Midnight Sanctuary (Bugrov Bratva #2)(10)

I get to my feet and wipe the blood off my hands. “You think I’m playing, motherfucker?” I growl. “I will take a piece of you, one inch at a time, until you give me what I want. Each will hurt more than the last. Now, where the fuck is my baby sister?”

Boris snarls at me for a second. “Your sister… oh! you mean that little slut I sold to the auction rings? That sister? She’s long gone by now.”

My body goes cold. Not the rings. Anything but the fucking rings.

“You’re lying.”

He grins again. “Am I?”

Furious, I drop my gun and start punching. I keep punching until he’s even bloodier than before. I don’t stop until someone physically pulls me off him. I’m about to whirl around and punch the asshole who stopped me before I realize it’s Nikolai.

“Brother,” he says gently, “we don’t want the bastard dead just yet.”

“I’m going to kill him one day. Slowly.”

“And I’ll be happy to help. But for right now, we need him alive.”

My fists are aching for more, but there’s no denying that Nikolai is right. I nod and he orders the men to load an unconscious Boris into the back of one of our armored jeeps.

“Make sure to secure him down in the cellar. Restrain him with everything we have. I don’t want him to be able to even blink.”

They salute and jump to carry out my orders. Meanwhile, I drag myself up the stairs and out of that nightmare house. Slumping into the seat of the lead car, I sigh and close my eyes. Nikolai joins me behind the wheel.

“Alyssa?” I ask gruffly without opening my eyes.

“She should be almost at the estate by now. I’ve ordered Stepan to put her in one of the bedrooms and lock her in.”

“No.”

Nikolai’s eyes snap to me. “No?”

“She’s proved time and time again that she can’t be trusted. I want her back in the basement and this time, I want the door locked and bolted. No one gets in or out without my permission. I don’t want Lev having access to her, either.”

Nikolai stays uncharacteristically silent.

“What?” I bark.

“Nothing. If those are your orders, I’ll see them through.”

“I feel like there’s a ‘but’ in there somewhere.”

He shrugs. “Lev has been asking for her since we brought him back home.”

“Exactly. He’s far too attached already. She’s not going to be around for very much longer and he needs to adjust to life without her.”

Nikolai falls back into silence. I decide to not let that irritate me. By the time we get to the house, Alyssa has been locked down in the basement and Boris has been confined to the shed cell with Alan.

But my head is a mess.

Polina’s still out there. A fresh new pawn circulating in the skin trade. And extracting her has just gotten ten times more complicated.

I walk into the living room and start pacing. I need to plant men in the ring. I need to get information on future auctions. I need to determine where she’s being moved. If she’s already been sold.

Fuck.

Fuck.

FUCK!

“Brother.”

I come to an abrupt stop and turn to Nikolai, who’s standing in the threshold of the door. “Take a breath,” he advises.

“You take a breath. How can you be so calm?”

“Because we can’t both be a mess right now.”

I glower at him. “I’m not—”

“Yes, you are,” he hisses. “And you need to stop being so hard on yourself. I know you feel responsible—”

“That’s because I am responsible, Nikolai. Pol and Lev, they’re my responsibilities. It was my job to keep them safe. I’m the one who exposed them to Alyssa. I’m the one who turned a blind eye when they started forming attachments with her.”

“Neither Polly nor Lev are babies anymore, Uri. You can’t control everyone all the time.”

There it is again, that word: control. Alyssa flung it at me enough times, with enough disdain, that it came to feel like a dirty word. An accusation. A curse.

“I’m not trying to control anyone; I’m trying to protect them! It’s all I’ve been trying to do for the past eight fucking years!”

Nikolai takes a deep breath. “You can’t blame the girl for this, Uri.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “Are you suggesting I’m being too hard on her?”

He doesn’t blink or back down. “She’s been through a lot. Maybe, instead of blaming her, you should go down there and talk to her.”

“You cannot be serious.”

“Listen, I’m just—”

“One minute, you’re telling me I’m too close and now, you want me to go down there and talk to her? Make your mind up, brat.”

“I get that you’re angry. And worried. I am, too. But blaming Alyssa isn’t going to change the situation. You need to talk to her. See if she can remember anything that might help us get Polly back.”

He’s making a lot of sense and it’s pissing me off. But I’m entirely too worked up right now to take his advice, good as it might be. It’s hard to accept that I’m falling to pieces. It’s harder still to accept that Nikolai is the one with a cool head on his shoulders. That maybe I might be the one who’s being unreasonable.