Brutal King: A Dark Bratva Academy Romance, page 21
His eyes narrow.
“But this?” He hisses as he turns to jab a grimy finger at Lizbet.
“This?!” He snarls, looking enrages. “You marry the daughter of him?! Of him, Lukas?!”
He coughs violently, looking more and more erratic as he looks wildly around the room. He scratches at his arm as he rocks.
“We are survivors, Lukas. Survivors! So this too, I will overlook. I know we do what we must…”
He frowns when he sees me still staring at Lizbet, unconscious and tied to her chair. His eyes narrow dangerously.
“She isn’t dead,” he grunts. “Yet.”
He reaches down and picks a gun off the floor. My gun. He hefts it, and then glances at Lizbet.
He raises his hand, and I snarl.
“Yanis!” I hiss. My head shakes. “Don’t you fucking dare point that at her.”
He looks at me curiously.
“I need you to understand we are the righteous, Lukas. Milo taught me that. He was a good, Godly man.”
Who kept you a strung-out, addicted sex slave for four fucking years.
“We are the ones who were victims here!”
“Yanis, I know…” I’m eying the gun, and the erratic way he’s waving it around in her direction.
“And we will reclaim, Lukas!”
The gun swings over her again, and I snap.
“Not like this! Yanis! Not like—”
He levels it right at her, sneering at me as he moves close to Lizbet until the fucking barrel is pressed to the side of her head.
“Yanis!” I roar at him, straining at the ropes. My teeth bare as he looks at me in confusion.
“She didn’t do this!” I hiss. “Her father did!”
“The poison of the tree flows into the new saplings, brother,” he mutters.
“You don’t know that. You can’t—”
“Maybe our father was as fucked up as we are, Lukas.” He glares at me. “Our real father, not this Bratva piece of shit you call—”
“Our real father abandoned us to the hell of the streets,” I snarl. “Because he was a monster.”
“Just like me,” my brother hisses. “And just like you.”
“I’m not anything like—”
“Please,” he laughs coldly. “No sane person could look at you and call you normal.”
I growl lowly, twitching as he chuckles.
“It has been fun to watch you work though, Lukas. Out in the streets of Manchester, being a fucking superhero! Saving the world!”
He grins like a maniac at me.
“I was sorry to make more work for you, brother. I hope you know that. But those girls…”
My heart goes colder. Oh fuck.
“I showed them mercy,” he whispers. “That life of forced…” he snarls, shaking his head.
“I gave them peace. And mercy.”
He’s deranged. Not just fucked on heroin; there’s something loose or wrong in him. Like I’m looking at a jigsaw puzzle of a man I used to know as my brother, but some of the pieces are missing.
Suddenly, there’s the sound of scuffling sounds, and hissed swears. Men’s voices, and footsteps coming from around the corner, down the hall.
Three shapes—two shoving a third—round the corner and into the light cast from an overhead bulb. The two pushing the third look up, and the faces of my two friends go ashen when they see me through the bars.
“Lukas!”
Ilya and Misha rush to the barred door, and I realize Misha has his arm in a choke-hold around Konstantin. The door is open a crack—it’s not locked. But just as they get to it, Yanis whirls, pointing the gun at them.
“Stay back!”
Ilya, Misha, and Konstantin all stare at the zombie version of me, their eyes darting between the two of us in shock.
Yanis flails the gun wildly.
“You all! You stay back…”
He frowns. His lips curl viciously as his eyes narrow.
“You are… his friends?”
He turns back to me, snarling as the gun points at me.
“Sons of Bratva pigs, Lukas? That is who call friends?”
“Yes,” I hiss.
I need him to keep the gun on me. Off of my friends. Off of her.
“Yanis, please,” I growl. My fingers try and work the ropes at my wrists. But they’re too tight.
“Let me explain this all to you. I can help you, brother. We can all help you, and show you the good—”
“There is only one way through the fire, Lukas,” he says quietly. His eyes burn with a mania as they swivel to Lizbet.
