Page 60 of The Bratva's Bounty

Guess my brother decided to be utterly stupid today. He got his scraggly ass all up in my face while the poor girl who had been servicing him scrambled out of the room. "No, you listen here." I didn't budge or flinch as he spat in my face. "You do not belong here, so you leave before someone throws you and your loser thug heads out."

Now, I did move when he decided to lay his hands on me and shove at my shoulders. I quickly caught myself before I could trip on my own feet, and I struck back. I felt no guilt in backhanding my younger brother. Unlike me, he fell to my feet with one strike. "Lev, I'm fine. Put the gun away." I could see Lev's outstretched hand pointing a gun in my brother's direction in my peripheral.

Looking down at my brother with a dead expression, I nodded toward the door. "Leave and be lucky I'm not picking my bone with you today, or possibly ever because you're not worth a second of my time."

Sure, my younger brother was a brat, and I didn't like him, but I didn't really have anything against him. Unfortunately for him, he was a product of our parents. He couldn't help how they raised him, and I definitely had no say in them raising their damn golden child. And maybe I held out a little hope for him in the end because I think deep down, he had the potential to be a good man; he just needed to get his ass kicked and set straight and removed from my parents.

That hope was short-lived, though. Getting back up to his feet, he got in my face again. "You are such a bitch. You know that? Always walking around like you own everything, that you are the shit." His seething face was inches from mine, letting me smell the alcohol and weed on him very clearly. "You're just a selfish cunt who wants everything for herself. I mean, you can easily create another company or give me some money to help me start my own, but no! You refused to help your own brother start off a good life!"

Confused, I lightly furrowed my eyebrows together and opened my mouth to speak, only to have my brother silence me with a finger to my face. "No! Don't you dare try to gaslight me and shit." He scoffed spitefully. "And, of course, when things don't go your way, you through a bitch fit and ruin things for all of us." Turning on his heel, he walked away a few steps before whirling back around to continue his nonsense.

"Would it have been so bad to marry Phi? He would have given you the damn lavish life ya wanted, given you more companies to be a tyrant over, but no, you wanted to be a stupid 'I don't need no man' feminist and didn't even show up to your own wedding." Throwing another accusing finger at me. "You have any idea how much shit we got from them? How much money we lost? How much shame was brought upon us?"

Yeah, color me confused because I truly had no clue, not even a shred, about what he went on about. "Are you high? Drunk?" Was that the reason for his outburst?

Before I could question my brother, a new voice took the spotlight from us. "Liam! That's enough!" Lazily, I turned my head over to the doorway, where my red-faced father stood with my mother right behind him. "Leave! Now!"

Liam instantly apologized, bowed his head, and left with his tail tucked between his legs.

Fucking coward.

Taking a deep breath to recenter myself, I pulled the jacket off the back of the desk chair and set it on the seat. After seeing what gets done in this chair, no way would I sit on it without some kind of barrier. Hell, I wanted to burn my eyes after seeing the initial scene, and I was sure that these clothes would end up in a bleach bath or in a fire pit once I got home.

Suffocating silence filled the room, following the doors slamming shut. Fora long while, I sat there, glaring at my parents with spiteful, dead eyes. "I would say I love what you've done to the place, but lying is unbefitting of a humble woman," I snarked at them with a fake smile. "But, who am I kidding." Dropping the act, I let the loathing edge inside me sharpen my voice. "I'm not a humble woman."

Scowling deeply, I propped an elbow onto the desk and leaned my head onto my hand, and my other hand drummed at the desk's surface. "Since everyone's so convinced that I'm such a bitch, then I might as well start acting like one." I scoffed, shaking my head disapprovingly at my parents, who stood there in a brooding silence. "Igor Petrov," I demanded with a hardened expression. "And don't you dare feed me some bullshit of 'oh, I don't know what you're talking about' and shit because I know you've been meeting him in secret, and I have proof of it. So, start entertaining me before I let Angel handle you two."

Slow steps interrupted the silence in the room as Lev moved next to me. "Talk," Lev demanded menacingly from beside me. "Now!"

My parents flinched at Lev's raised voice. My mother started stammering for a split second before my father silenced her with a hand in her direction. "How dare you," my father started, taking a step in my direction, only to stop when the men who surrounded him drew their guns at him. "You have no right to trespass and demand things of us."

"Igor. Petrov. Now," I repeated, not wanting to engage in useless conversation with them. "Why are you meeting with him? What is he doing here in Nespin? What does he want?"

"That is none of your business." My father stood firm, not running his mouth. "You're wasting your time, so unless you're going to tell me that you're coming back and going to be the obedient daughter you're supposed to be, leave."

Well, this was going how I somewhat expected.

Forcing out a short, ridiculing laugh, I shook my head. "You fucked over my life one too many times." Leaning back in the chair, I defied them with an arrogant look. "You already have everything I owned in name, so why even need me back?" I questioned in a bored voice. "And this is your last chance to talk. If you don't, then Isuggest you start getting used to the idea of living in a three-by-eight-foot room."

When I was met with another stretch of silence, I sighed heavily. "Fine. Have it your way." Lifting a finger, I signaled the men to act. "Cuff 'em, and we'll take them to The Catacombs."

Needless to say, my parents weren't too thrilled being walked out like perpetrators. No matter how much they protested, though, they wouldn't give me what I wanted, even when I gave them one last chance before they were thrown into the car.

"Wait," I half shouted at my men, making them stop right before they put my mother into the car. "Put her in mine and Lev's," I commanded, nodding toward our vehicle.

"Martha! Don't—"

My father's shouting became incoherent after I slammed the car door on him. "Oh, shut it!" I hissed under my breath.

The fake smile I flashed my mother would've put a snake to shame. "Let's go for a drive, mother."

If anyone between my parents were to break, it would be my mother. The only problem was my father, who controlled her. Not to say she was a good person without him around because she wasn't, but she was easier to manipulate without my father to block any attempts.

As expected, my mother trembled like a leaf in the wind the moment we started driving in a dead silence. "You know," I spoke up after we left the city limits. "I wonder how long it'll be before Liam's body turns up in the morgue. I mean, without mom around to feed him and tend to him, how is he going to survive? All that booze and drugs will get to him faster without anyone around to help curb his habits." My eyes glanced up at my mother's reflection in the rearview mirror. "I say the company bombs and tanks within three days max, and it'll just all blow up real quick after that."

No one at the damn company was loyal to my parents, at least not without the right incentive, which they wouldn't receive with my parents locked away in our desert prison. "Actually, it might be less than that." I sighed in disinterest. "It'll only take me an hour or two tops to completely drain everyaccount you have in existence while I have some men tear your homes apart from the foundation up."

I wasn't serious about everything I spoke into existence. It was all to scare my mother into spilling about Igor and whatever else they had up their sleeves. "No money, no home, no company, just what will your poor Liam do besides drown his sorrows until his heart stops? And what will you have to come back to if you ever live through this?"