Page 1 of Bratva Menace

CHAPTER ONE

LYLA

Ilooked through the scope of my sniper rifle, my focus locked on the dark room in the building across from me.

I was lying flat on my stomach on the roof of Vibe Hotel, music blasting in my ears so loudly I couldn’t hear the hustle and bustle of city life happening below me as I agonizingly waited to catch one more glimpse of my love.

My everything.

My Lukyan.

It had been three hours, seventeen minutes, and forty-three seconds since I’d last laid eyes on him, and I had been suffering for every millisecond of it. I’d watched him earlier in the night, modeling in a mock-up fashion show for his sister-in-law, Tatiana.

I’d sat right in the back, shrouded in darkness so he wouldn’t see me, and silently cheered him on while taking a bunch of photos to add to my scrapbook.

He’d done so well! Strutting down that runway as if he owned it, Lukyan even blew a kiss into the crowd, and I knew—I just knew—he’d meant it for me.

It was mine.

He was mine.

Once the show had finished, I stuck to the shadows, watching him from afar as he helped his brother propose to his girlfriend. As he attended an after-party for the fashion show, he mingled throughout the room with an ease that seemed to come naturally to him.

With his long, dark, luscious hair, blue eyes with small, almost unnoticeable flecks of brown in them, and charismatic charm, people flocked to him, mesmerized by his presence and his ability to make them relax with merely a few words.

While I could see he enjoyed it—the attention and making people laugh—there was also something more lying deep beneath the surface that he was trying desperately to hide. Almost a…sadness to his soul.

No one else could see it.

But I could.

I saw the way he crumbled bit by bit whenever his family didn’t believe in him. Saw how much it hurt that they didn’t have faith in him. Didn’t see him and all his potential.

I saw him.

I saw him in a way no one else possibly could have.

It was what made us so perfect for each other.

Lukyan had gone to the after-party with two of his friends from their group—identical twins whose names I didn’t bother to learn because I didn’t care enough to know them.

The twins each had a girl on their arm, and though I had expected Lukyan to do the same, he left the party as the fifth wheel.

It made my heart soar.

Was it because of me?

I liked to think so.

He must have finally started to feel our bond. Our connection. What other reason could there have been for him to leave a party by himself when so many men and women were throwing themselves at him?

We were two pieces of the same puzzle. Two sides of the same coin. And I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he felt it too.

It only made me more sure that the plan I had in place to make him mine was the right one.

I’d only glimpsed Lukyan once since then, when he arrived at his hotel room. He’d gone in and made a beeline straight for the glass sliding door, closing the curtains.

It irked me.