The God (Bratva Blood #3)- S.R. Jones Page 0,40

pesky nails sticking out of things and ripping your clothes,” he says with a wink. “Come on, grab your bag; times-a-wasting.”

He pockets the army knife, and I follow him out the door.

As we walk past one of the dancers, she gives me a knowing look, and I die a little inside. “Ripped my damn leggings, and I need a new pair,” I say lamely.

“Wow, they call it ripping leggings these days. That’s a new one.” Barry, one of the more senior male dancers, who dislikes me, makes the joke.

One moment he’s laughing, the next he’s up against the wall, his shirt bunched in Bohdan’s fist, the material right against his throat. “What do you mean?” Bohdan asks.

Barry’s eyes go wide, startled like a deer who has heard the hunter in the woods. Too late for Barry that he only just realized there’s a predator in his midst.

“I don’t know what you mean?” Barry splutters. “It was a joke, dude.”

The hold on him tightens, and he coughs. One of the other men walks over to Bohdan, but Bohdan puts out his other arm and holds him off. “What. Are. You. Insinuating?” Bohdan asks.

Barry shakes his head. “Nothing, man. Nothing. Honestly.”

“Good.” Bohdan lets go, arranges Barry’s t-shirt, then slaps him, pretty damn hard, on the cheek as if he’s patting his cheek but with added fury. “Good, because if I hear any of you have said a word of innuendo about Mrs. Felix here, I’ll fucking ruin your spoiled little lives, got it?”

“You don’t get to threaten us,” one of the girls says. “Who do you think you are?”

He turns to her, blue eyes cold as glass. “Who do you think I am?” he says, voice low. “Or rather, maybe I should ask, what do you think I am?”

Her expression falters at his words.

“Let me tell you what I am not. I am not someone who makes idle threats. I am not someone who puts up with gossip raging about them, ever. Or about their client. There is a life or death security threat against Mrs. Felix, and you lot gossiping could make my job a million times harder. If you think I will hesitate to get into your life and fuck it up, just because you’re a nice upper-class girl, you’re dead wrong.”

On the words dead wrong, he taps her forehead with his pointer finger.

Oh my God, what is he doing? No one behaves this way here. Clearly not caring that he’s crossed all sorts of lines with my co-dancers, he grabs my hand and shoves his way past them and out the side door.

“Bohdan,” I say, no other words coming to me.

“Don’t worry about it.” He glances at me briefly. “They hate you, so they aren’t going to do what I ask out of any sense of loyalty. Hence, I scared them into compliance.”

He scared them into compliance.

I file that disturbing line away to examine later.

We reach the stores nearest the opera house and choose one of them to go into. Once inside one of the big department stores, I fire off a text to Jasper.

Only just saw your message, darling. Had an accident this morning and ripped my leggings to shreds on a nail. I’m okay, but I’m not at the opera house. I popped to the store to buy some more.

Dots appear, disappear, and appear again, then go. Shit. He’s not responding immediately, which might mean he’s suspicious.

I’m still afraid he’ll find out from one of my colleagues what I’ve done.

“How do you know they hate me?” I glance at Bohdan over the racks of leggings and casualwear.

He shrugs. “I can read people. Seems to be an ability I developed too late in life, after one too many beatings.”

I wince, but he smiles easy. “Not a dig, Dasha. Contrary to all common sense, I believe you, which means someone else fucked me and my uncle over, and I haven’t a damn clue who it could have been.”

“So you can read people?” I prompt, hungry to learn more about him. “Must be interesting.”

“Yeah, I get a feel for people. I suppose there aren’t many people I consider close to me. Maybe a handful if that, and most other people are enemies or adversaries of one sort or another, so you get good at reading them. Plus, when I was on the streets of Moscow after I had to leave St. Petersburg, you had to learn to read people real fast.”

“What do you see when you look at me?” I