Taken By the Bratva Boss by Sarina Hart

Chapter Twenty-One

Olivia

His body tenses beside me and I watch him. His expression turns hard. A bolt of fear shoots through me. I’m not sitting by the man who held me so tenderly. He isn’t even the guy who showed up at the door today and I knew it. My head and heart both knew it. But like the naïve, stupid girl I’ve always been, I walked out of the house and got into the car beside him.

I slide over closer to the door while he continues to scroll through my phone. I don’t know what he saw, but whatever it was, turned him back into the man I met the first day, the one who painted the wall with Callum McKenzie’s brain matter.

Like I would actually throw myself out of a moving vehicle, I try the door handle. It’s locked because what gangster wouldn’t have his driver lock the doors of his tinted-out ride?

I’m one shallow breath from a faint or at least a good hyperventilation. And he’s still scrolling. Still scowling so deep his face might never recover.

Fuck.

“Leon…”

He glances up at me and there’s fire in his eyes. Hatred. Maybe hurt buried underneath. “You’re a fucking liar.”

“No.” I can’t manage more. This is his killer tone. I’ve heard it before.

“Are you fucking him, too?”

Oh God. “No. Leon. You’re the only man I’ve ever…” I can’t finish because his mouth is on mine, punishing, angry, bruising. I shove against him at the same time I bite his lip hard enough I can taste his blood mingling with mine.

He jerks back and wipes his mouth with his index finger. It comes away red. “You’re a liar. And a traitor. You willkeep him posted. Posted on Leon Krilov’s activities?”

Oh, fuck. Third person is never good.

“No, Leon. That isn’t what I meant.”

“And you fuck me, then run back and live with him?” His voice is thick with anger and Russian accent. “You treat men like toys, and you collude with my enemies. What does that make you, Olivia?”

God damn, Jacob. This is his mess. His fault. His lies catching up with me. “I know it looks bad, Leon, but it isn’t what you think. I promise you.” I know what he thinks I’ve done because with the way it looks, he couldn’t possibly think anything else.

“It is exactly what I fucking think, and we both know it.” His voice is a roar, but I know he won’t kill me. The same as I won’t betray him. Even though he thinks I did. Once he calms down, I’ll explain. I’ll convince him to let Jacob go. I’ll…

His anger is a presence in the seat with us. And the things I knew in my heart only a second ago, I don’t know now. Fear blooms in my chest and the trembling starts. My hands first, then my knees shake, and my stomach quivers. My breaths stutter out of me because we are headed to the waterfront. The industrial park. Not the side they use, but the other. The one shut down for years, the seedy side of lake Michigan’s Chicago.

Fuck. He’s going to kill me. I should’ve known better than to trust him. To believe he was better than I knew he was. Oh God.

My stomach churns, and I’m going to throw up. I swallow the bile back and take a slow, deep inhale of cleansing oxygen. So, what if it’s scented by the man beside me, a scent so familiar and so decadent I want to breathe him in again, but I can’t. Because that scent now means my death.

So instead of enjoying sitting beside him, every inhale a pleasure, I suck in gulps of air, too many, too fast until my head spins, and I can’t focus.

He shoves my head down between my knees. “Breathe.” I listen as he instructs me, breath for breath, exhale for exhale. When I’m better, I sit. The car is stopped, and his door is open.

I don’t fight him when he pulls me out of the car. I don’t struggle when he leads me to a side door in a graffiti painted warehouse. I don’t panic when he walks in behind me and the echo of the door is the only sound besides my footsteps on the floor.

“Leon, please. You have to listen to me.”

“To more lies?” His voice is soft now that we’re alone, but I don’t wonder if he was just playacting. He wasn’t. This is a man who knows how to control his body. Today, he slipped and let anger take him over. Someone will be punished for that, I’m sure. Probably me. Maybe Jacob. And neither thought is comforting. Although, at least Jacob has earned a portion of this ferocity.

“No. I won’t lie to you. I never lied to you.” I just didn’t run and tell him what I know about Jacob because I couldn’t. “He’s my friend, Leon.”

“And what am I?” Before I can tell him he’s the man I love, he shakes his head. “Don’t bother. I need no more lies from your lips to tell me who you are.” He nods to Adrian who takes my biceps in his hands and pushes me toward a heavy steel door.

“Leon, please.” I struggle, try to see around Adrian, try to look at Leon so he can see my fear, my sadness, my sincerity. “Leon, I’m…” Adrian shoves me into the empty room before I can finish, “Sorry.”

The floor is cold and concrete, and there’s no furniture, no windows, nothing I can use to get myself out of this mess. All I can do is sit in the darkness and wish I’d never started this mess with Leon Krilov.