The Bratva’s Locked Up Love by Jagger Cole

 

1

Quinn

“He’s a monster.”

My heart thuds. My tongue darts out to wet my dry lips as I nod.

“Got it.”

“No, doc…” the private contractor—probably formerly USMC or something similar, shakes his head as his jaw tightens. His eyes are hard, and I realize this isn’t just a jarhead trying to scare me just because I’m “the girl.” He’s legitimately scared.

I swallow. “I’m sure it’ll be—”

“All due respect to your father, doc, but this place is hell. And we’re just the angels keepin’ the fire at bay.”

My eyes drop to the tattoo on the soldier’s neck. It’s the statue of liberty, but with enormous tits, and a penis for some bewildering reason, bending a man in a turban over and… well, yeah.

Yep, just an “angel” keeping the fire at bay. An altar boy, this one.

“I got it—”

“This is hell, and that monster in there? He’s the devil himself.”

I swallow.

“So, you got me, doc?”

I frown. At least some of them are saying “doc” now, and not just “Miss.” I mean, yeah, I’m the one woman in this entire place. And at twenty-two I’m far younger than most doctors. I get that. But I can’t help that I’m very, very smart. Just like I can’t help but correct these guys every time they decide to drop the “Doctor” title.

My eyes slide to the man’s insignia on his flack jacket. This compound and the forces that man it aren’t official US Military. They’re all contractors. But The Colonel runs this place like a military anyways, complete with ranks.

“Corporal—”

“My job is to make sure that motherfucker stays in his cell. That’s it,” he grunts with a warning tone. “Even with your father being who he is.” There’s still fear in his eyes. “We clear?”

I know what he’s saying. He’s saying when I go in there, I’m on my own. He and the M16 in his hands aren’t coming with me. And if things go badly, the priority will be subduing the inmate, then helping me.

I tremble. If there’s any part of me left to help, that is.

“We’re clear. Can I go tend to my patient now?”

His brow furrows. His eyes drop to the bag of medical supplies in my hand.

“That’s a bad idea.”

I frown. “It’s going to be a little hard to treat his wounds without it.”

“You know he could kill you with pretty much anything in that bag.”

I nod.

“Or with his bare hands.”

“So what difference does it make if I bring this, if he can kill me with his bare hands anyways?”

The soldier smiles grimly. “The speed that he does it.”

I swallow.

“Listen, Ms. Coolidge—”

“Doctor,” I say quietly.

He rolls his eyes obnoxiously. “Right, doc. Look, if you don’t mind me asking, why the fuck are you hell-bent on going in there?”

I frown. “Because the man in there—”

“Monster. Not a man.”

I sigh heavily. “Whatever you want to call him, he’s badly hurt, and I’m a doctor. So I need to get in there and help him.”

“Yeah, but why?”

“Do you see any other doctors in this place?”

He shrugs. “So let him bleed out. Motherfucker is a terrorist.”

I frown and glance down at the chart in my hands. It’s not like they ever contain intimate details about crimes or reasons that these guys are in this place. But they do tend to list affiliations, per my request. The men in this place might be terrorists, enemies of the state, and ruthless mass-killers. But I still need to know something about them in order to communicate between doctor and patient.

“It says Russian Mafia on his sheet.”

The soldier shrugs. “Russian Mob, Cartel, KKK, Jihadist. Who the fuck cares? The guys in here are the worst pieces of shit on the planet. I say fuck ‘em.”

I shrug. “Well, they’re all still people, Corporal.”

“Nah, fuck—”

“And if nothing else,” I add dryly. “Keeping them alive when they get stabbed half to death keeps them in this place, which means the big checks from the US Military keep coming, and you keep getting paid to play GI Joe!”

I smile a very plastic, sweet smile. The soldier scowls at me. But with a final grunt, he turns and taps in a code on the keypad next to the huge steel door. The bolt locks slide free with a clank. The man turns to eye me warily.

“Watch your ass in there, doc,” he mutters.

I swallow the lump in my throat and nod. I’m trying to play it cool. I’m trying to ignore the overwhelming fear swelling inside of me. But that doesn’t mean I’m not still absolutely shit-scared.

I step through the door. It shuts with a clang and a hiss of the hydraulic locking bolts behind me. I tremble and start to walk down the small metal hallway with a single dim light to the door at the far end. I rake my teeth over my lip as I glance up at the small holes in the ceiling.

This is just one of the levels of security in this place. If an inmate is somehow able to break their way out of one of these solitary holding cells—through three inches of solid steel—they’ll end up in this hallway, which will then be instantly filled with either a non-lethal gas to subdue them, or a lethal one to put them down.

About two-hundred feet above us is Yellow Creek Family Farm—a “farm” that grows no crops and raises no livestock. Also odd for a “farm,” the forty acres it sits on is surrounded by razor wire and patrolled by drones and former US Special Forces soldiers.

The barn houses a barracks. The picturesque white farmhouse is home to a state-of-the-art command and surveillance center. The random haystacks dotting the fields obscure the AI-controlled anti-aircraft guns and various other impenetrable defense systems.

