Page 95 of The Bratva Betrayal

“Watch,” he tells me as his hand slides down from Lena’s jaw, over her throat, then lower, cupping her breast through the thin silk of her dress.

She gasps softly, arching into his touch. Misha’s gaze remains fixed on me, a cruel amusement lighting his eyes.

“You think you’re special, Cady?” He pinches one of Lena’s nipples, making her whimper. “You think your hesitation is noble? It’s just inconvenient.”

He unzips his trousers with one hand, and I begin to move toward the front door until he raises his gun back at me again.

“Watch,” he commands. “You’re going to watch me fuck her.”

I make a face. He’s pathetic and sick.

Lena reaches back to help him.

He pushes up the hem of Lena’s dress, revealing that she’s wearing nothing underneath, and a rough, approving growl leaves his throat.

“Hold onto the counter,” he orders her, his voice rough.

Lena bends forward, bracing her palms on the granite as Misha positions himself behind her, one hand gripping her hip, the other still with a gun pointed at me.

Then, he pushes inside her.

Lena cries out, a sharp and pleased sound, but Misha’s eyes never leave mine.

“This,” Misha says, as he starts moving, slow and deep at first, each thrust rocking her forward. “Is what a woman who doesn’t make things difficult looks like.”

He keeps his eyes on me the entire time.

That’s been the point ever since he walked through my door with her on his arm and liquor on his breath, furious that the one thing he’s decided he wants won’t fall into place. Every woman in that club wanted him. Every woman wants him except the one who he’s decided matters, and that’s been eating at him all night.

He wants me to break.

To flinch, to cry, to beg him to stop, to say “yes” just to make it end. He wants proof that I’m affected, that he has power, that the rejection I’ve handed him tonight means nothing because “Look! Look at what I can do! Look at what you’re refusing!”

So I stand in my kitchen, and I look directly at him, and I feel nothing except the quiet certainty that I’ve felt since the storage closet, since the car ride home, since I stood at this same counter and understood what I am to Misha Makarov and what he is to me.

He’s nothing, and he knows it. That’s why he’s doing this.

“You could have this,” he says. “A ring. A name. A life where you want for nothing. Or you can have nothing and watch someone else take what could’ve been yours.”

His free hand slides up Lena’s spine and into her hair, and he fists it. He yanks her head back, arching her body so his thrusts hit deeper.

She moans, her eyes fluttering shut as she pants like a bitch in heat.

Then Misha looks at me, really looks, and his expression hardens.

“You still think you have a choice?” he snarls, and in one brutal motion, he releases Lena’s hair and swings his open hand at me.

The impact snaps my head to the side, and the kitchen goes white at the edges. A sharp ringing settles into my left ear, and there’s a metallic bloom of blood where my teeth cut the inside of my cheek. I catch myself on the edge of the counter and regain my breath.

Then I straighten slowly and look at him.

He’s still watching me, chest heaving, the brunette a dazed and forgotten detail behind him now.

His expression has moved from violent to smug. He finally got the reaction he wanted.

“Look at her,” Misha taunts, still pounding into Lena, who’s watching me with a dazed, perverse thrill. “Look at what you’re making me do, baby.”

Misha is a dead man.