“We must purge the demons, brother.”
“Don’t you touch her!” I snarl.
“He told me I was the pretty one, Lukas.”
The ghost of my brother turns to look at me with haunted, empty, faded eyes.
“He told me I was special. His special boy.”
My heart wrenches.
“Yanis, we can fix—”
“There’s no fixing this!” He roars. “There is only blood! There is only an eye for an eye. A life for a life, Lukas!”
“He’s dead, Yanis! Semyon is—”
“He took both our lives. Your’s and Mine,” Yanis croaks. “Two for two. And now I will even the score.”
He moves towards her. I growl as I strain hard at my binds.
“Don’t do this,” I hiss.
He eyes me, stepping back; stepping closer to her. My fury surges.
“Don’t you fucking touch her!” I explode.
His eyes narrow in a cold fury.
“What is this, Lukas? What do you, love her?!”
“Yes,” I whisper. “Yes, I love—”
“Are you fucking insane?!”
“Yanis,” I choke quietly. “You are my blood. But I swear I will spill yours if you touch her.”
He looks at me coldly, confused and angry. He steps back behind her, waving the gun between me, my friends at the door, and her. He reaches into his pocket and my jaw clenches when he pulls out a syringe from his back pocket.
My eyes narrow as my lips snarl. “You put that poison in her and I will send you to hell, Yan—”
“It’s not heroine, Lukas,” he mumbles. “It’s adrenaline.”
He smiles a small, crooked, black smile at me.
“I want her awake for this. Like I was, like you were, when they hurt us.”
“No,” I hiss. “No, goddamnit, Yanis, don’t you fucking—”
The needle jabs into her neck
“No!” I roar, straining as hard as I can as he pushes the plunger down.
Her heart.
Suddenly, Lizbet’s eyes fly open, wide in sheer terror. She chokes, sputtering and gasping as her face goes white and pained. Her eyes whirl wildly before they land on me and widen.
“Lukas!” she screams.
“Open this fucking door!” Ilya roars.
Lizbet whirls. Her eyes land on Konstantin with Misha’s arm around his neck, and her face pales even more.
“No!” She screams. “No! Don’t hurt him! Please! Don’t—let—”
She cries out, choking, gasping, and wincing in pain as her face twists in agony.
“Lizbet,” I hiss, my eyes burning into hers from across the divide between us.
“Just breathe,” I choke. “Just breathe! Look at me! Look at me, and breathe—”
She’s choking. Her face is turning gray.
She’s dying.
Something snaps in me. I roar like a fucking demon, lunging up and down, making the chair jump up and down off the floor with me. My muscles ache, my body jars hard with each impact. Yanis stares at me.
“Stop that!” he hisses. “Lukas, stop—”
The chair breaks. I go sprawling back on the floor with the wind knocked out of me. But before Yanis can even say anything, I’m lurching off the floor, yanking my arms free of the loose rope as I rush to Lizbet.
I shove my dumbstruck brother aside and grab her, cupping her face.
“Look at me,” I whisper heatedly. “Lizbet, look at—”
Yanis bellows as he grabs my neck and hurls me away from her. I tumble into the smashed bits of the chair, and snarl as I lunge for him. But the gun suddenly swivels to her terrified, pale, gasping face.
I freeze on the floor.
“I’m saving you, Lukas,” Yanis whispers.
My finger curl around a splintered chair leg.
“I’m saving us both—”
I whip my arm around and hurl the piece of wood at his head. He cries out as it smashes into the side of his face. The gun explodes, but he’s reeling sideways, and the shot pings the wall next to my friends.
I’m already at him. I charge hard, slamming him into the wall with a thudding sound. Yanis slumps motionless to the ground as I whirl and start to madly yank at Lizbet’s binds.
“Lizbet!” I roar, shaking all over as I clutch her to me. She’s still choking, but she’s breathing in stuttered gasps. She clutches her chest in pain as I hug her to mine, rocking her.
“I’m here,” I whisper. “I’m here, I’m here… I’m here, love.”
