Page 142 of Bratva Menace

“The problem is, Rodrick, I don’t fucking care.” I stabbed his other shoulder. His cry of pain mirrored the first, drenched in pain and agony. “Nothing is going to stop me from finding her. No one is going to stand in my way. I will cut every inch of your body if I have to, to get the information I want.” I frowned at the two knives sticking out of him. “You know what, this is a little unsymmetrical. The right is a little further up than the left. Let me fix that.” I yanked out the knife in his right shoulder and rammed it back in a few inches lower.

“Ahhh!”

I nodded. “Better. Sorry, that was really going to irk me. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. I was threatening you.” I reached behind my back and retrieved another knife. I had an almost endless supply on my person at all times because, in my opinion, one could never have too many weapons. “I’ll start with your leg.” I tapped the tip of the blade against his shin. “I’ll take the skin off, inch by agonizing inch, and if you still haven’t talked, I’ll move onto your other leg. Then your arms. Back. Stomach. And then face. It’ll be tough work, keeping you alive the whole time. The human body can only withstand so much pain, so if we have to take breaks in between, so be it. But the end result will be a full-body flailing. Trust me when I say that is something you do not want to experience.”

Rodrick paled so much I feared he would faint before I even made the first slice.

“Whadda say, Rodrick?” I tapped the blade on his shin again. “Are you gonna start talking, or am I gonna start slicing⁠—”

“Melissa Anderson,” he blurted out instantly.

I smiled and patted his cheek twice. “Good man.”

The sound of a wailing baby hit my ears the minute I stepped through the front door. I stayed in the foyer for a moment, taking a deep, calming breath to bury the anger and frustration I felt at another failure. Another dissapointment. At the fact that I still didn’t have Lyla in my arms. I buried it as deep as it could go, refusing to allow that anger near the babies.

In the lounge room was Drea, trying and failing to soothe baby Ivana while Nikolai sat in the armchair, nursing baby Aleksei, holding a bottle to his mouth.

The twins were born about a month after the ordeal in Russia. They were a few weeks early, which had terrified Tatiana. She wanted to keep them in there for as long as possible, but the babies had decided they were ready to enter the world, and made their appearance a few days after Christmas. They’d both been born happy and healthy, much to everyone’s relief.

Aleksei pulled in at a whopping nine and a half pounds with a full head of dark hair and cute, chubby cheeks. Ivana—who I found out was named after Tatiana’s father, Ivan—was roughly eight pounds. She had lighter hair, taking after her mother, and the kid was very particular about who she let hold her.

Drea was, unfortunately, not one of those people—case in point, the screaming newborn in her arms.

I plastered the fake smile on my face—the one that had been my go-to facial expression for the past three fucking months—and walked into the lounge room. “Hey, hey, hey, what’s going on? What are you doing to my niece?” I asked, taking her from Drea.

The crying stopped immediately.

Drea’s mouth dropped open. “Why?” she whined softly, almost stomping her foot in outrage. “I’ve been trying to soothe her for twenty minutes, and you just come in and she stops straight away? That’s not fair!”

I smiled down at Ivana, my heart so full of love and light, giving her my pinky to wrap her little hand around. This smile wasn’t fake. It was the only one that wasn’t. “What can I say? Babies love me,” I said, falling into that easy rocking rhythm you couldn’t help but do whenever you had a baby in your arms.

“Again, I say, no fair. You’d never even met a baby before they were born.”

“I told you I would be the favorite.”

She pointed an accusatory finger at me. “Just you wait. I’m coming for that title.” Then, she smiled lovingly at Ivana. “Goodbye, Princess. Sleep well,” she whispered, rubbing the top of her beanie-covered head in a soft, soothing caress. Her gaze whipped up to me, and she pointed two fingers at her eyes before swiveling them to me in a I’m watching you, it’s on motherfucker kind of gesture before she said a quick goodbye to Nikolai and Aleksei and walked out.

I laughed softly. “She’s salty, isn’t she?”

“Little bit.” Nikolai chuckled, placing the empty bottle down on the side table. He maneuvered Aleksei to his shoulder and began gently patting his back.

He’d fallen into the father role effortlessly, almost as if he’d been born to be a parent. I’d never seen him so happy. The pure love and adoration on his face when he looked at his children was nothing short of heartwarming.

Kinda made me want a little rascal of my own, to be honest.

“Go easy on her. She tried everything to settle Ivana, and you waltz on in and she just falls asleep.”

I looked down, and yep—sure enough, the little one was fast asleep. Grinning, I said, “I can’t help that I’m the favorite.”

“No, but you like it,” Nikolai snickered.

I flashed my teeth in a wide smile. “Yeah, I kinda do.” I sat down on the couch beside him, making myself comfortable. “Where’s the missus?”

“Getting some much needed rest. She was up all hours of the night, breastfeeding the twins.”

Aleksei burped, spitting up on the cloth slung over Nikolai’s shoulder before starting to cry. “Shh, shh, shh, it’s okay, it’s okay,” he soothed, rubbing a hand up and down his back. “How did it go? Did you find her?”

“No.” I sighed, disappointment and anger pounding inside me. I beat it down. I promised myself that I wouldn’t lose my shit near the babies. “She hadn’t been there in weeks. I did manage to get the information on her new identity, though, so that’s a plus.”