Page 8 of Bratva Stalker Kidnaps His Bride

The posture of the man near the stand leans like a jaguar focusing, about to strike its prey.

My feet halt then pivot, immediately breaking out into a run.

The wind drowns out the noise of the city, ears popping because of the sudden motion. People curse as I cut through pedestrian traffic. A shoulder clips mine and someone shouts. My boots slam pavement in sharp rhythm as I angle toward denser foot traffic.

Crowds are unpredictable, which means higher chances of survival.

Footsteps thunder behind me, too many and too close.

Something grabs my sleeve.

I twist violently, driving my elbow backward into soft cartilage. The grip loosens just enough for me to wrench free, but another body cuts across my path, forcing me toward the curb.

They are herding me. Instead of veering away from traffic, I cut directly into it.

A horn screams as I dart between moving cars. Brakes lock and rubber burns against asphalt. I plant both palms against the hood of a stopped sedan and vault sideways, using the vehicle as a barrier.

The one closest to me hesitates.

Good.Half a second matters.

Grabbing the first loose object within reach—a metal café chair abandoned beside a table—I swing it hard into the nearest advancing body. The impact echoes through my arms, jarring bone. He stumbles but does not fall.

Trained and high pain tolerance.

Ducking, pivoting, and changing direction without warning, I force them to constantly recalculate. A man lunges but I drop low and kick hard into the side of his knee. He buckles with a strangled sound. A hand locks around the back of my blazer. Fabric strains.

I toss my weight backward, bone striking bone. His grip loosens with a curse as warm liquid spatters my neck.

Blood.

My lungs burn now, each inhale scraping raw. Adrenaline blurs the glint of headlights in rain-slick asphalt, steam rising from astreet grate, the metallic taste flooding the back of my tongue into a hyperreal dream.

They keep on coming but I am slowing down. I cannot outrun them forever.

I can only delay them. Every second I buy is a second something can change—a witness, or a mistake, or an opening.

Jerking around again, I grab a glass bottle from beside a trash bin and hurl it at the nearest face.

Glass explodes only a small distance from him, knocking the man off his track.

Fuck, I’m gonna die for real, aren’t I?

A large shadow falls across my path. Nothing different about it other than the men behind me slow down. Their sudden halt is unmistakable, as if predators have recognized something higher in the food chain is now present.

My breath catches.

It can’t be—

Mikhail Korovin stands in front of me, motionless in the center of the chaos, his broad frame cutting through the street’s fractured light like something carved from violence itself. His messy dark hair is slightly disordered by the wind, black shirt immaculate beneath his coat, tattoos just visible where ink disappears beneath his collar.

Almost the same bored expression on his face as the first time he rescued me.

His gaze settles on me first, then shifts past to the men behind me. The darkness of his eyes turns completely lethal.

A moment ago, the city had felt wide and chaotic, but now everything narrows around him.

These men know who he is—everyoneknows who he is.