Page 50 of Bratva Sacrifice

“Not anymore,” I tell her, but still she scrubs at her face until it is bright pink. “Stop that,” I chide as I snatch the sponge from her fingers.

“I just want to be clean.”

“You do not need to scrape off your skin for this. You will be clean, Katya, I promise you.” Passively she accepts my help in this, and I am thorough, so she knows no traces of blood linger on her skin. From her face to the soles of her feet, until the water runs clear in the shower. Until there is no evidence left for her to see. “You need to eat dinner,” I tell her as I turn off the water and wrap a fluffy towel around her.

She winces. “I don’t think I can.” From the mess of toiletries strewn across the bathroom counter, she pulls free a hairbrush and drags it through her wet hair. In the mirror she stares at her face as if she expects it still to be streaked with blood.

“Eat anyway.” Her food has been delivered already. I can smell the savory scent of meat as I push open the bathroom door. The cart is beside the bed. Her lobster and scallops. Her caviar and blini. Her Beef Wellington. Even the fucking cheesecake. A whole one, covered in a bright red strawberry sauce.

Katya shivers, her gaze falling away from it. Probably it looks too much like blood. Too much like the mess Ivan’s ruined brain left on my marble floors. She crawls into bed as if she is exhausted. Probably she is. She is coming down from a surge of adrenaline. All the more reason to eat.

I sit at the edge of the bed beside her. The cart is close; the nearest offering is a tin of caviar set atop a bowl of ice. I prepare her blini in the way she likes. “Open.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Alyosha—”

“You need to eat. Open.”

Finally, she fucking listens. She chews. Swallows. “It’s good,” she says begrudgingly.

“Of course, is good. You know anyone who does not like caviar?”

She rolls her eyes. “Don’t be a dick,” she says, but she opens her mouth without prompting when I feed her another bite. Slowly she consumes bits and pieces of her extravagant meal, until at last she pushes my hand away and says, “I’m done. Really.”

She would not touch the cheesecake she asked for. But otherwise—it is enough. For me; for her. “Okay, Katya,” I tell her, and when I shove the cart away and climb into bed beside her, she snuggles up against my chest and settles in to sleep. She nestles beneath my arm like it is capable of protecting her against the whole fucking world.

And for the first time, she has nightmares.

Chapter Twenty Four

Catalina

Two of Alexei’s men follow us at a discreet distance as we walk through the outdoor mall. They’re like bodyguards, I guess, but less obvious. I’m amazed at the swarms of people that surround us, completely oblivious to the mafia boss in their midst.

Well, maybe not completely oblivious. Alexei is attractive enough to turn heads. More than a few women watch him as we pass. No one is daring enough to approach him, though, because it’s obvious that I’m with him. He makes it obvious, with one arm slung around my waist and his index finger threaded through the belt loop of my jeans.

It’s strange to be out among so many people after weeks spent inside. I feel a little exposed.

“You don’t seem surprised,” he says as he turns at my direction around a corner, and I know he’s referring to the fact that I clearly know exactly where we are. Which is an outdoor mall I’ve been to dozens of times.

“I’m not,” I say. “I already knew we were back in Chicago.” Even though he didn’t bother to tell me, and really, given the isolation of his house, we could have been just about anywhere.

“Oh?”

“All of your TVs get local channels,” I tell him. In addition to the billion and a half others, of course. “I’d have to be an idiot not to have noticed.”

“Ah,” he says, and his thumb strokes my hip just above the waist of my jeans. “So you have some store in mind, then.”

“Of course I do. And you’ll be paying, since I seem to have left my purse back in Minneapolis.”

He chuckles at the scolding tone of my voice, since he knows full well anything I left behind was his fault, not mine. “Okay, Kayta. You want money?”

“I want books. Half of your library is in Russian, which I can’t read. And the other half is—”

“Expensive,” he says. “You cost me probably fifty thousand dollars, handling rare books with your fingers wet from the pool.”

“I was going to say boring. And I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting on an apology.” I risk a glance over my shoulder. Alexei’s men are still there, some paces behind. But they don’t seem particularly interested in me. “And you didn’t have to bring muscle, you know. Are they supposed to catch me if I run?”

“I do not need them to catch you,” he says, and there’s amusement rife in the words.