Broken God: A Dark Bratva Academy Romance, page 2
“I’m fine. And I’m ready.”
I’m not fine. I’m terrified. But it’s terror mixed with excitement. I’m ready to be awake. I’m ready to live. I’m ready to have the normal life of an eighteen-year-old girl.
Well, or as normal as any of this is.
I’m the daughter of a dead Bratva kingpin. I’ve been in a coma for four years due to gun-related head trauma. I’m—thanks to Lizbet—wealthier than I will ever know what to do with. And I’m about to have my first day of school, three months before the end of my final year, at the world’s most exclusive, expensive, and elite private preparatory academy.
The students who go here are the sons and daughters of the world’s most elite. Offspring of presidents and prime ministers. Of billionaire tech entrepreneurs and energy moguls. Of actual royalty.
And then, there’s me: amnesiac daughter of a toxic, alcoholic socialite and a vile, truly evil criminal kingpin.
Luckily, I’m not entirely on my own with the sort of background I have. And I don’t just mean because of Lizbet. There are a few others here at Oxford Hills Academy who come from the same broken, dark world of the Bratva that my sister and I do.
There’s Lukas, for one: the adopted son of Viktor Komarov, the head of the Kashenko Bratva family. There are his two best friends—both of whom helped save Lizbet’s life: Misha Tsavakov, head of the Tsavakov empire. And Ilya Volkov, future head of the Volkov Bratva.
And then, there’s him.
Konstantin Reznikov.
Like the others, and yet completely different. Konstantin is another heir to another Bratva throne. Well, was an heir to, and now sits upon that throne, after having his own father killed three and a half months ago.
The same day I woke up, actually.
Lukas, Misha, and Ilya saved Lizbet’s life that day.
Konstantin saved mine.
Or at least, he woke me up. He’s the one who brought in a special team of cutting-edge doctors who used a brand-new electro-therapy to bring me out of the darkness.
But he’s not my superhero, like Lukas is to Lizbet. Konstantin didn’t pull me out of my coma because he wanted to save me. He did it because he had a deal with my sister. He needed evidence of his father’s involvement in a child trafficking and abuse ring. In exchange, he brought in the team that woke me up.
It wasn’t heroism. It was a business transaction.
I know all this now, after the fact. Now that I’m awake. Just like I know that months ago, while I was still in my coma, in a bid to swallow my late father’s frozen assets and to keep Lizbet from getting them, Konstantin tried to marry our mother.
Just like I know that on the OHA campus, the divide with Ilya, Misha, and Lukas on one side and Konstantin on the other is frosty at best.
And just like I know now that he’s the owner of the gun-metal dark gray eyes that burned into me through the glass of the hospital room that day, when I awoke screaming into the world.
At times, over the last three and a half months, when I’ve closed my eyes to sleep, it’s those eyes that I see.
Haunting me. Or hunting me. Sending a chill I can’t explain up my spine.
We’ve never spoken. And the only time I’ve even seen him is in those first few minutes of terror, when I woke. When he watched me being reborn through the glass, his face cold. His gray eyes calculating and unblinking.
Maybe that’s why thinking of those eyes keeps me up at night. As if I’m a child again, worried about the boogeyman hiding in the closet or under the bed.
But that’s actually a big part of Lizbet’s—and Lukas’s, though he’s good at hiding it—worry about me being at OHA. That I’m technically eighteen years old, but I’ve been checked out of the world since I was fourteen.
The fear is that while I’ve physically grown up, I’m not mentally or emotionally ready to be in a hugely complex, fairly grown-up environment like a very exclusive, more than slightly snobby private school.
But I’ve worked so hard on all of this over the last few months. And I’ve grown up, fast.
On one hand, I can see the reservations. I mean what’s the point? I’m going to be here for three months, and then school is over. Lizbet and Lukas will go on to university. But me? I’ll… well, I don’t know. Which certainly begs the “what’s the point” question to me even being here.
