Page 5 of Paved in Hate

“Sorry, man. Nothing personal,” I say before shooting him in the head.

“Well that fucking sucks,” Lev says, giving me an annoyed look. “I didn’t get to kill anyone.”

“Sorry. You can kick him if it’ll make you feel any better.”

“Fucker,” he mutters, but I can tell he’s thinking about it.

After a few seconds, he shakes his head. “It’s no fun when they’re already dead.”

“Come on,” I tell him, putting my gun away and smacking his arm. “I’ll let you beat me in the racing game. That’ll cheer you up.”

“You’re such an asshole,” he says, but I can tell he’s trying not to laugh.

We leave the bodies in the alley, knowing they’ll be found at some point, but without the CCTV footage and no witnesses, it’ll be decided that it was a rival Bratva trying to encroach on Safronov territory, not exactly a rare occurrence.

We spent the rest of the night with Alina. It was a fun night, one of the last we all shared together as a family. After Alina was taken, it was like someone had come in and ripped out our hearts. We hadn’t had much to begin with, but without her the darkness we carried around just kept growing.

It’s nearly destroyed all of us, but we vowed to find her and bring her home, and now we’re closer than ever.

The Lebedev Bratva is going to pay for what they’ve taken from us. We’re going to bring Alina home, and we’re going to kill every motherfucker who dared to touch what belongs to us.

Brothers in blood, in life, and in death.

I’ll bleed for my family and die for them. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep them safe, because family is everything, and no one fucks with ours and lives.

Chapter1

Katya

The flight from Berlin is another awkward Lebedev family flight from hell. The private jet that my brothers own will never be big enough to accommodate our dysfunctional mess. Osip is already waiting for us at whatever mansion he’s decided to buy, so at least that’s one brother I haven’t had to worry about. My older brother, Konstantin, has more than made up for his absence, though. He’s been in a foul mood since we left, and we’re all giving him as wide of a berth as we can while also being stuck on the same goddamn plane.

Our parents were murdered by a rival Bratva when I was ten, and my brothers have raised me ever since. They left most of my care to a hired staff, but I learned very quickly that the best thing I could do was remain as invisible as possible. The less Konstantin and Osip see me, the better.

I sink further into the leather chair and watch Oksana stumble to the bathroom. After five years of marriage, Konstantin’s wife is still having trouble adapting to her new life. I have no doubt she’s snorted enough coke to keep her as high as the plane we’re in, and, judging by the scowl on Konstantin’s face, he’s aware of it and minutes away from losing his temper.

I glance over at Simeon, the man who’s been my personal bodyguard since I hit puberty and Konstantin decided I needed to be put in a virginity box. Simeon barely meets my eyes, but even when he does, I can tell he’s looking through me, not at me. I know it’s a self-preservation thing, but I still hate it. Six months ago, one of Konstantin’s enforcers made the mistake of smiling at me. He’d had Osip drag him in front of the entire Bratva and had then beaten him to within an inch of his life as a warning. Needless to say, it was the last damn smile I ever got. Most people don’t even know I exist. My brothers have done one hell of a job hiding me, and the people who do know of my existence treat me like I’m invisible.

Maybe I wouldn’t hate it so much if the overprotectiveness came from a place of love, but that’s not what this is about. I’m a commodity. I’m something they can use, and I’m worth less if I’m tarnished. I know the world my brothers live in, and I know what they do for a living, and it scares the living hell out of me, because I know that one day it’s either going to be my ass getting auctioned off or I’m going to be given in marriage to form an alliance. It won’t matter if my future husband is old enough to be my grandpa or if he enjoys raping and murdering women. I’ll be handed off without a second thought, and that will be that. It’s a depressing thought and one that keeps threatening to overwhelm me.

Simeon watches me out of the corner of his eye as I shift in my seat and wrap the blanket tighter around my body. The truth is he isn’t only here to make sure no one touches me. He’s also here to make sure I don’t run away or take matters into my own hands to try and escape my life. I’m not at the point where I would consider taking my own life, but I also haven’t been sold off into a miserable marriage yet either. There’s no denying that Oksana’s method of escape does look downright appealing on certain days. I’m not so sure the punishment Konstantin would give me when he found out about it would be worth it, though. Looking at my brother’s tense jaw and clenched fist, I’m guessing no.

When he gets up and storms to the back of the plane, I pretend I don’t know where he’s going or what he’s about to do. Surviving the Lebedev family means making yourself blind to certain things. The fact that my brother keeps a woman as a pet is most definitely one of those things. She’s not the first one he’s had, and I doubt she’ll be the last.

There was a time when I didn’t know about the evil that lives in my brothers, but that all shattered when I was twelve and I found a woman chained to our dining room table. She was naked, scared to death, and the chain around her neck had kept her just out of reach of a plate of food. I could tell she was starving and scared and hurting, so the first thing I did was scoot the plate of food closer and then run and get a blanket for her.

I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but I knew my brothers would be furious when they saw what someone had done to this woman, so as soon as I covered her in a blanket, I ran to Konstantin. I told him about the woman and how I’d helped her but that I needed his help to unchain her. He’d calmly listened to me and then taken my hand so we could walk back to the dining room together. As soon as we walked into the room, the woman took one look at my brother and scrambled as far away as her chain would allow. Her naked, dirty body and the rough chain that held her looked so at odds with our formal dining room, and the way she was acting had warning bells ringing in my ears.

Konstantin had hooked a finger under my chin and tilted my face up to his. Cold blue eyes stared down at me as he explained that the woman belonged to him, and that because I’d been bad and tried to help her, he now was being forced to punish her because of me and because of what I’d done. He made me watch as he beat her, and when I tried to close my eyes, he got out his knife and started cutting her. By the time he was done, she was a bloody mess on our cream carpet, and I was no longer the child I once was. He made me kneel by her broken body, watching as she struggled to breathe and begged for death. She lived for another two hours, and I sat with her for each and every one of those minutes, knowing that she died because of me.

When it was over, Konstantin had cupped my face with his bloody hands, smearing my skin with my guilt. “Don’t ever fucking interfere with my business, Katya. She’s dead because of you, and if I ever see you trying to help one of my pets again, I’m going to put the knife in your hands.”

I’d looked up at him, confused and scared and not recognizing the man in front of me as my oldest brother, the one who may be distant but had never been cruel to me. He’d leaned closer and held up the bloody knife.

“I’ll make you kill them,” he’d said. “I don’t care if I have to hold my hand over yours while it happens, but you will be the one with the knife in your hands. Remember that the next time you want to help.”

He’d left me standing there next to the poor dead woman, my face covered in her blood from where he’d touched me, and I’d never been so scared in my life. His warning worked, though. I never tried to help again. The next day I’d walked in for supper and there had been another naked woman chained to the table. The staff my brothers employed to keep our house running walked past like she didn’t exist. I stepped closer, noticing the large red stain that Konstantin had obviously told the maids to leave, and then I’d met his eyes. He’d raised a dark brow at me, daring me to help the woman at his feet. I could hear her crying, even though she was trying so damn hard to not draw attention to herself. It killed a part of me to ignore her completely and go sit down in my usual spot, but I did it to help her. I did it to save her life, and I’ve been ignoring them ever since.

Sometimes I think the part of me that makes me human died with that woman eight years ago, because I’ve felt numb ever since. I wake up every morning and I go through the motions, and one day slips into the next and on and on it goes. I’m not sure how much more I can take, but when I think of an endless future of a life that I don’t feel like I’m living, a life that I’m merely surviving, I feel like I can’t breathe.

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