Page 3 of Bratva Menace

We were soulmates.

And we would be together.

Or die together.

CHAPTER TWO

LUKYAN VOLKOV

Taking a drag from the blunt pressed firmly to my lips, I inhaled deeply, letting the smoke fill my lungs before blowing it out, watching it dance up into the dark sky. Dozens of buildings were in front of me, some even bigger and taller than the one I was staying in.

There were thousands of windows, some dark and quiet, indicating the occupants were most likely asleep. Others lit up, making it very easy to see into their apartments or hotel rooms. Lights danced across the sky from the dozens of other buildings in front of me, the world still wide awake and going strong despite the fact that it was two in the morning.

It was my last night of absolute freedom.

It wasn’t what you might think. I wasn’t going to jail or dying from some sort of illness. I was just moving to Russia to marry some random woman I’d never met.

You know, normal shit.

An arranged marriage was pretty common in our world. It was the easiest way to solidify alliances between organizations. Fuck, even my sister’s marriage was arranged.

I never thought that would be in my future, though. I always envisioned that I’d settle down, marry a woman of my choice who would pop out a couple of kids, and then live the rest of my life with my wife, children, and annoying siblings at my side.

But the world decided something else for me instead.

I had no one to blame but myself. It was all my fault, really. I had offered to take my big brother’s place. He was originally going to marry Anya, the bride my horrid grandfather arranged to be wed into the family in exchange for access to her family’s trade routes.

But then, he’d gone and grown a heart.

Okay, that wasn’t fair. Aleksandr always had a heart. It was just stuck behind an impenetrable wall of grumpiness until a five-foot-nothing cartel queen came a-knocking.

She had bulldozed that wall down with a goddamn sledgehammer. Suddenly, he was all lovey and sappy. Which, yes, I acknowledged was a good thing because he was finally happy. But it also meant there was no way in hell he could marry Anya.

The same went for Nikolai, my other, slightly less grumpy but also still grumpy older brother. He was even more head over heels for his woman than Aleksandr was for his, and that was saying something.

Plus, Tatiana was currently six months pregnant with his twins.

So, yeah, he was out. And if one of us didn’t marry Anya, that horrid grandfather I mentioned earlier was going to kill Illayana, our sister.

It had to be me. Little old me.

I wasn’t complaining. It was just the hand I’d been dealt, and I had no problem adjusting to my circumstances. Life always threw crappy shit at you. How you dealt with that crappy shit was what made a person. Determined if you were going to thrive or just survive.

The cold wind skated over my skin, and despite the goose bumps running down my body, I welcomed it. Welcomed the refreshingness of it.

I leaned forward, bracing my forearms on the railing, and took a deep breath in. Not a lot of people knew it, but I liked the quiet. It was calming. Peaceful. The complete opposite of the chaos in my brain. My life. I felt as though I could finally breathe in moments like that. The dark sky. The cold, icy wind. The spatterings of bright stars in the night.

Tranquil was the word to describe it. And for someone who ran a mile a minute in everyday life, moments like that were hard to come by. Hard to enjoy.

I savored it, basking in that moment and clearing my mind. Clearing all the noise and all the bullshit and just⁠—

A dark chill shot down my spine. I stiffened and straightened to my full height, going from relaxed to hyperalert in an instant.

She’s watching me.

There was a certain feeling you got when someone was watching you. You couldn’t see them, you couldn’t hear them, but there was a part of you that just knew they were there, almost as if they were breathing down the back of your neck.

That was the feeling coursing through my bones.