But the point is, I’ve missed a lot. Having friends. Dealing with puberty and raging hormones. Navigating the social structures of school. First dances. First kisses. First heartbreaks, and first loves.
I want all of those things, even if Lizbet is worried I’m not ready.
In the end, though, I am eighteen. And my decisions, now that I’m actually awake, are my own. So, here I am, even if it’s just for three months.
OHA is very hard to get into, extremely elusive, and ludicrously expensive. But, I have the money. And I’ve spent the last month testing my way through the lower levels of school to have the academic credentials to attend. Before the darkness, I vaguely remember the private tutors that taught us within the walls of our father’s fortress-home calling me “gifted.”
Apparently, four years of sleep hasn’t taken that gift away.
So, I had the money. I had the grades and intelligence, and my team at St. Thomas thought it was a good step forward. So here I am.
Lukas steps out of the car. Lizbet sighs and lets go of my hand to step out on her side. Before I can reach for the door handle though, the driver turns around to nod at me.
“You are ready?” Grigori rumbles in his thickly accented, graveled voice.
The ex-KGB agent is almost seven feet tall, looks like he’s made out of stone and iron, and has a mean-looking scar running the length of his right cheek from the corner of his eye almost all the way to his mouth. To most people, Grigori Pasternak might seem like a monster.
To me, he’s a teddy bear.
Grigori is one of the few faces I remember from my time before. Lizbet and I both always had a rotating small army of guards, given our father’s line of business. But Grigori was always a constant with me. And he always felt like an uncle.
A terrifying looking mountain of an uncle. But he was my terrifying looking mountain.
Grigori was there the day I was shot. The four other bodyguards I was with were gunned down and killed. He was shot through the shoulder and left for dead, along with me. And yet somehow, we both pulled through.
Eventually.
When my father’s empire dissolved, Grigori faded away. But apparently, he never really left me. He’s been living in London for four years, and visited me once a month with flowers while I was asleep. If he had it his way, he’d be enrolled here with me, to shadow my every step. Instead, he’s accepted a position with the Kashenko Bratva as my unofficial bodyguard whenever I’ll be off-campus.
Divine intervention wouldn’t have stopped him from coming tonight to drop me off.
I smile as I nod.
“I’m really ready.”
“Da, okay then.”
He steps out, quickly coming around to open my door for me. Lukas already has my two suitcases of brand-new clothes out of the trunk. I try to take one, but he shakes his head.
I give Grigori a fierce, drawn-out hug, since he’ll be leaving us here.
“I will not be far, zaychik.”
Little rabbit. He used to call me this when I was young, too, and I love him for saying it now as I step into this unknown.
And he’s quite serious about not being far. For the next three months, Grigori will be living in Heathington, a very posh village not far from the OHA campus. I can only imagine what the well-to-do members of upper society who live there will think of the man who resembles the huge guy from Game of Thrones living next door.
When I’ve said goodbye to Grigori, Lukas, Lizbet, and I head across campus by way of the gorgeously manicured little white-stone pathways. Flickering gas lampposts illuminate the way through rose gardens, hedges, and reflecting garden ponds, like scenes out of a Jane Eyre or Harry Potter book.
As we walk, I find myself staring at the gas lights flickering in the chill of the February night. My toe catches something, and I gasp as I sprawl forward, catching myself at the last minute. Lizbet and Lukas both lunge towards me, but I shake my head.
“I’m fine, I’m fine. Just wasn’t looking where I was going.”
The two of them glance at each other, then back at me.
“I’m fine, Lizbet,” I smile, seeing the concern roaring back across her face. But she finally nods before we keep walking.
At OHA, mostly every student lives with one housemate in very gorgeously quaint little cottages. I say “mostly” because there are exceptions; namely Lukas, Ilya, and Misha. The three of them, along with Lizbet, Ilya’s girlfriend Tenley, and Misha’s wife Charlotte, live in a sprawling, ludicrously elegant house across campus called Lordship Manor that was once home to the academy president.
