Fractured Ties by Bethany-Kris Page 0,14
he’s not moving. Let’s safely assume he’s dead, but I’ve got other shit to do before I can go check.”
Kaz cringed.
Kolya scowled. “That is not the right context. It wasn’t because he made a suggestion, suka.”
“Call me that again, brat.”
Brothers, then.
The two—Kolya and Konstantin—glowered at one another. Maya could practically feel their irritation wafting from their bodies in waves. She took a moment to survey the two and take in their differences despite the relation.
Sure, they shared some of the same features. Strong, square jaws, the same ice-blue eyes, and their hair was the same dark brown.
That was about as far as it went.
Kolya was muscle and meat while Konstantin was lean and mean. With a torso the size of a barrel, she had little doubt that Kolya was not to be messed with. Yet, Konstantin didn’t exactly give off the impression that he should be messed with, either.
Both were incredibly good-looking, although Maya’s attention continued to drift back to the bigger of the two—the one that spurred a spark of fear in those around him the same way he seemed to intrigue her.
Kolya.
He should fucking terrify her, frankly. Splattered with dried blood, his suit was all but ruined, although he didn’t look like it was causing him any discomfort. His bloody, swollen knuckles made her heart clench with what might have happened after she’d left the bar. And the tattoos coloring up the visible parts of his hands?
Those tattoos told her far more than anything else about him did.
She knew bratva tattoos.
She recognized them all too well.
How could she not when this had always been her life?
Kolya had maybe an inch of height on his brother, and something else that made him a little different, too.
A coldness.
Maya could feel it.
She’d noticed it from the second he’d looked at her down in the bar. His face was expressionless unless he was scowling, or frowning. Or, it seemed, if she was looking at him.
Yeah, she hadn’t missed that.
Not the way his eyes widened, or his pupils blew wide at the sight of her. Not the way he’d lost his words, or his ability to use them when they’d locked gazes. He probably hadn’t even realized it, but the stiffness in his shoulders had released, and so had his clenched fist for those quick, few seconds.
His guard had been up.
He saw her …
It dropped.
He’d been sitting around some of the most dangerous men she knew—one, she’d lived with for twenty-one years—and yet, he’d barely blinked an eye at them. They hadn’t fazed him at all. Then, Maya had come into his line of vision, and he was … knocked off balance.
Yeah, she saw all of that.
The conversation between the men drew Maya back to the present, and took her gaze away from the towering, massive bull of a man still watching her. He kept doing that—she could still feel him doing it even now.
“These are problems I don’t need,” Kaz told Konstantin in Russian.
Konstantin nodded, but his expression was marred with annoyance. “None of us do, but thank you.”
Kolya grunted, making Maya glance his way again, but now his attention was on the other two men in the room. “Nothing happened—nothing important. We’ll say it was … a by-product of the Ivan issue. Who the fuck is going to know any different? Vadim won’t.”
“And her,” Kaz said, tipping his head in Maya’s direction, “what do you plan to do with her now?”
“She’s fine where she is,” Kolya muttered.
Konstantin’s head snapped around so he could stare at his brother. “What does that mean?”
“Just what I said. She’s fine.”
“She—”
“She’s right here,” Maya said in English.
Three pairs of eyes turned on her.
For a second, she almost wanted to shrink into the couch, and act like she hadn’t said a thing. It wasn’t that people staring at her put her on edge—quite the contrary. Her father often liked to put her on display in his business because she drew attention. He liked that she was enough to distract a man, and it gave Ivan an edge.
It was just about the only time he did like her.
Any other time, and Maya was just the little bitch who her mother had dropped off on his doorstep one December afternoon. Or, that’s how her father had always told the story, anyway. She was his liability and responsibility.
One he didn’t want and had never asked for.
She wasn’t a boy.
Not like her brother.
She wasn’t useful.
Her father never let her forget it, either. Whether it be with his words, his hand, a