Page 2 of Bound Wings
He killed in front of me.
And he still expected me to be sitting there waiting, arms and legs wide open, when he was done. But I've always been a girl with excellent self-preservation instincts.
There's a twinge in my chest when I catch his expression in the mirror—something confused and wounded—but I choose myself. I keep driving until there are enough miles between us that my hands stop shaking on the wheel.
At the nearest CVS, I park the car and leave it running, lights and all—it definitely has some tracker or some shit. I dig my phone out of my pocket and pull up my sister's location.
Fudge cakes.
It's a six-hour walk from here. Taking a cab is a gamble I can't afford; I have no idea who Slava really is, or who's on his payroll, or how many of them are already looking for a girl in a bloodstained dress.
So, walking in the shadows it is.
I tie my jacket around my waist to conceal the bloodstains as much as I can and stick to the crowded streets—funny how running from one monster makes you grateful for a few hundred strangers around you—and I cross wherever I can to dodgesecurity cameras, ducking my head and keeping my pace even. I have to be smart about this.
It feels like my lungs are being wrung out to even think the wordmonsternext to his name. He never once raised a hand to me. If anything, he loved too hard, too much, like I was something he'd been starving for. I never once suspected this.
But I can't live in his underworld. I won't survive it. I'm not meant for blood and violence and fear.
No. My place is in the light. Even if it means walking there alone, one shaking step at a time.
Chapter Two
Slava
My foot stomps out the cigar I just took the last pull from, eyes locked on the wooden cabin miles below, where I'm parked between the trees.
"Pakhan, are—are those fucking binoculars?" my second-in-command, Ilya, mutters beside me.
"Da," I say, half-minded, too busy watching my woman fight with her sister. They don't seem to like each other much. Every time I watch, they're either screaming at each other or doing that cat-like slapping thing women do. But every night, they sleep next to each other, even though there's another bedroom in the cabin. Must be a sibling thing.
"Should I be worried you've lost your mind, Pakhan?" Ilya asks, lighting another cigarette.
He's the only man alive who can speak to me like that and keep his head attached to his shoulders. He makes good use of the privilege. Well—Nora too. I'd probably find it endearing if she slapped me.
What a bitch of a man I've become.
"Da." I mean to say it with venom, but the sight of my little butterfly slamming a fistful of dirt into her sister's face has me fighting back a laugh instead.
I lost my mind the moment I met her. She abandoned me in the middle of a war zone, left me standing in a parking lot covered in someone else's blood, and still—all I feel looking ather is warmth. Anyone else who pulled a stunt like that would be missing a few limbs by now.
"You're smiling," Ilya says.
"Am I not allowed to smile at my own woman?"
"You don't smile at anyone. I've known you twelve years, Slava. I've seen you smile maybe three times."
"Then this makes three and a half."
He shakes his head. Through the corner of my eye, I watch him straighten, glaring down at something in the yard before he catches himself, clenches his fists, and leans back against the car. The same car we retrieved from the CVS lot after my smart girl, suspecting it was tracked, left it running and walked away.
Truthfully, my girl is far smarter than anyone gives her credit for. She did everything right. Blocked me everywhere. Changed her number, changed her phone, because yes—I had a tracker buried in the old one. Packed a bag, left her apartment behind, and disappeared to her sister's place in the middle of nowhere.
I remember the day I put that tracker in. She'd thanked me for checking out why her phone battery was draining fast, kissed my jaw, and called me her savior. I let her believe that instead of telling her I took advantage of the issue to tap her phone.
I remember another night when she was curled into my side on the couch, tracing the scar above my collarbone with her finger, asking who did it. I told her a car accident. She believed me.
But this isn't an ordinary mafia syndicate she's running from. This is the Bratva. And my men found their future pakhanessa within a few hours.
