Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 92160 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 461(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 307(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92160 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 461(@200wpm)___ 369(@250wpm)___ 307(@300wpm)
Anissa Laurent is a ghost—a master of deception, a woman who has slipped through the cracks of the underworld. Untraceable. Untouchable. Unclaimed. Until me.
I made it my life’s mission to find her, drag her back where she belongs, and punish her for her betrayal.
I traced every false identity until I found her, but I took my time. I studied the way she breathes, the way she moves, what she loves, and what she hates.
She thought she could run. She thought she could hide. She thought she could get away with betraying my family.
But I’m not a man who lets go of what’s mine.
She was meant to be broken, to be owned, meant to carry my mark in the most primal way possible. I won’t just take her body—she’ll have my baby, too.
But I didn’t expect her to be as broken as I am. I didn’t expect her to fight like she has nothing left to lose. And now, I don’t just want to cage her—I want to own her.
She’ll curse me. She’ll hate me. She’ll claw and bite and scream my name in fury and in pleasure. But in the end, it doesn’t matter. Because there is no escape from her past… and definitely not from me
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter 1
MATVEI
Branding is not the same level of pain as a tat, and I don’t know why I ever let Rodion convince me otherwise.
But this isn’t just my brand. It’s my vow to swear my soul to the Bratva, my promise to give every ounce of my being to my Bratva kin.
I sit on a stool, molars locked, my feet hooked under the rungs so I don’t topple off. Fucking hell.
“How’s that pain, bro?” Rodion, my younger cousin and best friend, stands a few feet away, strategically out of my reach, his arms crossed on his chest.
“Feels like ink,” I mock. I glare at him. “I’m gonna kick your fucking ass.”
It doesn’t feel like ink. It feels like penance.
Rafail, the head of the Kopolov family Bratva and my oldest cousin, shakes his head. “He’s due,” he mutters.
Vadka presses his lips together, a look of concentration on his face. I look away as he presses the brand into my back. I close my eyes and try to mentally transport the fuck out of here, but it doesn’t work. The pain is too raw, too vivid. My throat burns from swallowing a scream, the sickening stench of seared flesh filling the room. Someone makes a retching sound.
“What’d he tell you?” Vadka says, doing a piss-ass job of hiding his amusement.
I exhale through my nose. “Said it felt like a tat.”
Vadka snorts but keeps his hand still. “You should definitely kick his ass for that, but you’re the dumbass who believed him. How is a prickling needle the same as a hot iron scarring your flesh?”
If a tat is a paper cut, a brand is severing a limb.
Jesus.
The pain makes sweat dot my brow. I have to take my mind off this.
So instead… I think of Anissa.
The woman who betrayed my family. The woman who’s mine.
Anissa fucking Laurent.
The runaway. The ghost. The girl who managed to slip the noose off her neck and vanish into thin air like a goddamn myth. But my mind is a vault of every detail I’ve gathered over the years I’ve tracked her.
Sister to Polina Kopolova, my pakhan’s wife. Both of them pawns in a brutal game of life and death, and neither knew of the other’s existence. Anissa still doesn’t.
She’s sometimes blonde, sometimes auburn, sometimes short or dyed black. Her eyes are a striking blue but cold. Always analyzing. Watching. She looks at the world as if it’s a threat to her.
I want to be the one who makes her look that way.
Her mouth—full lips that smirk like she knows every secret you’ve ever kept, smug because she’s clever enough to wipe out full identities. And just above those pouty lips, she has a birthmark I’m obsessed with. I imagine resting my finger there when I finally have her pinned beneath me.
“The next part is the hardest. Breathe,” Vadka reminds me when he lifts the larger brand, so hot I can see steam rising from it in the cool basement air.
“Fuck,” Rodion says, paling. Maybe he’s the one making the sound like he’s about to vomit. I imagine the satisfying feeling of my fist connecting with his jaw.
I close my eyes and breathe through my nose. The problem is, it isn’t just the pain, but the way the smell of burnt flesh brings back the worst memory of my life, the one I try to bury.
I remember the way the walls of The Cottage basement absorbed the sounds of my brother’s screams, the cement floor slick with his blood. I stood, my arms crossed on my chest as cold decision settled in my veins. My brother betrayed us. I had to watch him die. My younger brother, the one I had protected and half raised, the one who I’d give my own life for, committed the unforgivable sin of betrayal. He traded his blood for a pocket full of promises from our enemies.
And now, I’m hunting down the girl who made betrayal look easy.
She ran from my pakhan, made a mockery of our family, and then joined forces with our enemies. Made the whole world think we were weak.
Just like my brother.
Gleb hung in front of us, wrists raw and bleeding from the cuffs—a living warning of what happens when you break the Vorovskoy Mir, the Thieves’ Code.
“Tell us the three laws you took a vow to,” Rafail said. When we were younger, Rafail acted as the big brother for all of us. He was stern and unyielding, our guide and friend. Now he was our pakhan, the acting leader of our Bratva, the one who called for the execution of his cousin. My brother.
And I vowed I would watch every brutal, soul-tearing second.
I’d failed my younger brother. It was on me to teach him to obey the law of the Bratva. I was the one who taught him how to ride a bike, how to smoke a joint, how to fuck a girl well and good and keep her coming back for more. I was the one who bailed him out when he fucked up, but that night—that night, I was the one who burned his tats from his flesh before he faced the ultimate punishment for his sins against us.