Page 116 of The Bratva Enforcer and His Virgin Bride

I quickly figure he’s Karl. Something about the familiarity of his face causes my heart to hammer in my chest as I rack my memory. Where have I seen this face before?

“Lukyan,” Karl calls out, his voice echoing off the corrugated iron walls. A smug, sickening grin pulls at his lips. “I knew you would find me. I’ve been waiting for you. But I must admit… I didn’t think you’d be foolish enough to bring her to me yourself.”

Lukyan steps slightly in front of me, his hand settling flat against my chest to push me back. His voice is a low, vibrating growl. “You’re not touching her.”

Karl lets out a dry, mocking laugh. He shifts his weight and turns his cold, predatory gaze directly to me.

My heart starts to hammer violently against my ribs, the sound deafening in my own ears. I stare back at him, and the moment I fully take in his sharp jawline, the specific slant of his brow, and the cruel line of his mouth, recognition isimmediate and undeniable. The blurry, fragmented nightmare I have carried since childhood suddenly resurfaces with terrifying, crystal clarity.

The graying hair at his temples changes nothing. He is the man from the hallway. He is the shadow from the dark. He’s the man who killed my father that fateful night when I was only seven years old.

The realization lands with the force of a physical blow, connecting the past and present in a way that leaves absolutely no room for doubt. The room seems to tilt, the smell of the warehouse fading, replaced by the scent of old wood and the copper tang of fresh blood in my childhood home.

I hold his gaze, refusing to look away, refusing to let him see me tremble. “You’re the one,” I say, my voice steadying as a deep, primal anger takes over. “You’re the one who killed my father.”

I feel Lukyan inch closer to me, his muscles locking, ready to spring, as Karl’s laughter echoes through the rafters.

“How do you know that, little girl?” Karl asks, tilting his head with curiosity.

“I saw you that night,” I growl, taking a half-step out from behind Lukyan so Karl can see the absolute hatred burning in my eyes. “I was with my father. When you knocked on the door, he knew what was coming. He told me to hide. I saw you through a gap. I remember your face, Karl. You stabbed him to death.”

Karl acknowledges my recognition without a single shred of hesitation. There’s no remorse on his face, no shame—only a sickening sense of absolute superiority driven by his own warped ego.

“Ahh, he saved you,” Karl muses aloud, casually resting his hand on the butt of the pistol holstered at his hip. “I would have killed you if I’d found you. Your father was a brilliant man, Sofia, but a terrible businessman. He built the foundation of afinancial system that could have put the world’s wealth at his fingertips. But he had a conscience. He wanted to lock it down, to hide the master code where no one could exploit it. He denied me my rightful share of the access.”

He takes a slow step forward, his eyes gleaming with the memory. Lukyan and his men form a formation around me again.

“Killing him wasn’t an act of impulse, my dear,” Karl says loudly. “It was a calculated decision to remove an obstacle. He wouldn’t give me the code willingly, so I had to eliminate him and wait for the pieces to scatter. And now, look at us. All these years later, his precious little girl has brought the final pieces right back to me.”

Karl pauses, letting out a dark, mocking laugh that makes my skin crawl.

“I underestimated you, Sofia,” he confesses, shaking his head with amusement. “I truly did. I suspected for years that your father had hidden the code in a way I could never access on my own. My experts couldn’t crack his logic. That is why I orchestrated this entire situation with Lukyan.”

My breath hitches as his words settle in.

He planned this.

“By pushing you into the path of the desperate Lukyan,” Karl continues, his grin widening, “I brought you into proximity with someone who actually had the raw power and resources to extract the truth. I knew Lukyan would hunt down your father’s past to protect his own assets. I intended to sit back, let him do the heavy lifting, and benefit on both sides. He finds the books, you solve the puzzle, and I take the prize.”

Lukyan steps fully in front of me, completely eclipsing Karl from my view. The fury vibrating off his massive frame is suffocating.

“Karl,” Lukyan says, his voice dropping into a low, lethal register that promises absolute annihilation. “Bring Ben and the books out right now. That’s the only way you will leave this warehouse alive.”

Karl laughs again, but the amusement vanishes from his face. He takes a sharp step backward, retreating into the shadows behind his mercenaries, his eyes turning freezing cold.

“I don’t think so, Lukyan,” Karl sneers. He lifts a single hand and signals the armed squad surrounding him. “Kill them all. And bring the girl to me alive.”

The mercenaries start toward us, raising their weapons, and just like that, a violent confrontation starts.

The world dissolves into an explosion of noise and violence. The deafening roar of automatic gunfire echoes off the metal walls, so loud it rattles the teeth in my skull. I’m instantly yanked into Lukyan’s side, his massive arm locking around my waist like a steel vice, lifting me practically off my feet as he moves.

Through the thick, rising smoke, all I see is blood and gore.

It’s a meat grinder. Lukyan simply destroys. With his left arm pinning me to his chest, he fires his weapon with his right hand, the muzzle flashes illuminating the horrific theater of the room. I watch, paralyzed, as a man lunges from behind a concrete pillar, only for Lukyan to catch him with a devastating kick to the knee that snaps the bone backward. Before the man can even scream, Lukyan fires two rounds directly into his chest, painting the floor in a spray of deep, visceral crimson.

To my left, one of our guards takes a shotgun blast to the shoulder, his flesh tearing away in a horrific burst of red as he falls, painting the wall behind him. The copper stench of blood fills the air, thick and suffocating, mixing with the acridbite of gunpowder. Brains, bone, and torn tissue litter the damp concrete.

Panic, cold and suffocating, twists my stomach into a knot. A sickening wave of guilt crashes over me, heavier than the fear. I did this. I pressured him. I screamed at him in that hotel room, accusing him of trapping me in a cage, demanding to be brought into the dirt.