Page 68 of Vows of Blood
He gets out of the bed in a huff and starts scanning the floor for his underwear. I watch as he finds it and puts them on, then goes to the chair where he laid out his clothes.
“What are you doing?”
“I need some air,” he says. “Don’t follow me.”
I watch helplessly as he gets the rest of his clothes on and leaves without another word. I stare at the door for a long time before I feel the tears start to come again.
Damn him and his stupid loyalist attitude. Fine. If he wants to stay, let him. I wipe the tears as they start streaming down my face.
Fucking let him.
24
ALEXEI
All I can think about when I storm out of the bedroom is how little Isabella understands about this situation. I would think that someone who came from a similar lifestyle would understand that there are rules that just cannot be broken. Leaving the Bratva…leaving the Bratva?
She doesn’t know because she’s never seen what happens to someone who tries to leave. I have. In my life, I’ve seen men beaten to within an inch of their lives. I’ve been party to the torture and murder of would-be absconders. She could not imagine how much blood there is on just my hands from the few who have attempted to leave the brotherhood.
Leaving,trulyleaving, has never been in my plans because it is something that just doesn’t happen. Even now, the plan has always been to wait until things are safe enough for us to return. How could she think that I would ever choose to leave the brotherhood?
I walk outside to the porch and find Dmitri standing guard… or rather, sitting. He’s leaning back on one of the chairs on theporch, rifle at his side and feet up on the railing. At the moment I walk out, he’s just lit a cigarette.
“Everything all right?” he asks me.
I look out at the night stretching beyond the cabin, the black of the trees that surround us against the midnight blue of the sky, telegraphing dawn hours away from now. The moon is full and bright and hanging low, just above the treetops.
“I needed some air,” I tell him. “How are things out here?”
He’s looking at me suspiciously. “Quiet.” Dmitri takes a drag from his cigarette, then adds, “Want to talk about it?”
I don’t, but I can’t just let it fester inside me. “She’s pregnant,” I tell him.
He freezes, cigarette burning between his fingers, eyes trained on me. “What?”
“Isabella. She’s pregnant.”
He sits up, setting his feet on the floor. “That’s great news?—”
“No, it’s not. She wants us to leave. For good.”
His smile fades. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘leave’?”
I sigh as he stands up and approaches me. I look down at the smoking cigarette in his hand. I haven’t had a craving since I decided to quit a couple of months back. But now…
“Got another one of those?”
He nods, reaches into his jacket pocket, and produces a pack, handing it to me. I take out a single cigarette, pop it between my teeth, then lean in as he lights it for me.
I take a drag, letting the smoke fill my lungs and relax my rage. Funny how these things can bring instant calm.
“She wants me to leave the brotherhood,” I tell him. “I think she has some fantasy about the two of us running away together or something.”
Dmitri leans against the porch railing, sitting on it while he regards me. “You make it sound like a bad thing.”
“I can’t leave the Bratva.”
“That’s not what I mean,” he says. “If I got a girl pregnant tomorrow, I would hope that the first thing she would want is to have some romantic fantasy about running away with me. We don’t really attract women who want anything like that. At least, not on purpose.”
