Page 51 of The Bratva’s Monster

I let my body give up the last meal I ate until I’m just heaving air. When it finally stops, I lie down on the floor, my body weak and sore all over.

I’m not going to be able to hide this pregnancy for long if this is what it’s going to be like now. I thought I had some time before I even started showing, but now…

The doorbell rings as my stomach turns again. Shit.

I manage to roll over onto my knees and then get to my feet. The floor under my feet shifts, tilting so that I can’t find my balance. I’m so dizzy, I can barely walk…

I get to the door and open it. It’s Rikki. The moment he sees me, all the blood drains from his face. “Liz?”

The floor tips up sharply and my knees buckle. I’m falling… I’m in Rikki’s arms… and everything goes black.

I open my eyes to the low, buzzing noise of machinery. It’s a repetitive sliding kind of noise in the distance. Back and forth, back and forth…

The world starts to blend in around me and I realize that I’m lying on my couch. My head thuds with my heartbeat, right behind my eyes, and my stomach turns slightly. I sit up and the world wobbles a little around me. This feels more like a hangover than pregnancy.

I wait for a second for the world to stop spinning, then I stand up and walk out of the living room and down the hall, toward the buzzing noise. It’s coming from Gedeon’s office.

I get to the door and see Rikki sitting at his desk, looking at the screen and rubbing his beard thoughtfully. The buzzing noise is coming from somewhere near him, but I can’t tell where.

“What are you doing?”

He looks up at me, his eyes shining like spring leaves. “You’re up. Good. How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay,” I lie. I’m not. I feel like trash. I should probably go to bed. “You’re on Gedeon’s computer?”

He nodded. “I’m printing out these emails that I have to assume you were looking through.”

I blink, glancing around the desk. “There’s a printer in here?”

He nods and waves me forward. I walk around the desk to see one of lower doors of the desk open and a printer sitting on the shelf, spitting out pieces of paper.

A wave of relief washes over me. “Oh, my God,” I said. “Thank goodness. I didn’t know what I was going to do with those emails.” He gives me a quick smile and turns back to the screen. I see he’s gone past the email I was on. I have no idea how far, though.

“You’ve been reading them?” I ask, and he nods.

“Stefan and Gedeon did time in Russia,” he says pensively. “When they were young. Really young. When their parents came to America, they stayed in touch.”

He looks like he has a lot more to say, but he just sits there, rubbing his beard silently. “You never knew about that, did you?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “Gedeon’s parents were killed shortly after they got to New York,” he said. “Some business surrounding his father that bled into his personal life. They had a bakery in Brooklyn. It was a front for the drug running he was doing.” He sighs, his eyebrows knitting together in a frown. “When they died, his grandmother took Gedeon in.”

He scrolls up the screen, looking at some of the previous emails. “It doesn’t say in here what happened to Stefan. Not yet, anyway. But it looks like they’ve been in communication for a long, long time. Years. And no one ever knew about it. I never knew about it.”

“I can’t imagine that he would tell you,” I say. “Stefan’s Irkutsk.”

He doesn’t say anything. He just rubs his beard, looking over the words in front of him.

“What are you thinking?” I ask him.

He sighs. “I’m thinking that this could damn him as much as it could save him… and you.” He side-eyes me as he says that. “The kind of bond you make growing up together, it’s deep. It’s connected a lot of us together in this Bratva. It’s how many of us have bonded as brothers before we were Bratva.”

“What are you saying, exactly? You make it sound like he and Stefan were their own Bratva.”

Rikki nods. “He could have given the Irkutsks every secret we ever had,” he says softly. “He could have destroyed us from the inside out years ago. Yet, I don’t think he ever did. There’s no shop talk in these emails. Not anything that I’ve read so far. They talk about life, their families back in Russia, sports, all kinds of bullshit. There’s nothing in here about my father or me or any of the Bratva.”

I lean against the desk, mostly to hold my balance together. “So, they were just friends.”

“They were brothers,” he corrects me. “In every way that counts in our world.” He leans back in the chair and adds, “It’s conceivable to believe that if Stefan wanted, he could have asked Geddy to spy for him. It doesn’t look like he ever did.”