Hunted By The Bratva Beast: A Bratva Stalker/Captive Romance - Jagger Cole (the ebook reader .TXT) 📗

aimlessly, but when they suddenly land on me, she pauses, startled.

Fifty feet apart, across thin air, and we’re total strangers. But slowly, her lips curl into a small, hidden smile. She waves. Before I know it, I’m waving back, and I’m smiling. It might be the first one I’ve had in years.

“Kostya!” Fyodor roars. I frown and glance back to the door. I turn back, but the girl is gone, her shades drawn closed. I smile again, waving at no one.

“Kostya!”

I grunt and head back into the living area.

“Da?”

“I need you to go out and get more beer,” Fyodor grunts from the couch where he’s watching soccer.

I’m physically exhausted. I’m drained from fighting and killing my way through fifteen men for a couple thousand bucks. I’m still bleeding. But Fyodor turns, and he smiles at me.

“Hey and pick up some good food for dinner. Pizza maybe?” He grins. “You earned it, my boy.” He tosses me a wad of cash with a wink.

I smile. “Da, Fyodor.”

“That’s my boy.”

Present:

She looks so beautiful when she sleeps.

Being near her again is… thrilling. It makes my heart surge with need for her. It makes other parts of me yearn and ache for her too, if I’m being honest. I groan as my eyes slide over her sleeping form.

There’s a war inside my head. A battle being raged between the man in me that wants to protect her, and the beast in me that wants to pull these hospital covers off of her and savage her right here. That’s the part of me that wants to wake her with her legs around my waist while my thick cock pushes into her tight little cunt.

To have her wake up moaning my name as my tongue delves deep into her sweetness.

I growl quietly, catching myself before the monster in me completely takes over. It’s a battle—and a constant one at that. I want to cradle her like a delicate flower. But I also want to fuck her like an animal. I suck in a breath, stepping back from her.

The plan has all gone wrong. But that’s the story of my life, isn’t it? Part of me still wants to take her, and bring her someplace I can watch over her, forever. But I begrudgingly know she’s safest here.

I managed to sneak into her hospital room past the small army of guards and cops her brother has patrolling this floor. But that’s only because I climbed up seven stories on the outside of the building, and then over two wings to slip into her window. And when I leave here, I’ll add myself to the list of those watching her, protecting her.

My phone buzzes quietly in my pocket. I let my eyes slide over Nina once more before I climb out the window. I swing my weight over to the room above and next to hers. It’s unoccupied and it has a small window ledge for me to perch on as I answer the call.

“What have you found?”

Erik pauses for a moment.

“I said, what have you—”

“No, I heard you. But that’s not why I’m calling.”

I scowl. I’ve given Erik some of the firearms I recovered from the shootout, where those animals tried to hurt her, and take her from me. They thought they’d have easy prey. But they weren’t accounting for me, shadowing her. As I’d been shadowing her all night. I think of the soft, spineless little pussy of a man I spooked with a single look and single sentence: “keep away from her.”

He was no threat. At least, not in the same way the men who came for her later were. But I’ll not suffer a single jackal to be circling her, sniffing her, looking for a weakness. I’ve survived as long as I have, especially through prison, by being able to read the devil in people. There are criminals, and then there are evil people who commit evil things because it is in their nature. Prison taught me to spot the difference.

Her “date”—this soft, spineless man—wasn’t evil. I don’t believe he intended to hurt her, or even to manipulate her as some men are inclined to do when it comes to beautiful innocence like Nina. But just the same: he had to go. He had to be told to stay back from what was not his.

Because she’s mine.

The men with the guns who ran her off the road though, were another story. Some had Bratva ink, some did not. All of them had the look of hired guns, though. On the surface, what happened tonight was made to look like a Bratva hit. But the pieces don’t add up. The players are all wrong. That’s where Erik comes in, though—to figure out based on the guns and the pictures of the tattoos I left with him who’s after my angel.

“Then why are you calling.”

Erik clears his throat. He’s nervous, even if he’s a brave man.

“We’re done, buddy.”

I frown. “Excuse me?”

“Listen man, I don’t ask questions, I don’t pick teams, I don’t choose sides, and I don’t play politics. But whatever shit you’re up to? I can’t be part of it.”

My jaw grinds. “I thought we had an arrangement.”

“We did.”

“I pay you, you deliver me information—”

“Yeah, and this ain’t Moscow, comrade. Chicago’s a small town, and I’ve been hearing all about you from a whole bunch of people. Money or not, if word gets out that I’ve been helping you take whole crews out, that’s bad for me.”

I frown. “What are you talking about? The Nazi motherfuckers?”

“Wyatt’s crew? The gun dealers? No, man, fuck those Fascist fucks.”

I growl. “Then I fail to see how we have a problem.”

“I’m not talking about beating up Nazis, brother. I’m talking about all the other crews you’ve been taking down and knocking over for cash and weapons.”

My brow knits. “Excuse me?” I have no idea what he’s talking about. The only “crew” I’ve taken out is the little swastika fuckers who sold the tripod guns. And the men