Page 9 of Bratva Stalker Kidnaps His Bride

Danger radiates from Mikhail even when his breathing remains calm and his shoulders remain loose, hands hanging at his sides.

The street noise continues to sound strangely muffled, as though all sound has been pushed behind glass.

One of the men dares to lunge.

Mikhail’s movement nearly goes undetected because of how fast he is.

One second the man is charging forward, and the next moment he’s lying on the ground, gurgling. Mikhail stepped in close, redirected the attack, and drove his fist into the man’s throat. The sound of the attacker is wet and ugly, all broken breath and collapsing cartilage.

The second attacker comes from the side, but Mikhail pivots, catches his wrist, and twists. The snap—a sharp, sickening crack—is audible, slicing through the city noise like glass.

The man screams as Mikhail drives an elbow into the attacker’s sternum with enough force to fold him inward before shoving the body aside like discarded weight.

The third man advances and by then I snap out of my daze, grabbing a discarded bottle lying near the curb, glinting under fractured streetlight.

The fourth man circles wider, his attention split between me and Mikhail. That split focus is enough for me to swing the bottle hard into the side of his head. Glass explodes and he stumblessideways, blood immediately threading down the side of his face in dark rivulets.

Pain jolts through my arm from the impact.

Worth it.

His hand shoots out anyway, catching my wrist in a grip like iron. The force nearly yanks me off balance. I twist sharply, dropping my weight the way my self-defense instructor drilled into muscle memory years ago:attack joints, never fight strength head-on.

I drive my heel into his shin, then his knee.

He curses and loosens his grip but not enough to give. Trying to wrench it off only tightens his hold again.

Then it disappears as Mikhail violently rips him off me.

One moment the man is attached to my wrist, the next he is airborne for a horrifying fraction of a second before crashing into the side of a parked car with a metallic crunch that dents the door inward.

The remaining men retreat first with their bodies, then with their eyes. As their colleagues’ bodies are lying barely alive here and there, the cost-benefit analysis is rewritten in real time.

Whatever they expected tonight, it did not include Mikhail Korovin arriving like an execution order made flesh.

One of them signals to retreat. They peel away with disciplined speed, disappearing into traffic and shadow. That seals the deal for me; these are professionals, not street-level opportunists.

My pulse is still pounding painfully hard, even as adrenaline fades away. The hormone has a peculiar half-life. During threat,the body becomes a machine, only to become nearly useless once the hormone drains away.

My wrist throbs, shoulder burns. A tremor begins in my legs, traveling to my jaw to make my teeth chatter. Mikhail turns toward me, dark eyes taking in my face first, then sweeping downward to my throbbing wrist and burning shoulder.

I follow his gaze to see that the blazer has torn.

Ah. Explains why it burns.

Then my eyes find his, a rage so controlled in them it becomes almost elegant.

I have seen anger before in grieving mothers, corrupt politicians, cartel sources, whistleblowers two breaths away from panic attacks.

What I see in Mikhail is something worse.

Wordlessly, he reaches for my wrist. I pull back instinctively.

His jaw tightens, which somehow feels worse than if he just shouted at me. When he speaks, his voice is low enough to reverberate through my whole body.

“Enough.”

His fingers tighten around my wrist, walking me toward a waiting car. I dig my heels in.