The Final Hour (Volkov Bratva #3)(59)

She was used to seeing Mishca without clothes on, but at the sight of Klaus’ bare chest, she felt ill.

There were scars everywhere.

She was baffled, seeing the stars that were so proudly done on his chest because she knew they weren’t meant to be there, but more importantly, they appeared to have been mutilated, like someone sliced through them multiple times and on different occasions.

If it were Mishca, she might have wondered who had done it to him, but with Klaus, she wondered if he had done it to himself.

Klaus looked up, as though sensing her presence, meeting her eyes for half a second before giving her his back, grabbing his shirt from the bed. In the brief time it took for him to don the garment, she tried counting the long, jagged scars across his back. Now those, he couldn’t have done those to himself.

What the hell had he been through?

After his shirt was on, he pulled on a beanie, covering his hair—a habit Lauren noticed after the few times she’d been in his presence. He seemed to have a thing about letting his hair hang.

More noticeably, however, there was a brand on the nape of his neck, that of a triangle with a line going through it. Lauren wanted to ask what it meant, but she doubted he would be willing to tell her.

“Something I can do for you?” He asked, grabbing a bottle from his duffle, walking towards her

“Oh,” Lauren said shrugging, stepping back out of his way. “Just checking on you.”

His brow lifted as he moved past her, pulling the door shut behind him. She couldn’t get upset, especially when it did appear as though she were spying on him. It was clear that Klaus valued his privacy.

While they weren’t necessarily friendly, Klaus was nice enough when they were alone on the rare occasion. It didn’t surprise her that she still didn’t know much about him—he hardly ever talked about himself—but that didn’t stop her from being curious about him, and the anger he felt towards Mishca. She’d head Mishca’s side, what little of it he shared, and since heh ad said that it wasn’t his story to tell, the best person to ask was right in front of her.

“Can I ask you a question without you getting angry?” She called, trailing behind him.

He smiled sarcastically, waving her on. “I’m always angry, ask anyway.”

“Who is Sarah? You mentioned her at the hospital…”

He stopped moving altogether as he looked at her, but there wasn’t anger like she was used to, there was…nothing. It was like he had shut down every emotion, his face carefully blank.

“Worried your Russian had a thing for her? Ease your mind, he didn’t.”

“But you did,” Lauren stated, drawing her legs up in the chair, wrapping her arms around them. “You said you weren’t angry with Mishca because of what happened to you, but because of what happened to her?”

“And did you ever think that it wasn’t any of your business?” He asked evenly.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“Like that’ll make you back off,” he muttered looking out at the night through the windows behind him.

In that moment, he looked tired, that carefully placed mask of bitterness and contempt gone. He ran his fingers through his hair, glaring at nothing as he pulled that beanie away. She had noticed that since he was letting his hair grow out, he grew more agitated with it.

“She was my girlfriend. Sarah Moore. I’d known her all my life and we’d been together in high school.” He smiled, just a brief lift of his mouth before it faded. “For graduation, I wanted to take her to New York—it was all she ever talked about at the time.”

He looked back at Lauren. “I didn’t come from a rich family. I worked my ass off for a year to afford that trip, but it was worth it, just seeing the smile on her face when I showed her the tickets. I didn’t understand it at the time, but my mom didn’t want me to go, never gave me an explanation…just, ‘don’t go.’ What did I do? I went anyway.

“There we were, acting like f*cking tourists in the middle of the city, not a care in the world because we had each other.” His expression changed then, vulnerable to closed off in a heartbeat. “We got lost over in Hell’s Kitchen. It was late, no damn taxis anywhere. Then, out of the blue, a dark van skids to a stop beside us, three guys in ski masks jumping out.”

Lauren didn’t have to visualize what he was saying, she had experienced it. She also didn’t miss that all throughout his story, Klaus always referred to Sarah in the past tense.

“I tried to fight them off, but they f*cking tasered me, throwing us both in the back. When I finally came round, we were tied up in that building.” He laughed, shaking his head though she doubted he found any of it funny. “I stupidly thought they wanted money, probably thought we were a couple of rich brats. I begged and pleaded with them to let us go, that we didn’t have anything. Do you know what they said?”

Lauren shook her head.

“They didn’t say anything. Jetmir—you remember him?—he punched me in the face. That was what he did any time I tried to speak that first night, but I kept talking because as long as they were hitting me, they would leave Sarah alone. Hours passed before they even told me why we were there. They wanted to know where the Bratva was storing their weapons.”