All of this is paid for by Uncle Sam and the US taxpayers, they just have no idea that this place even exists. But that’s the point of an off-the-record, off-the-books “black site” like Yellow Creek.

Yellow Creek Detainment Facility doesn’t officially exist in the eyes of the US Government. But it houses the worst of the worst—guys that are too high-value for even a place like Guantanamo, or too dangerous for even a top-level ultra-max prison. The whole place is operated by a private mercenary group by the name of Coolidge Security Consultants, run by Colonel Rockland Coolidge, or just “The Colonel.”

The name similarities between me and my employer aren’t coincidental. The Colonel is also my father.

There’s a small buzzer sound. A red-light flashes once overhead, bathing the hallway in an eerie glow for a second. I tremble, but I grit my teeth. Monster or not, terrorist, or Russian mafia, or whatever this man is, he’s a patient in need of medical care. That’s all I need to think about.

I hear a heavy clank, and the door in front of me begins to slide open. With a shiver I can’t stop, I step inside.

This particular block of solitary cells are already converted for medical situations—like a surgical room with eighty percent of the equipment missing. Though the inmates in Yellow Creek are almost all separated from each other at all times, violence is still commonplace. And while I was trying to make a cold-blooded joke to the guard before, I wasn’t that off. When these guys do manage to go at each other and rip each other half to death, keeping them alive means money.

Even though he was a Navy Seal for the first half of his career, my dad doesn’t house America’s worst enemies in a state of the art detention facility under his barn out of the goodness of his heart. He does it because doing so is extremely lucrative. And cold bodies bleeding out in the showers means a downswing in that cashflow.

When I step into the cool, white, brightly lit, obviously windowless room, the door slides shut behind me. I feel my pulse thud as my eyes land on the wall across from me. A portion of it is outlined in yellow and black caution stripes.

“Doc?” The Corporal from outside’s voice rattles through the com system. “Keep by the door you just walked through. They’re bringing him in now.”

A light flashes and a harsh buzzing sound blares through the room. My hand grips the medical bag tightly. Suddenly, the portion of the wall in front of me begins to turn clockwise. First, I see the metal edge of the wall. Then the bars of the cage. And then, my breath catches as I see him.

My patient, the monster. One of the worst of the worst, in a place that houses the worst of the worst. An enemy of the US Government. A savage Russian mafia killer.

And even covered in blood from across the room, also quite possibly the most gorgeous man I’ve ever laid eyes on.

The wall section clanks into place, now rotated the full one hundred and eighty degrees. And now, facing me, is the monster himself, chained to a gurney bed, surrounded by bars. Dark hair, closed eyes, his bloodied jumpsuit almost ripped completely off, baring his muscled, tattooed chest and bulging arms.

“We’re going dark, doc,” the Corporal mutters into the mic before it goes off with a click.

I also know what that means. You’d think a place like this would have surveillance on everything, constantly. But a lot of the time, it quite purposefully doesn’t, for liability and deniability reasons. Say, for instance, when the resident doctor is operating on an inmate that might be a key US intelligence asset in terms of gainable information. If he dies on the operating table, it never happened. No video, no recordings, nothing.

It also means, if something goes wrong and the patient breaks free, my only hope is the big red button on the wall next to me, if I can even get to it. Other than that, I’m dead, and no one outside this room will even know until they check in on me in half an hour.

My eyes lock on the man across from me. His gurney bed is half propped up, with him facing me. But his eyes are closed. Even still, my heart quickens when I take in the chiseled jaw, the striking features, the grooved, honed muscles of his chest and arms, and the tattoo ink covering him.

The door to the cage surrounding him suddenly unlocks and swings open. The man stirs with a flex of his muscles and a grunt from his lips. I tremble as I take a shaky breath and step forward.

This is not my first time doing this—“fixing” one of these guys in one of these rooms. But there’s an added risk to this today. It’s not just that this man is apparently above and beyond on the bad-guy scale. It’s that I’ve been expressly forbidden from doing this anymore by my father, The Colonel.

But fuck that. I might be young, but I put the work in to medical school. I got the degree. I took the oath. I’m a doctor. I’m not going to not treat people who need to be treated. And the criminally gorgeous man lying in the bed across from me most certainly needs to be treated.

I’ve already read them, but I glance at the notes on his chart as I step into the caged enclosure. There was an altercation in the showers—this guy against three others who jumped him. The patient—the monster chained half-unconscious on the bed—suffered multiple lacerations from hand-made instruments to the ribs and back.

The three men who jumped him are dead. No hand-made instruments were used. I tremble. The guard wasn’t bullshitting me. This man really could kill me with his bare hands.

As I approach the side of the bed, the man suddenly stirs again. He groans, his face contracting in pain as he opens his mouth.

“Gde ya?”

I took exactly one level of Russian when I was in my undergraduate classes. Enough that I can eventually recognize “where am I?” from his perfect lips.

“Ya doktor.” Which is loosely and grammatically horribly “I am doctor.” I frown down at his closed eyes. “Tebe bylo bol'no.” You have been hurt. “Vy mnogo poteryali…”

“You have lost many…” I frown, trying to wrack my brain for the word for “blood.”