I have no idea how the three Bratva heirs managed to call that place home, but they have.
Obviously, that’s where Lizbet wanted me staying while enrolled here. But, while being awake and being near her again is incredible, I wanted something else.
Or rather, I didn’t want to be tip-toed around like a small child, or a little porcelain figurine that might break.
I’ve had four years of being bathed, changed, and fed by others. Four years of darkness. Four years of not knowing what living was.
I want to live, and I want to do it myself, without being watched all the time.
The compromise Lizbet and I found was me living in one of the student cottages, but without a roommate. And I agree with that settlement. Living on my own for the first time in my life is going to be strange enough. Being around people my age, who got to grow up at their own pace over four years is going to be hard enough to navigate.
Trying to do it all while also living with a stranger seems like a bit more than I want. So, I’ll live alone, with Lizbet a five-minute walk away.
Lukas unlocks the front door to the cottage, and we all step inside.
“I’ll bring this up to your room—”
“I’ll get it, but thank you.”
He frowns as he and Lizbet share a look.
“Guys, I’m not going to break carrying a small suitcase up one flight of stairs.”
They share another look, but Lukas nods. They both want what’s best for me. But Lukas is a little better than my sister at knowing when someone needs to scrape their own knees to learn how to walk.
My sister’s hands fidget with each other as she nervously glances around the cottage.
“This is silly. Mara, there’s like four guest-rooms at Lordship Manor, let’s just—”
“Lizbet.”
She purses her lips, her face worried as her gaze snaps to mine. I smile softly.
“I will be fine, okay?”
She frowns, but she nods. “Okay. Okay,” she repeats, as if coaching herself to be at peace with that decision.
“You have your phone charger, right?”
“I do.”
“And my number is in there. And you know Lordship is like a five-minute walk that way—”
“Lord what?”
She stiffens. “Lordship—”
“Who are you, again?”
Lizbet pales until she sees the grin spreading across my lips. Lukas chuckles darkly, shaking his head as my sister jabs a finger at my giggling face.
“That is not fucking funny.”
“Lizbet, I’ll be fine. I was fourteen when I went to sleep. Not four.”
She chews on her lip. Lukas steps forward, smiling.
“We know you’ve got this. And you know we’re not far. Yeah?”
I smile. “I know.”
My sister sighs, slumping against Lukas’s shoulder before she flings herself at me and hugs me tightly.
“It’s a five-minute walk—”
“I will be fine, Lizbet.”
And I will be. This is just an experiment, anyway. I mean I don’t need to be here. If it all goes to hell spectacularly and I fail out because I can’t manage to even leave my cottage? Well, then me and my team back at St. Thomas will know what we need to work on.
But that won’t be happening. Because I do have this. I want this.
I want a life.
All I have to do is learn how to live again, navigate the “viper’s nest,” as Lizbet puts it, of OHA, and avoid Konstantin Reznikov because he gives me the chills.
And I’m quite positive I can readily do all of those things.
I’m not asleep anymore. I’m wide awake.
I hug Lizbet and Lukas once more at the door before they leave to walk across campus back to Lordship Manor. Then, for the first time in four years, I am actually, truly, entirely alone.
And I have no idea what to do first.
I put a kettle on for tea. Then I walk the modest sized, beautifully quaint cottage slowly; exploring. I head upstairs and realize I have two bedrooms to choose from. Back downstairs, I start to lug my suitcases towards the stairs.
There’s a knock at my door. I grin, shaking my head as I drop the suitcases and skip towards the door. I yank it open, laughing at my sister’s quick return.
“Wow, miss me much?”
But when I look up, my pulse skips and my words falter. My body stiffens, and the same cold feeling of claws ripping into my skin to snatch my heart that I felt that first day back in the hospital comes rushing back.
