Page 1 of Merciless Bratva Soldier

1

VERA

“Don’t come any closer.” The voice is a low growl that lands inside my chest as the sleet hits my face.

I blink, ice crystals already collecting on my eyelashes as the man sitting on the back step of the bakery lifts his head into the security light.

Holy shit.

Something cold and wet slithers down my spine and I stop with the trash bag against my leg. He’s huge. Who looks that big sitting down?

My heart is pounding. I should retreat into the warmth and safety of the back room, lock the door, and call nine-one-one. That would be the sensible thing to do. It’s close to midnight, there’s a fucking giant sitting on the back step, and no one else inside the building to hear me scream if he tries to kill me.

But my feet won’t move. My hair is sticking to my damp face, the trash bag is slippery inside my fist, and my nipples… It’s the cold, I tell myself. Sub-zero temperatures will do that to a gal.

His eyes start at my feet and travel up to my face, and I hold my breath the entire time.

“I won’t hurt you.” His voice is like gravel but my thudding heart latches onto the delicate thread of softness holding it together.

“Spoken like a true serial killer.” The words come out before I can stop them because apparently, all sensibility left the building with the last customer, and I’m running on empty and a death wish.

He shifts as if to give me room, and I swear a small smile curls one side of his mouth upward. Then his jaw tightens, and his hand presses harder against his side.

I track the movement. Blood runs between his fingers, thick and dark, and my heartbeat taps out a different tune.

“You’re hurt.” Shit.

Someone attacked him and left him here to die at the back of Rosa’s Bakery. I don’t even think about how big the other guy must’ve been when my eyes settle on the pool of blood under him.

Above his head, the door reads ROSA’S BAKERY, DELIVERIES. My keys are in my pocket. My phone is in my apron. I could call an ambulance and keep my distance until it arrives; better than coming down in the morning to find a dead giant on the back step. My conscience struggles enough with a dead spider.

Then he tries to straighten, and his hand slips against the wet brick.

I drop the trash bag and reach for him before he can fall.

“Go inside,” he says, the gravelly bits dragging harder.

But my next move is already a done deal. “Too late.” I shake my head. “You’re coming with me.”

Dark eyes lock with mine. “Someone’s coming for me.”

“Someone good?” I mean, right now, a paramedic would be the only reason I’d leave him out here and close the door behind me.

“Good for me.” He draws a careful breath, but his eyes don’t leave mine, and something magnetic in them is keeping me right here beside him. “Fifteen minutes.”

The sleet runs dark beneath his boots and into the drain. There’s too much blood to stand here for fifteen minutes.

“Can you stand?”

“Yes.” But I heard the pause.

He braces his free hand against the brick. His sleeve pulls back, showing black ink around his wrist as he gets his feet beneath him.

And keeps rising.

I have to tip my head back to maintain eye contact. His coat strains across his shoulders. Up close, I can see the dark stubble along his jaw and the pale scar cutting through his left eyebrow.

For a second, I forget what I was going to do while my heartbeat finds a rhythm that better matches the situation and the iron tang in the sharp air.