The Final Hour (Volkov Bratva #3)(65)

After staring at Luka in bemusement for several moments, Klaus’ gaze slowly lowered, taking in the sight of the rather feminine tattoo there. He didn’t have to explain what it meant, Klaus had spent enough time studying them to know what it stood for.

“Who?” Klaus said.

“Bastian.”

Luka half expected him to demand he turn around to see if the scars were there, evidence of his claims, but from the way Klaus’ eyes clouded with fury, Luka knew that he was remembering the exact pattern in his own back.

The one’s that Luka had put there.

“And the Russian doesn’t know this?”

No, he didn’t and Luka wanted to keep it that way.

It was left unspoken, but they both knew Mishca would see Luka killed than standing at his side.

“You suicidal?” Klaus asked the most obvious question. Most would come up with that conclusion if they knew Luka had willingly walked into this den of wolves, knowing what he had done.

“I like to think I’m a masochist,” Luka said with a shrug.

“This isn’t over between us, but I’ll not tell your little secret to your Captain,” Klaus said, “but you’re in debt to me.”

“And when will it come due?”

“Whenever I call for you.”

Luka agreed, not that he had any other choice. He already considered killing him, but he doubted that it would be easy, and it would damn well be bloody.

“You might wanna go ahead and give me your number since, ya know,”—Luka took out his phone, looking at Klaus’ expectedly—“you’re going to be calling me.”

Klaus’ mouth twitched but he refused to smile. “Are you really as mad as they say?”

Luka looked around, a smile on his face as he gestured to their surroundings with his arms. “We’re all mad here.”

Shaking his head, Klaus turned his back—arrogant bastard—jerking his thumb back at Luka. “You might want to get up there soon, I told the Russian you were back.”

So he hadn’t planned on killing Luka.

He watched after him, seeing the familiarity between Mishca and Klaus. They both were arrogant and thought themselves at the top of the food chain, but they could never rule together. Especially not when they couldn’t be in a room together longer than a few minutes without going for each other’s throats.

Luka took a breath, shoving his hands in his pockets as he boarded the elevator, ignoring the way Turner eyed the blood on his clothes.

Not much he could have really done to help that.

And as he readied to enter the apartment, Luka let his mind drift back to the past, where he had been the victim, begging for a life he wasn’t really sure he wanted.

There, the chaotic rhythm of jumbled pieces of images flashed in his mind, the torture, the training, the fear. Then his mind finally calmed to a blank space.





Alex didn’t need any confirmation from Luka to affirm what she already knew. It was blatantly obvious that Anya was setting her up. Alex was sure Anya had been counting on Mishca’s love for Lauren to set him off prematurely, but had she really thought Mishca would have killed her outright?

He could be temperamental sometimes, sure, but he had never in his life raised a hand to her.

Even now as they argued back and forth, oblivious to the storm that was raging inside of her, Mishca was trying to refrain from saying outright what she already knew was going to happen. Anya was going to die. Since she had come back to the penthouse, a while after Luka had already come up and announced what he had already told her, she had only caught the tail end of the argument.

Anya had been given a chance once already. While her living arrangements hadn’t been ideal for a person like her, Alex had always thought that living would have been enough.

The crazy thing was, she hadn’t thought about her visit with Anya since she left her place that day. A few days after, she hadn’t been able to find her wallet, but she had chalked it up to her own habit of losing things. Even weeks later, when Mikhail had informed Mishca—he still didn’t talk to Alex—that Anya had disappeared, Alex had been worried, but she figured either Anya had escaped, or Mikhail had something with her.

Now, she was almost one-hundred percent sure it wasn’t Mikhail.

A she gazed around the room, at the only people she truly cared about, she only had one real option to end this. She knew Mishca would feel guilty, not because Anya would be dead, but because of what it would do to her. And a part of her wanted to be the one to take care of this, and that part was destructive.

Because of her life, it was imperative that she was careful with how she acted no matter where she was. She had never really been able to have a normal life, going out with friends, drinking to excess, so for years that free spirit of hers was tempered, but not in a good way.

While she wouldn’t admit it, there was something dark in her, very much like her mother. For years, Mishca thought he had been shielding her from the life, while in fact, he had taught her everything she knew.

And to move this along without bringing suspicion on herself, she needed to get out of there and make a phone call.

She slipped out easy enough since Mishca was too busy arguing with Klaus, and Lauren was trying to be the median between them. For reasons Alex didn’t care to contemplate, Vlad was acting strange, distancing himself rather than his usual hovering.