Hidden Monsters (Volkov Bratva #4)(97)

But as he headed out to his Jeep, Klaus was at his heels.

“What are you going to do about this?” Klaus asked.

Not wanting to acknowledge that he had spoken, Luka kept on, but Klaus wasn’t one to be ignored.

“About Fatos. The Albanian. The one who helped carve me up. Oh, and the motherf*cker who put Alex in a coff—”

He was cut off when Luka turned so fast that Klaus nearly collided with him, but he caught himself just in time to not hit his back. Folding his arms across his chest, he waited, undeterred by the wrath in Luka’s eyes.

“End it.”

Klaus, who had never seemed to care what choices Luka made, looked thoughtful for a second. “Can you?”

No one had ever thought he was capable of harming Fatos. Not in all the years they had spent together.

Not even Luka, himself.

“It was only a matter of time,” he found himself saying as he climbed into the Wrangler, jamming the key into the ignition. “But I could only run for so long.”

“You know then that the Russian will know what you’ve done.”

He wished otherwise, but… “It was only a matter of time.”

Before Fatos, however, he had another stop to make.





39

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Breathe…Breathe





Luka screeched to a halt outside the older building, nearly ripping his keys out of the ignition as he climbed out and headed for the entrance. He didn’t have to worry about surveillance of any kind, not in this neighborhood. That, at least, was a small favor.

Too impatient to wait for the elevator, he took the stairs two at a time until he reached the fifth floor, pushing through the heavy metal door at the end of the hall. His fingers flexed as he faced the closed door that loomed just ahead, but before he could kick the door down the way he wanted, he checked the urge and lifted his fist to knock instead.

A few seconds was all he needed, and by the time Natasha was pulling that door open, smiling at him in surprise, he’d managed to conceal his anger as best he could. It was there, the interest in her eyes, and even as he was radiating malice, she wouldn’t care. It never bothered her before.

“Can I come in?”

She hesitated, glancing behind her, though he didn’t know for what. If someone had been in there with her, she wouldn’t have answered the door, or at the very least, not far enough where he could actually see inside. Glancing back at him, she finally nodded and stepped to the side to let him past.

Closing the door behind them, she remained there and watched his every move. She couldn’t have known about Alex—there was no one to tell her—but he could see it in her body language that she was nervous about him being in her place. Even if he’d had any doubt as to her involvement in this, it was gone now.

Feigning ease, he lifted his arms, brushing his fingers through his hair as he pushed it back out of his face. The action drew the hem of his shirt up, enough that her gaze immediately drifted there. He’d done it on purpose, making sure she could see that he wasn’t armed, not that that would do her much good, but it had the desired effect. She relaxed some, pushing away from the door as she headed around him and into the kitchen where she had a glass of wine sitting on the counter.

“Why are you here?” she asked, taking a sip. “I thought you didn’t want me anymore?”

And he still didn’t. “I needed to see you.”

“Oh? And is Alex okay with that?”

It was the wrong thing to say, and even she realized this as her eyes grew wide when he circled the island to get to her. She wisely took a step back, but there was nowhere for her to go with the refrigerator at her back.

“Fatos. What did he offer you?”

She had shaken her head before the sentence was fully out of his mouth, looking down at her feet. “I don’t know who that is.”

“You’ve known me for three years, and in that time, how many people have come to you about me?”

“Yeah? But where was your loyalty to me,” she snapped back, turning it on him. “I’d given you everything, but you turned your back on me the moment she came calling.”

He had entertained her pain once, even apologized though he hadn’t felt the need to. Because she had wanted that from him even when she didn’t ask for it.

Despite her act now, her need to draw him away from what he really wanted to know, it wouldn’t work today. “What did you tell him?”

She visibly swallowed, meeting his gaze. “Did he do something to you? He said he wasn’t going to hurt you.”

She didn’t know what he had done, no one did, but she could guess, and oftentimes, a person’s imagination was worse than any story told.

“Luka, please. You could never be happy with her,” she tried to explain herself.

Luka came up behind her, his hands sliding around her shoulders, pulling her back against him. She was crying, apologizing for her part, relaxing in his hold as she thought he was trying to comfort her.

But the only thing he could think of was how Alex had suffered because of her.

“I warned you once,” he whispered next to her ear, his hold gradually growing tighter. “Don’t ever betray me.”

She sputtered, gasping for breath as she tried to get free, but Luka was both bigger and stronger than she was. For a little more than a minute, he held her like this, not letting up even when her arms dropped loosely at her sides and her body went lax.