Mika!
She’ll be furious with me for leaving her again, when Gianna has just given birth, and it’s only the two of us. But I hope that she’ll forgive me when I can explain what’s going on.
At the bus station, I check the timetable. The next bus heading south is traveling to Charlotte, North Carolina. I’ve never been there before. It sounds like a nice place though, the kind of place that the Bratva wouldn’t think of looking for their enemy’s daughter.
I hand over cash for my ticket, and wait to board the bus, keeping my head down and avoiding eye contact with the other passengers.
Whenever shiny black shoes enter my peripheral vision, my body tenses, and my breathing grows shallow. But Andrej doesn’t come to find me.
How would he know where to begin looking?
No one knows that I’m here. Mika is still expecting me back at the shelter. And I haven’t spoken to Gianna since my first date with Andrej.
But my legs feel like rubber when I finally board the bus, stow my bag in the overhead rack, and find a seat next to the window.
Part of me wanted Andrej to stop me from leaving the city. My romance-brainwashed mind had subconsciously mapped out the whole begging-me-not-to-leave-him scene before I even packed my bag. I pictured him on one knee, declaring his undying love for me with a dazzling meteor-sized diamond on a gold ring, while simultaneously presenting me with the evidence to prove that Yuri Asimov was a compulsive liar with a split personality.
I don’t even consider what the other part of me wanted. The sane, rational part of me that works in a shelter for abused women, and understands the scars caused by toxic relationships. Andrej might be a lot of things, but he isn’t toxic.
He’s kind, and considerate, and sexy. My pulse races at the vivid memory of him with his face buried between my legs. No one else will ever live up to that image. No one else will ever compare to Andrej Ivanov; what would be the point of looking?
Disappointment settles on my shoulders like bags of cement when the bus fills with people, the door hisses shut, and the driver starts the engine.
The world outside the window blurs through my tears as we hit the road.
Sure, I sensed Andrej’s violent streak the first moment I set eyes on him. The classic bad boy—he even has the scar to prove it. But I know that he would never hurt me. I believed him when he said that he would protect me with his life. The guy from the nightclub has a broken jaw to back up this promise.
Andrej saved a woman from being assaulted for chrissakes.
So, why should I accept the word of a stranger over the man who makes me feel like I deserve the world?
But then, why would Yuri Asimov make up a story like that to destroy Andrej’s family? Unless they’d done something terrible to him.
Round and around, my thoughts keep spinning until I rest my head back against the seat and close my eyes. I allow the hum of the engine, and the muted chatter of the other passengers to wash over me.
If what my ‘uncle’ said was true, why did the Ivanovs kill my parents? What had they done to deserve being murdered? What did I do to deserve being orphaned over a Bratva power struggle, because that’s what these killings were all about, weren’t they? The mobs never learned to get along because they wanted to be the ones on top. Sharing power was never an option, it was all or nothing.
Lulled into a false sense of comfort by the moving vehicle and the rumble of wheels across asphalt, my mind drifts, and I don’t stop it. I want to fall asleep and wake up in Charlotte with all my problems resolved by my psychedelic dreams.
Has Andrej ever killed a person?
Would he tell me if he had killed someone? If we’d carried on seeing each other, got to know each other better, reached that stage where we’re comfortable talking about our past, would he have snuggled up in a blanket in his living room and confessed to being a murderer? And if he did, would it change how I feel about him?