“You love her…”
I look up in horror as Yanis drags himself off the floor, gun in hand. He looks at me in shock and confusion, his face manic and twisted.
“You… you really love her?”
“Yes,” I snarl.
“Her…” he shakes his head, dazed. “Her father—”
“We are not our fathers, Yanis,” I whisper.
He blinks. His face pulls gaunt and hollow.
“I—I was wrong?”
“Yanis, please,” I choke. “Put the gun—”
“I was wrong about this world, Lukas,” he says softly. “I’m not meant for it.” He looks up at me curiously, his face ticking.
“Do you know when I was happiest, Lukas?”
Tears bead at my eyes. “Yanis, please…”
“I was happiest when I was dead.”
He raises the gun to his head as my face falls.
“No!”
I lunge for him as his finger squeezes. I catch him, but the gun explodes in a deafening echo in the basement room.
The man who was my brother drops to the floor, blood gushing from the jagged hole through his neck.
Lizbet is screaming. But then suddenly, her face goes ashen. Her fingers claw at her chest as she slumps back onto the floor.
“Lizbet!” I scream, scrambling to her as the door kicks in and the three others rush inside.
“Lukas—”
I look up wildly, and my eyes land on Misha.
“Did you drive here?!”
His face tightens as he nods.
“Take her!”
“Lukas—”
“Take her!” I roar savagely. “Hospital. Fucking now.” I look Misha in the eyes, steadying myself.
“She’s having a heart attack. It’s her right valve. She has Ebstein’s. Tell them that.”
His face is hard and lined as I scoop her up and pass her into his arms.
“Drive as fast as you’ve ever driven.”
He doesn’t respond, he just whirls and bolts from the room, fast.
I whirl, yanking my shirt off as I rush to Yanis. I shred the shirt and start tying it around and around his gaping, gushing neck.
“Who knows CPR?”
The other two are silent. I whirl with a snarl. “CPR!?! Who?!”
“I do,” Konstantin grunts as he rushes over.
“Good, give it to him. Pump his chest, now.”
I rush to the medical station on the wall. Mercifully, I find the two needle ends and length of tubing I was praying would still be here.
I fall back to the floor next to my brother, running my fingers up my forearm, over my scars.
“Lukas,” Ilya growls quietly. “Lukas, what are you—”
“Looking for a vein. He needs a transfusion.”
“Lukas…” Ilya’s hand touches my shoulder. “He’s dead—”
“I know,” I choke. I turn to him with tears blurring my eyes and dripping through the blood on my face.
“But I need his fucking heart to keep beating.”
38
I hate hospitals. They remind me of the state I was in when I was first rescued, those years ago. When I was broken and twitchy. When the psychiatrists would come “just to talk” hour after hour, for days and weeks.
But today, I’m barely even aware that I’m in one.
Fourteen hours after watching Misha bolt down the hall carrying Lizbet, we’re in London, at St. Thomas’ Hospital. Which is, ironically, also where Lizbet’s sister Mara has been for the last few years, in her coma.
It’s myself, Ilya, Misha, Konstantin. And my parents, who are both sitting beside me, their hands on my back as I rest my head in my hands and stare at the gleaming white floor.
All of us, and Lizbet. Who is alive, and about to go into surgery. They don’t know what’s going to happen. The doctors back in Montenegro stabilized her, but they say she had a massive cardiac episode.
Now, it’s not a matter of if. She needs that valve replacement. They’re going to find out when they get him on the table if I managed to keep Yanis’s heart pumping enough to keep it a viable transplant. Or if it still is at all after years of hardcore drug abuse. Mercifully, they’ve tested his blood, and he’s clean—no HIV or hepatitis, which would mean it’s a no go. It would have also meant I’d have those things too, seeing as I had a needle flowing blood between his arm and mine for hours.
But that’s a go. Now, we wait.
Ilya and Misha sit across from me. They know me well enough not to be offering to get me shit, or trying to comfort me. They know this is now in the hands of fate and very, very good doctors.
