Twilight Sins (Kulikov Bratva Book 1)

Nikandr is standing on the sidewalk in front of the apartment building Sergey led me to. I pull along the curb and roll down the window.

“Aw, shit,” he says, assessing Sergey. “I hate when you have fun without me, brother.”

It wasn’t fun. Not for a single second.

Usually, I’d relish punishing someone who deserves it the way Sergey does. But my mind was elsewhere. With Mariya.

And Luna.

“I can’t go,” Sergey groans. He slumps down in the passenger seat. “I’ve lost too much blood.”

“Let me see.” Nikandr grabs his hand and yanks it to the window. Sergey groans as Nikandr tosses it back to him. “You’re not gonna bleed out from a few missing fingers, fucker. Be grateful it wasn’t your dick.”

Never say never. The night is young.

“How are you here, Nik?”

I should have called Nikandr when I left the club. I wasn’t thinking clearly. My head hasn’t been on straight since I saw that bruise on Luna’s face.

“I tracked Mariya’s phone here. She’s inside somewhere.”

Her phone is inside, at least. I’ve lived in this bloody world for too long to have hope without proof. I’m not going to assume the best-case scenario until I see Mariya alive with my own two eyes.

“Looks like I didn’t need this deadweight, after all,” I say, hitching a thumb towards Sergey. “I could’ve left him to rot in the alley like he deserves.”

Sergey starts to say something, but Nik leans across him to look into the backseat. “Hold up. Where’s Luna?”

“Home,” I say flatly. I don’t let my face show all the shit burning up inside of me when it comes to that infuriating woman.

Sergey struggles to sit up, his eyes suddenly wide. “I’m not deadweight. I’ll take you to the apartment. Right to it. It will save you time.”

Nikandr snorts. “I thought you were too weak to walk?”

“I want to help!”

“You mean you want to keep the rest of your limbs where they are.” I walk around the car and drag him through the door. “But what you want doesn’t matter. Take me to my sister. I will decide what happens next.”

Sergey limps through the rotting apartment building as if I cut off his toes instead of his fingers. There are yellow water stains on the drop ceiling tiles and molding trash accumulating in the corners. The whole fucking place should be condemned.

After tonight, I might make sure of it.

“I can’t believe Mariya didn’t run screaming when she saw this place,” Nik mutters.

“She probably didn’t have that choice.”

He curses under his breath, realizing the same thing I did the moment I walked into the alley and Mariya wasn’t there.

Our little sister is rebellious. She wants to dabble in danger and test her limits—but she isn’t stupid. She wouldn’t have left with some guy she didn’t know, especially with Luna waiting inside for her.

If she left Suono, it wasn’t because she wanted to.

“The list of people to kill grows longer every day.” Nik sighs.

We climb a worn set of stairs and Sergey stops in front of the first apartment on the second floor. He’s cradling his bloody hand in his shirt and tips his head towards the door. “In there.”

“This is it?” Nik asks. “You’re sure?”

Sergey double checks the apartment number. “I’m sure.”

I shove him into the door. “Knock. Tell him it’s you.”

He reluctantly lets go of his left hand and knocks softly on the door. “Hey, Ryder, man. It’s me.”

Nik is tucked against the wall next to the door, his gun ready. I wait on the other side.

“Again,” I bark when no one answers.

Sergey knocks harder. “Ryder! Open up!”

There’s movement from inside the apartment. Then a deep voice. “Come back later.”

Nik elbows Sergey. “Open the door.”

Sergey tries the knob and shakes his head. “It’s locked.”

“I don’t have fucking time for this,” I growl.

I kick Sergey over to Nik, who snares him by the neck so he doesn’t run. Then I angle back and drive my shoulder and all of my weight straight into the door.

The door frame is as rundown as the rest of the apartment building, so when I hit it, the trim splinters and rips away from the wall and we find ourselves staring through the now-open door into Ryder’s apartment.

It’s small. Which means it doesn’t take more than one glance inside to see a large man with his hands all over my sister.

He turns towards the door and Mariya slams her fists into the man’s chest. “Yakov! Help!”

The tremor in her voice is a shot of adrenaline straight to my chest. It’s that day at Nikandr’s soccer game all over again.

My father bleeding out in my arms. Nik and Mariya looking to me for help, for answers.

They saw horrors they shouldn’t have seen that day. Things I should have protected them from.

Just like it was my job to protect Mariya from this.

From him.

I leap over the shattered remains of the front door and land with both feet in the middle of the living room.

Ryder scrambles away from my sister, both hands in the air. “Whoa, man. This your girl? She didn’t tell me. I didn’t know nothing!”

