Page 35 of Prey of the Bratva

Nico’s gaze didn’t soften. “You’re making it one.”

“I’ll be gone for a few days,” I said. “You two should return to the house. Make sure you secure all other property as well so the Chernykhs don’t attack elsewhere. I don’t think they will come back, though.”

“You have already been gone too long, Kliment,” Jarek replied. “We have been managing operations just fine without you, so you don’t need to go around passing orders for no reason.”

“Let him go,” Nico said quietly. “If that is what he wants.”

Jarek didn’t look convinced, but he stopped. For now. I didn’t wait for anything else and quickly walked out before things got worse. My brothers were already mad at me, Misha was refusing to give me answers, the Chernykhs were hunting me, believing I had kidnapped their sister, and what was I doing?

I was running away from all of it. And I was running straight towards Misha Chernykh.

The very woman who, until a month ago, had been the one person I had wanted to kill.

Chapter 9 - Misha

The door opened before I heard his footsteps.

It was not the sound itself that alerted me, but the shift and the subtle change in the air whenever he entered a room. It was the way the silence inside the safe house tightened by a fraction. I was already awake and aware, watching the hallway when he stepped into the light. A part of me had been worried tonight, as if something was about to go wrong. I had been unable to sleep and unable to shake the thoughts away. The worst part of it all was that Kliment had been late in returning home. I turned around, my gaze falling on him.

And that is when I saw the blood.

It soaked through his shirt at the shoulder first, darker near the seam, spreading unevenly across the fabric. There was more along his side, less obvious but still there if one was looking at him closely. His posture was steady and his expression unchanged, but I saw the slight tension in the way he held himself.

He was injured, and it had clearly been rather recent. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed like a gunshot wound. A graze, perhaps because he did not seem to be in pain. But then someone like Kliment Romanov knew exactly how to hide his pain anyway.

“You’re injured.” The words left my mouth flat, almost irritated, as if he had personally inconvenienced me by getting shot. His gaze flicked to me, assessing as always.

“I’ve been worse,” he said, repeating the line I had used when he had rescued me from the warehouse all those weeks ago. I rolled my eyes at his cheekiness, but that was all the humor I was willing to accept. I did not understand why myheartbeat was accelerating, but seeing him in this position suddenly turned everything gray around me.

“That doesn’t make this acceptable, Kliment.”

I sighed and pushed myself off the couch, ignoring the pull along my side and the dull protest in my foot as I moved towards him. My injuries still hurt, but I was still much better now. The brace limited the damage, but it did not eliminate it entirely. I compensated without thinking and adjusted my weight, keeping my steps controlled. He watched me approach and did not move to stop me or turn me away.

“Care to tell me what happened, or will I have to pry that out of you?” I asked, already reaching for the edge of his shirt.

“A Romanov storage property near the port was hit just a few hours ago. I got the call and rushed to check out the area. I got shot during the fire when I tried to protect one of my men. But the bullet has only grazed my shoulder. I am fine. There is no bone damage.” I tugged at his collar, the blood beginning to appear even worse from up close. I had seen enough wounds in my life to not let this bother me, but for some reason, it did. It almost felt as if seeing him in pain was the reason it made it all the worse for me.

“By who?” I asked, beginning to focus on the logistics instead.

“You already know the answer to that, Misha.”

I paused and sighed at his reply because he was right. I did know. My fingers stilled for half a second before I resumed, pushing the soft fabric aside carefully. The wound at his shoulder came into clearer view. It was a graze exactly as he had said, but it was deep enough to bleed heavily. It was not clean but appeared accidental. I almost wanted to smack him for jumping in front of a moving bullet.

“How stupid are you?” I asked, my annoyance only increasing.

“Why?” he seemed taken aback by the question.

“Who in their right mind jumps in front of a bullet. It could have hit a vital organ,” I lectured.

“If I hadn’t jumped in front of Dominique, he could have been dead. When you see a brother in line of danger, you do everything in your power to protect them. You know this better than I do, Misha, and I know you would have done the same if the roles were reversed.”

My jaw tightened. He was right.

“So it was my brothers, I believe?” I asked quietly, and Kliment nodded.

“They are looking for you everywhere, and when they couldn’t find you, they thought attacking the Romanov property would give them access to me and, in turn, access to you.”

That made me completely still, for just a second.