I don’t look into the warm blue eyes of my sister.
I look into the cold, gun-metal gray eyes of Konstantin Reznikov.
I stand there, frozen, staring at him as the tightness grips my heart. His cold eyes pierce through me, sucking the breath from my lungs, chilling the blood in my veins.
I quaver, my lungs trying to suck air, though none reaches them. I just stare into the gray pools staring right back at me, with the cruel smile curling at the corners of his mouth.
“Well?” He growls quietly, his voice edged in the same cold steel that his eyes are hewn from.
He steps forward, making me gasp as his tall, built frame fills the doorway. He smiles viciously at me as he grips the edges of the doorframe.
“Aren’t you going to invite me inside?”
I swallow with a dry mouth. My heart thuds slowly at my chest.
This is living. This is being awake. I can do this.
I force the fear down. I take a slow breath, and I face off with the gray-eyed devil looming before me.
And I shake my head no.
Konstantin’s cruel smile thins as it grows hungrier. His eyes flash like cold fire.
“No?” He growls.
I shake my head again.
“Why would I let you—”
“Because, Mara,” he growls thinly, his voice rumbling against me like a force of nature. He grips the doorway and leans slightly into me, leveling those gun-metal grays right into mine.
“Because I know what you did.”
2
From the rooftop, I watch her step out of the car.
My jaw tenses. My pulse simmers, as it always does when she’s close to me.
In another lifetime, perhaps things would be different. Just how like in another lifetime, the building I perched atop was once a cathedral. Now, it houses some of the Oxford Hills Academy administrative offices as well as the vaulted-ceiling dining hall. I’m sure it’s frowned upon for students to be up here. But, that rule, like most rules, were created for people who aren’t me.
People who need to exist within a construct. People who need to live within a society.
I live above that. I left constructs and society behind when I dethroned a king and took his crown.
Having your own father killed, no matter how loathsome a man he was, has a way of separating you from society and humanity at large. I think it’s fair to say I made that leap from society three and a half months ago.
But I burned my humanity away a long, long time ago.
From the shadows, lurking like a gargoyle, I let my eyes seep into her. My gaze trains on her every step, like a sniper’s scope and ready finger.
Trigger primed. Magazine loaded.
Her being here comes as no surprise, of course. There are few things about Mara Belsky that come as a surprise to me. Not anymore.
Know thine enemy.
In fact, I’ve prepared for this, and laid the groundwork for it all. She’s arriving here perhaps sooner than I would have imagined. But I’ll course correct for that.
I watch as Mara hugs a man that looks from here to be her driver. Then, she turns, and she follows her sister and Komarov across the dark campus.
My eyes follow her every step.
I look past the feelings she stirs in me. It’s something I’ve become quite adept at. I’ve spent years scorching out emotions that hinder me. Thoughts and desires that will only drag me down. And now that I sit upon a throne, those sacrifices and training are what will keep me at the top.
And alive.
Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Unflinching is the arm that swings the sword of vengeance.
Four years ago, the first domino was pushed. Lines were blurred and crossed. Machinations were set in motion.
By her.
She remembers none of it, I’m sure. I’ve read her diagnosis. I know about her amnesia following the coma. I also know that blissful ignorance doesn’t erase the crime.
It’s coldly, brutally amusing to me that she’s the one who took a bullet, when she’s the very one who pulled the trigger.
Isn’t it ironic.
Don’t you think.
I stare at her across the dark divide between us. My eyes trace over blonde locks and a petite frame wrapped in a heavy pea coat.
So innocent. So delicate. So beautiful.
My teeth grind as I purge those thoughts away.
For four years, I’ve bided my time. I’ve replayed the events a million times over. I’ve gone to war with the emotions inside of me—a crusade to torch what must be torched in order to move forward; to rise to the top.
To carve away the things she stirs in me, as if I’m surgically removing a cancer.
I want her. I want to break her. I want to be her undoing.
