Fractured Ties by Bethany-Kris Page 0,16
the dogs, considering she had been hiding in the kennels with a blanket and a pillow,” Kaz said.
Asshole.
Maya didn’t need her horrible life put on display for more people. It was bad enough as it was without adding more pity to her fucking days. That thick, heavy silence was back again.
Kolya broke it first.
“She will go with me,” Kolya said.
Maya’s head snapped up. “What?”
His sharp gaze turned on her, unapologetic and hard when he repeated, “You will come with me.”
She didn’t get a chance to respond before Konstantin asked, “Do you think that’s a wise fucking idea, brat?”
Kolya never glanced away from her while he spoke. “I think she is mine to do with as I wish, and I have what Vadim wanted from Ivan in the form of something else. So, yes, she will come with me.”
“You can’t take me,” Maya said, her voice faint.
He raised a single brow. “I can’t? Tell me why not. Tell me where you’ll go tonight, girl. Your father’s home, and his businesses? This place? It all belongs to the Boykov family, now.”
Her brother.
She could have said him—Alexei—but she knew better. He was just like their father, but worse. He hated her even more than Ivan did, it seemed. Like she was always in the way, or something for him to abuse.
No, she certainly didn’t want to go to her brother.
Kolya had her backed into a fucking corner.
“You have no home to go to, and you cannot stay here,” Kolya said, dragging Maya from her painful thoughts and thrusting her back into a sickening reality. “That, by default, makes you my … responsibility.”
Maya’s brow knotted together as the two stared at one another. “Responsibility or property? I know how the Bratva works, Kolya.”
And honestly, Maya had been waiting for a day like this to come along. It had been years in the making, from the first time her father threatened to sell her, or use her in some other way, to further his business, or his status. Then, those threats had not been so empty all of the sudden, and Maya was her father’s leverage.
She didn’t like to think about that.
She refused to.
Apparently, she was only worthless to her father.
To someone else, she could be gold.
“I’m staying out of whatever comes of this,” Konstantin said, jumping into the conversation. “So we’re clear on that, yes?”
Kolya nodded at his brother, but never looked away from Maya. “Understood.”
“Well, which one is it?” Maya asked. “Responsibility or property? At least give me the decency of letting me know what I am now.”
“Why aren’t you afraid?” he asked her instead.
“Of who—you?”
Kolya smiled.
Thin as it was.
Faint as it was.
Cold as it was.
He still smiled.
And he smiled for her.
“Yes, girl, of me.”
“Why should I be scared of you, Kolya?”
He’d not yet given her a good reason to feel fear.
He only looked like fear.
It was not the same.
• • •
“Oh, my God,” Maya huffed as Kolya pushed her along the west side of the warehouse. “You were actually serious.”
“About you coming with me? Yes.”
“But-but—”
“Do you splutter often?” Kolya asked.
“What?”
“You, and the spluttering as you try to figure out your words. Does it happen often?”
“I—”
Maya didn’t see the fucking rock coming before she tripped over it. She could practically taste the dirt coming for her mouth, and even threw her hands out to catch herself before she hit the ground. And yet the dirt never came, nor did the hard, cold ground.
Kolya’s arm saved the day as it easily wrapped around her midsection. He righted Maya to her feet without as much as a word about her tripping like an idiot. He hadn’t even missed a step as he’d kept on walking with his hand pressed firmly against her lower back just like it had been before.
She was hyperaware of that hand, too.
Of the warmth that bled through.
Of how rough his palm felt overtop the thin blouse she wore.
Of how he wouldn’t seem to remove it.
“Now,” Kolya said as they waded overgrowth and dead grass, “but, what?”
Maya blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You were trying to get something out—to tell me something, no? What was it?”
Oh, yeah.
That.
Not that she figured it was going to make any kind of difference, really. Here he was, and there she was. He had made his stance on this whole thing pretty clear up in the office, and it seemed Maya wasn’t going to get much of a choice at all.
“You said I wasn’t property,” she muttered.
“You’re not,” he agreed.
“Then why do I still have to go with you?”
“Nyet. You’re