“Poteryali…”

“I speak English.”

I gasp, startled at the perfect, if not heavily accented English that purrs from his lips. His eyes are still closed, his face lined and scrunched up in pain.

“I need to stop the bleeding,” I say as I open the bag on the table next to me. The man just nods.

“Da. Yes.”

I pull out scissors. For a second, I can hear the guard’s voice again, about how this man could kill me with his bare hands. If he had scissors… I shiver as I push those thoughts away. He’s handcuffed to the bed anyways, after all.

I lean close to him and begin to cut away the already half-ripped-off top to his jumpsuit. It falls away, and my eyes drop to his body. A blush creeps into my cheeks as I try and remind myself that I’m a fucking professional.

Slowly, my eyes move over every inch him. The immediate guards who responded basically half-assed field dressed him. But without stitches, he doesn’t have much time. I count five wounds on his ribs, but only one looks like a puncture and not a slice. Instantly, I get to work.

The man barely even flinches when I wash down the wounds with antiseptic. He barely makes a move at all when I start to stitch him up—no topical numbing at all, per the rules of the facility. Slowly but surely, I work my way across his ribs and his abs until all five wounds are done.

“I need to roll you—”

The man rolls to his side away from me without a word. It startles a gasp from my lips. But then I catch myself and slip back into doctor mode. I wince when my eyes slide over his back. Okay, it’s a little worse back here. There are two deep punctures, and they’re both bleeding profusely. Worse, one still has a piece of a jagged looking metal shiv sticking out of it.

“This may hurt.”

The man says nothing. He hardly makes more than a grunting sound when I pull the homemade knife out of his back. He’s perfectly still as I clean both deep wounds and begin to stitch them up. I apply the antiseptic bandages and stand.

I’ve been in here for fifteen minutes, and my fears from earlier are gone. Yes, I’m sure this man is a dangerous monster. But he’s also lost a ton of blood, and he’s chained to a freaking bed. I’m not in any danger here, no matter what that Corporal said to scare me.

I turn to start putting my things back into the bag. “You’ll be given antibiotics with your meals for the next two weeks. Please do take them. Some of your wounds are deep, and they will get infected without the meds. If they start to itch or smell, you need to alert your guards so that they tell me.”

I hear the dull clanking sound of metal on metal, and the man shifting on the bed behind me.

“So, unless you have any questions, we’re done—”

My words fail me as I turn. It’s like seeing identical triplets walking down the street. Or an optical illusion. The world seems to be on pause for a second, like a glitch in the matrix. At first, it doesn’t make sense how the man who was just seconds ago half-dead and handcuffed to a gurney is now standing, looming over me.

But then suddenly, the play button is pressed. And very quickly, reality comes rushing back—and right into me.

The scream starts to bubble from my lips as the man suddenly rushes into me. But his huge hand covers my mouth, with the other around my neck as he slams me back against the bars of the cage. My pulse roars in my ears. My blood hums right beneath the surface of my skin as fear knots in my stomach.

But his grip on my neck isn’t like he’s trying to hurt or kill me. It’s just… there, like a not-so-subtle reminder of his power and strength. I tremble, shaking all over as I look up into the most intense dark eyes I’ve ever seen.

Suddenly, the hand over my mouth drops. His eyes hold mine fiercely. His mouth thins as his chiseled jaw grinds tightly. But his huge body keeps me pinned to the bars. He leans closer to me. His hand stays around my neck as my pulse throbs.

“Who are you?” he growls in a voice that sounds like it’s unused to being used.

“I—I’m…” I’m shaking. But even still, raw heat pools in my core and traitorously between my thighs. “I—I’m a doctor.”

“What is your name?” The gorgeous, dangerous man with his hand on my neck rasps. And I honestly can’t tell if my physical reaction to the question is fear or desire.

“Quinn,” I croak. “My name is Quinn…”

And then suddenly, all hell breaks loose. An alarm bell blares through the room, and red lights flash. I hear the door I came through unlock with a metallic click.

The man never pulls his eyes from mine. He never moves away. But right before the door opens, he suddenly drops his hand from my neck and steps back from me.

“Thank you, Quinn.”

The door slides open. Guards in full tactical gear come pouring in, barking orders with guns drawn. The man just smiles at me as he laces his hands behind his head and gets to his knees.

The guards swarm him like ants. They scream and hit as they tackle him to the ground. Concern creases my brow as I start to move towards them. But instantly, two other guards grab me, yank me from the cage, and quickly haul me back through both sets of metal doors.

They shut with a clank behind me. One of the two men who just dragged me out is the Corporal from before. He glares at me, his face white and his mouth thin.

“I fuckin’ told you, doc. Christ,” he spits. “Just a fuckin’ animal. A goddamn monster.”

They both turn to jog away down the hallway as more alarms wail in the distance. I slowly turn back to the metal door between me and my mysterious, dangerous, and beautiful patient.

My heartbeat thuds. My skin feels like it’s electrified. I’ve just experienced the single most terrifying instance of my life.

…There’s no way I should be this turned on about it.