Broken Vow (Brutal Birthright #5) - Sophie Lark Page 0,120

feel colder and more calculated by the moment. I feel myself analyzing him like he’s a character in a video game. Looking for the best and quickest way to annihilate him.

I start hitting him again and again in the face and the gut. Each blow feels solid and satisfying, like punching a heavy bag. Every grunt of pain from this asshole gives me a glow of pleasure.

He gets me with a jab to the lip, and I taste blood in my mouth. That just pisses me off more. I grab him by the face like I’m palming a basketball, and I slam his head back into the fence. I do that three or four times until the light goes out of his eyes, and he slumps down on the sidewalk. I don’t even bother to break his fall.

The blonde girl has pulled herself out of the trunk. Seeing her assailant out cold on the pavement, she runs up and kicks him in the gut.

“Chtob u tebya hui vo Ibu vyros!” she shouts, pulling back her high-heeled foot and kicking him again.

To be honest, I kinda forgot about the girl for a minute while I was beating the shit out of this guy. Now I turn around and really look at her for the first time.

She’s tall, and that’s saying something from my perspective. She’s got to be over six feet in those heels. With her face aflame with fury, she looks like a vengeful Valkyrie. She’s white-blonde, her hair pulled up in a high ponytail on top of her head. Her features are sharp and exotic — high cheekbones, almond-shaped eyes, full lips, fierce white teeth. And her body...

I feel bad thinking about that, when some dude just tried to abduct her. But it’s pretty impossible to miss the Amazonian figure stuffed into that skin-tight dress. Full breasts, tiny waist, mile-long legs...it’s hard to snap my eyes back up to her face.

“Are you okay?” I ask her.

Her left cheek is red and swollen where the man slapped her. I can see his individual finger marks on the side of her face.

“I’m fine!” she says, fiercely. She has a hint of an accent. I’m pretty sure she was shouting in Russian a minute ago.

“What did you say to that guy?” I ask her.

“What?”

“When you kicked him — what were you saying?”

“Oh,” she shakes her head impatiently. “It means...something like ‘May a dick grow on your forehead’.”

I let out a snort. “Really?”

“Yes,” she says, frowning at me. “This is a very common insult in Russia. Very rude, trust me. He would not like it if he could hear what I said.”

“Well, he can’t hear shit,” I say. “But he deserved it anyway.”

“He deserves to be castrated!” the girl says, spitting on the sidewalk next to her fallen assailant. It’s funny — spitting is the furthest thing from ladylike. But I find it oddly attractive. It seems wild and foreign, like she’s a captured warrior princess.

Speaking of which...

“Do you know who he is?” I ask her. “Why was he grabbing you?”

The girl makes a sharp, dismissive sound.

“You would not understand,” she says.

That just makes me curious.

“Why don’t you try me?” I say.

She looks me up and down, like she’s trying to figure me out. At last she shrugs, maybe thinking she owes me an explanation.

“My father is a powerful man,” she says. “He has a lot of enemies. I suppose this one here thought it would be easier to attack me instead.”

“Who’s your father?” I ask her.

“Alexei Yenin,” she says, not expecting me to recognize the name.

I do, though. He’s the head of the Bratva in Chicago. Or, I should say, he’s the new boss — after the Griffins killed the old one.

“What’s your name?” I ask her.

“Yelena Yenina,” she says, with a proud upward tilt of her chin.

“Sebastian Gallo,” I tell her. I don’t see any flicker of recognition in her eyes. She doesn’t seem familiar with my family.

Instead, she looks me up and down again with a mistrustful look on her face.

“Why are you so huge?” she demands, as if it’s suspicious to be this tall.

“Genetics,” I say, blandly.

“No,” she shakes her head. “You know how to fight. What do you do?”

“As a job?”

“Yes, of course as a job,” she snaps.

It amuses me that this girl barely seems grateful that I helped saved her. Instead she’s haughty and imperious.

I don’t know how to answer her question, however.

I’ve been doing a lot of jobs, lately. All family business. Running our underground gambling