He’s in his thirties, at least. He knew Mariya was way too young for him, even if he didn’t know anything else.

“She’s my sister,” I snarl.

Nik moves in behind me, Sergey still in tow, and grabs Mariya from the couch.

“He forced me into his car,” Mariya sobs, clinging to Nik. “I didn’t want to go.”

Ryder’s eyes go wide. He shakes his head. “She wanted it. I wasn’t going to fuck her anyway. Just fool around. We were just⁠—”

Every ounce of rage I’ve swallowed down in the last hour rises up like a fucking tsunami. There’s no controlling it.

I wrench Ryder off of the couch. He grabs at my hands, trying to fight me off, but he doesn’t stand a fucking chance.

My vision is red as I slam his head down on the corner of the only sturdy-looking piece of furniture in the room. Blood splatters across the surface. Rivulets of red drain onto the stained carpet. The coffee table groans with each blow of his skull against the wood, but it doesn’t buckle.

So I do it again.

And again.

And again.

Ryder’s body is limp and lifeless before I finally force myself to stop.

Even as I throw his corpse on the sofa, the fury in me is nowhere near spent.

When I turn around, Mariya isn’t looking at the dead man behind me or the blood. She’s used to it. More accustomed to the violence than I wish she was. There are tear tracks on her face, but she isn’t crying anymore. Now, her eyes are locked on mine.

“Where is Luna?” she croaks.

“What in the fuck were you thinking, Mariya? You could have been killed.”

She frowns. “He wasn’t going to kill me.”

“Raping you isn’t exactly a prize, sis,” Nik adds. “This is bad.”

The failure that tonight could have been plays on repeat in the back of my head. If I’d been a few minutes late getting to the club. If I’d wasted another minute yelling at Luna in the alley. One wrong turn. One missed clue. And bam, fucking disaster.

“They never should have made it past the gate,” I growl to Nik.

He clenches his jaw tight. As head of security, that was his failure as much as mine. He knows it. “I’m going to handle it. They’ll tighten up. They thought Luna was allowed to exit.”

Again, her name shifts uncomfortably inside of me.

“I lied to her,” Mariya says quickly. “She didn’t know. I told her I had your permission. It isn’t her fault.”

I ignore Mariya and look to Nik. “Take her home.”

“Yakov!” she snaps. “Listen to me. It wasn’t her fault. I lied to her about⁠—”

“Go home!” I yell so loud my voice rattles the walls.

Mariya jerks back, eyes wide. She retreats into Nikandr’s chest and my brother whips her towards the door.

The doorway is still a mangled mouth of shredded wood, so there isn’t much privacy. But this will do.

It’s enough for me to finally, mercifully, crack open the box in my chest. The black beast slips out and curls around my heart just as I curl my hand around Sergey’s neck.

The man has been cowering in the corner since I bashed his friend’s skull in. Now, he’s dangling from my grip, whispering what sounds like a prayer.

“If there’s a God, He turned His back on you a long time ago, my friend.”

I throw him at the bloodied coffee table. He hits the floor and rises instantly to his knees. “Please. Please. I never touched your sister. I didn’t want any of this to happen. It was all him—Ryder. It was his idea.”

“And where was Ryder when you had your hands on my woman?” I snarl.

Sergey is weeping too hard to form words. There’s none that could save him, anyway.

I grab his ruined left hand and splay it wide. . The stumps of his fingers have stopped bleeding, but they’re red and throbbing. When I stomp on it again, though, the blood starts running anew.

“Where was Ryder when you had your hands under her dress?” I hiss, twisting his left wrist until it snaps.

He’s screaming so loud he can’t hear me. It’s fine. I don’t care anymore.

“Ryder wasn’t there when you punched her in the face and forced her against a wall. Did you use this hand?” I ask, picking up his right hand.

Before he can answer, I jam my gun to his palm and pull the trigger.

Gunpowder and flesh explode in the small space. The smell of burning skin fills the air.

Between the gunshot and Sergey’s screaming, one of his neighbors might have called the cops. Or, given the neighborhood, maybe not.

Either way, I’m done with him.

His mouth is forming around what would be his final words, but I press the gun to his head. With one final shot, Sergey slumps to the floor, finally rendered into the useless bag of flesh I always knew he was.

I look down at Sergey’s broken body, but the beast in my chest doesn’t go back to its cage. It curls tighter around my heart, filling my lungs. It grows bigger, wanting more.

Wanting her.

But I already gave myself over to that. I took that path and it led us here.

I won’t follow it again.