Konstantin is down the hall a ways, barking furiously into a phone as he paces. He occasionally looks over at us. When we’ve caught each other’s eyes, he’s just nodded solemnly before going back to his phone.
Viktor’s hand lands on my shoulder and squeezes.
“Silence or words?” he growls quietly.
I close my eyes. He’s fond of this saying. It’s his way of asking if I want to talk or if I want everyone to fuck off.
“Words,” I whisper.
“She’s in the best possible place on earth for this. With the very best doctors anywhere.”
I nod.
“I know this is a lot, Lukas,” he says gently. “With… everything. With your…” his voice breaks. “Your brother. There will be a time to grieve, I promise—”
“I don’t need to.” I draw in a breath and sit up, turning to look at Viktor.
“I’ve already grieved for him.” I swallow. “Yanis died four years ago, Viktor. The man in that basement…” I shake my head. “That wasn’t my brother.”
Viktor’s arms go around me, and I welcome them. Fiona sobs quietly as she does the same behind me, and I lose myself in family.
“I’m so sorry, Lukas,” Viktor chokes. “I’m so fucking sorry. If we’d only found you sooner, those years ago…”
“But you did find me,” I say quietly. “And without you, I’d have been him.”
He smiles wryly. But then his phone buzzes. He scowls and goes to silence it, but his face stills.
“Sorry,” he frowns. “It’s Lev, and he knows not to call right now.”
“I’m fine, take it.”
He nods as he answers quietly.
“Lev, I only have a min—”
His face still. His brow furrows as he nods and then stiffens. His eyes swivel past me, to Konstantin who’s still down the hall growling into his phone and gesturing violently.
He nods. “Thanks.”
He hangs up, his face lined and his mouth thin.
My brow furrows. “What?”
He clears his throat as he looks past me, to Konstantin again. Then back to me.
“Antin Reznikov was just killed.”
I blink. “What?”
“By his own men, after evidence of his involvement in child trafficking and torture were shown to his organization.”
My mind flashes back to the basement. I vaguely remember something that looked like a hard drive falling out of Lizbet’s jacket pocket before Misha ran off with her. And I remember Konstantin picking it up later, I just didn’t give a shit about it then.
“Holy shit,” I growl.
Viktor nods grimly.
“The word is already out. Konstantin was next in line. He just became head of the Reznikov Bratva. There’s a meeting later to…”
He frowns when he sees me staring at Konstantin.
“It doesn’t matter,” Viktor growls. “We can… Lukas?”
I stand, and I start walking over to the man on the phone. My heart thuds heavily, my lips pulling back in a snarl as I start to walk faster and faster. He turns just before I get to him. His eyes narrow as he slips his phone into his pocket.
“Hang on—”
I hit him hard. I snarl as I grab him by the shirt and slam him back against the wall.
“Did you use me?” I hiss.
He doesn’t fumble at all.
“Yes.”
I growl as my muscles coil. I pull him up and then slam him back against the wall again with a thud.
“Did you bring her there?”
His eyes harden. “Yes.”
Rage explodes in me. “You motherfucker—”
“Choose your next words very fucking carefully, Luk—”
“If she dies,” I snarl into his face. “You will have no more words, ever. Do you fucking understand me?!”
A soft hand touches my arm. I hiss, whirling and then deflating a little when I see it’s Fiona. Her face is pale, but she’s forcing a sort of comfort to it as she looks into my eyes.
“Lukas,” she says softly. “You need to clean up.”
“I’m fine—”
“Mara Belsky just woke up from a coma.”
I blink. My hands drop from Konstantin, and my rage evaporates with it. I turn to stare at Fiona.
“She… what?”
“This new medical team came in a few hours ago, apparently.”
“Lizbet and I had a deal.”
I turn to look back at Konstantin. His face is hard.
“You might not like me, Lukas, but I will always honor a deal.”
He holds up a little red hard drive—the same thing I saw on the basement floor.
“Consider the deal settled for both sides.”
