Hearing another crash behind me, I twisted my head to the right to see Savin, my second guard, smash the heel of his palm against Brandon’s nose, blood immediately spraying on his shirt. The sound of crunching bone assaulted my ears.

Brandon stumbled and instinctively reached for his nose, the syringe he’d tried to inject in my arm falling to the ground.

Savin reached into his back pocket and pulled out his Russian army knife. He smiled as he held up the blade, moonlight reflecting off polished steel. Without hesitation, Savin lunged forward with the knife and drove it into Brandon’s side … right through his kidney.

Brandon called out. Not giving him any chance to retaliate, Savin thrust Brandon back against the opposite wall, forearm to throat to keep my attacker in place.

“Who the fuck are you?” Savin hissed, danger radiating from every pore.

Brandon coughed, bringing up blood that spilled from his mouth, and spat out, “No one you need to worry about.”

Savin, on hearing Brandon speak, looked back at Ilya and hissed, “Georgian.”

Savin got closer to Brandon’s paling face. “You’re the deliverer we’ve heard about? The Jakhua deliverer?”

Brandon, this time, lost his smug grin. His reaction said it all. He was exactly who Savin had accused him of being.

“What’s in the syringe?” Savin asked, but Brandon remained quiet. Savin, clearly losing his patience, sank his knife into Brandon’s lower stomach, slowly, inch by slow inch. Brandon gasped and cried out, then gritted his teeth.

He still said nothing.

“Last chance,” Savin threatened.

Brandon jerked his chin arrogantly and said, “I will not say shit to a Russian cunt like you.” He looked over at me and smiled. “A daughter of the Bratva, Talia? I wish I’d known that before, it would have made the game that much sweeter—taking down the Bratva whores, one wet cunt at a time. It would have raised the price on your body. There’s a high stake on capturing a Volkov printsyassa … a lot of buyers would pay the earth to take their revenge out on your sweet pussy.”

Out of nowhere, Savin lifted the knife and hammered it into the side of Brandon’s neck. I tried to scream out in horror. I wanted to look away. I really tried to, but Brandon’s glazing eyes remained fixed on me as the blade cut deep.

Yanking out his knife, blood pouring from the wound, Savin thrust the blade in Brandon’s neck three more times—blows to the front, back, and far side. Savin stepped away and Brandon’s gurgling body fell to the floor. A pool of blood rapidly began to form. Freeing myself from Ilya’s grip, I slapped my hand to the wall behind me and vomited all over the alley floor.

I closed my eyes and took a calming breath. But my breathing came hard, its warmth turning into a white mist as it fought with the icy air of a winter night.

Ilya crossed his hands at his front, scanning the alley for any other threats. I knew that face. He was angry with me. Ilya’s jaw clenched as he stared at me without speaking. His fair hair was ruffled and his blue eyes blazed with rage. Straightening where I stood, a heavy silence reigned.

The sound of a vehicle door slamming shut in the distance echoed farther down the closed-in alley, followed by the sound of approaching heavy feet. Savin suddenly emerged from the darkness, the same scowl of fury Ilya was wearing on his sharply featured face. His hands were now clean of blood.

The sound of gurgling stopped, and I couldn’t bring myself to look at Brandon, dead on the ground. Brandon who wasn’t really a Brandon at all. He was a Georgian. A fucking member of the Georgian mob, and I …

Christ!

I stared at them both and shook my head. They stood, stoic, silent, and unmoving. It broke me.

Minutes passed by. Neither of them uttered a word, which told me just how livid they really were. I’d snuck out of my house without them, come back here. I’d broken the rules. Judging by their furious faces, they were beyond pissed at me.

“Speak,” I demanded out of frustration, and placed my arms across my stomach. My hands had started to shake as the cold wind slapped at my bare skin. “Look, I’m—”

“Do you want to get us killed?” Ilya interrupted in a low, dangerous voice. He’d lost his byki shield. The one Bratva decorum demanded.

The question made me step back. “What? No! Don’t be stupid, Ilya, I just … I needed to get away for the night. It’s all been too much at the house. With Zaal. I needed to clear my mind—”

“Well, you got that, miss. This cunt almost made your mind real fucking clear.” He edged closer. “If your father had found out you had sneaked past us tonight, what the hell do you think would happen to us?”

Savin was watching me coldly as Ilya spoke, eyes narrowed, but I could see his agreement with his fellow guard in his harsh glare.

I was shaking “It was one night, Ilya. One night where I wanted to do what I wanted without the surveillance.”

Savin laughed, but there was only viciousness in that laugh.

“Don’t you dare laugh at me, Sav. I just wanted a night at a bar where I could be chatted up by normal guys. Where I could have a damn drink without being watched.”

What I said clearly irritated him, because he stepped forward and got right in my face, his dark features sharp. “That guy, that cunt lying behind you in a pool of his own blood, the ‘normal guy’ that was chatting you up, is a fucking trafficker. A fucking deliverer for the Jakhua Georgians.”

I opened my mouth to talk, to say anything in response, when Sav grabbed my shoulders, spun me round to face Brandon’s corpse. “That fucking dead guy there on the ground was going to drug you, and once you were drugged up to the fucking eyeballs, he was going to drag you out of Brooklyn in the back of his van and you’d be on a boat from the docks within the hour, off to fuck knows where—to whatever piece of sick shit had put in an order for a twentysomething blonde to be his bitch slave! This is the underground world of Brooklyn, Miss. There’s danger everywhere!”

As Savin spat out his answer, it dawned on me what he had said. Brandon … Brandon was a … a Jakhua trafficker? My hands reached up to my burning cheeks and Ilya took an arm in his grip to steady me.

I met his eyes. “I’m not feeling so good. I’m burning up.”

He frowned. “Did he get you with the needle?”

I shook my head, knowing I’d have felt it, when … the mojito he’d bought me …

“He bought me a drink. I think he drugged it.”

Panic began to paralyze me, when Ilya pushed, “How much, Ms. Tolstaia? How much did you drink?”

“Just a couple of sips. I barely took any of it,” I replied, and watched as my guards’ tense shoulders relaxed. I inhaled again hoping that the cold air would cool me down.

“Can we just go home? To the Hamptons,” I pleaded.

Savin, the harsher, more dangerous of my two guards, stood in front of me, blocking my path. “Promise me you won’t do that again. You won’t go anywhere without us.” His voice brooked no shit. He wasn’t really asking me not to do it again, he was straight up telling me.

“I don’t get a choice, do I? Once you tell Papa, I’ll be ordered back here to Brooklyn. When you tell him I went to the Georgian enemy in the basement, too.”