Page 39 of Bratva Menace

—a fucking asshole, I growled in my head.

I tracked him with my eyes as he checked each of my targets, my anger bubbling inside me, higher and higher, threatening to boil over. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when he was finished. Maybe a good job or, fuck, even a not bad. But my brother gave me none of that. He marched back to me with his “drill sergeant” expression firmly plastered on his face, nodded once, turned, and started walking back up the path we came.

He’s just looking out for you.

I repeated it over and over in my head as I followed him, like the words themselves held the power to quell the raging anger inside me.

They didn’t. Each step I took, my anger grew, and I found it hard to keep it all back. A slight rustle came from behind me. It was barely audible—something that, under normal circumstances, I might not have even heard, but I’d been honing my skills, remaining hyperalert in all situations, thanks to my grandfather’s antics.

A heartbeat later, I felt it. That creepy feeling of someone standing right behind you. In your personal space. Breathing down your fucking neck.

I always thought it was some strange defense mechanism our bodies had to alert us to the possibility of danger. Like it was saying, look out, there’s someone with unclear intentions behind you.

Mine was going ballistic, and I always trusted my instincts.

They guided my body right, and I just missed the thrust of a blade. Another second later, and I would have had a knife firmly lodged in my side. I grabbed my attacker’s wrist, plucked the knife from his hand, swung his arm back to flip him onto the ground, and jammed the knife into his chest in one quick, flawlessly executed move.

Except…nothing happened.

There was no shout of pain. No blood. Just…nothing.

With a frown on my face, I pulled the weapon away to see that it had a retractable blade.

It was fake.

What the fuck? Who tries to kill someone with a retractable—Oh, that motherfucker.

My gaze snapped to Aleksandr in front of me, rage not only burning in my eyes, but in my goddamn soul. “Seriously? Another test?”

He shrugged a shoulder, completely unashamed of his actions. The anger that had been slowly building inside of me for years reached breaking point.

“You know what? Fuck you,” I snarled, getting to my feet, nothing but my rage fueling me.

Aleksandr took a step back at the harshness of my tone.

Sure, I said shit like that all the time. I swore at my siblings. Fought with them. But that time? That time it was different.

And Aleksandr knew it.

“I am sick and tired of you and everyone else treating me like I’m goddamn incompetent. Like I don’t know how to do my fucking job.”

“Lukyan—”

“Oh, don’t fucking ‘Lukyan’ me. Do you have any idea how much it hurts to know you have such little faith in me?”

That impenetrable armor of his cracked. “I do have faith in you—” Aleksandr tried to insist, but my laugh cut him off before he could say anything else. It was one devoid of humor, filled with only derision and sorrow.

“No. You don’t. Let me ask you a question, Aleksandr. And if I’m wrong, I’ll apologize, and we can move on from this like nothing happened.” I crossed my arms over my chest and glared him down. “If Nikolai was the one going to Russia, if he was the one leaving today, would you have pulled this same shit?”

Aleksandr stared at me, his silence speaking volumes, saying everything he was refusing to.

I shook my head. “You know what’s funny? I don’t even need you to answer that because I already know. Nikolai went into the fucking lion’s den six months ago. He went to an undisclosed location, completely unarmed, surrounded by enemies with absolutely no backup….His circumstances were ten times worse than mine, and yet, you didn’t feel the need to ‘test’ his skills, did you?”

When he said nothing, I pushed for the confirmation I so desperately needed.

“For once, Aleksandr—just for once—respect me enough to tell me how you really feel. Tell me the truth.”

His words came out stiff and uncomfortable, as if they’d been pulled from him one agonizing syllable at a time. “No, I didn’t feel the need to test Nikolai.”