Read Online Dancing for the Badman (Russian Bratva Book 3) by Hayley Faiman - Free Book Online Page A

too young of an age; she has never known who she is, never known her place. Had she known, she would be stronger. I wish I felt less for her because of her weakness, but I don’t.
    I still fucking want her.
    I walk over to the fridge as the girls pack, and I open the freezer. I stand stock still, staring at the contents of Tatyana’s freezer. Beluga Noble Vodka.
    “Sometimes, I just wanted to remember you,” Tatyana says softly from behind me.
    I turn around, releasing the door as I do, and I just stare at her.
    Unmoving.
    Silently.
    “It doesn’t mean anything,” she continues, losing eye contact and glancing down at her feet.
    I step up to her, wrapping my hand around the side of her neck and my other around her waist. I squeeze her neck so that she’ll tip her head back to look at me. When she does, I see her green eyes shining.
    It squeezes my heart and makes my stomach clench. This beautiful woman in front of me. This woman I don’t know if I can ever forgive. This woman I don’t know if I could ever love again, or if I ever stopped loving in the first place. I am so conflicted—but I know that she is mine.
    “It does. It means something, Tati,” I whisper before my lips brush against hers.
    “It’s just vodka,” she murmurs.
    I slide my hand into the back of her hair and tighten my fingers in her strands, forcing her to look at me.
    “It is not. It is my favorite brand, and it is the type I drank when we were together. It is a memory you kept all of these years. It means something,” I say.
    “When I would miss you, when something would happen and my first reaction was to pick up the phone to call you, I’d take a shot. It comforted me. It made me think of all those times you would come over, get drunk, and just be. You think I left you because I didn’t love you? I didn’t. I was scared. I ran scared, Kirill. I never stopped loving you .” Her last words are on a whisper, and it guts me.
    I want to believe her, but I’m not sure that I do.
    Yet I still feel sad at her confession.
    “You won’t have to miss me anymore,” I mutter, unsure of what else to say.
    “But won’t I?” she asks. I stare at her, unable to answer her question. “You aren’t the same man, and what you want our relationship to be, it isn’t anything remotely near what it was.”
    “I cannot give you what we had, Tati,” I explain with a sigh as I step back from her, releasing her completely from my grasp.
    “I’m ready.” Kiska’s sweet voice floats through the apartment, halting our conversation. I’m glad for it. Grateful, even.
    I do not want to finish this.
    Tatyana thinks she has some semblance of control over her life, but she doesn’t. Another thing her father failed at teaching her when he went back to Russia while she was at such a young age, abandoning her.
    She has no control .
    She has no say in what happens to her. She is mine. She has been mine since I was fourteen years old and penned my name to the contract that made her so. I decided my fate with nothing more than a photograph of my intended. A cute, blonde, eight-year-old girl.
    Tatyana Orlova, the daughter of a very powerful Pakhan in Russia. One of the most powerful Pakhan’s . At the time, I did it because my father promised me it was a lucrative business deal. I would quickly rise as a leader, solidifying our families together and ensuring my place in the Bratva . A printsessa at my side.
    Later, when I met her and seduced her, I was grateful for the match. Tati was everything I wanted in a woman. She was soft and sweet, gentle and pure—mine through and through. When I thought she was dead, I was beside myself with grief. I loved her so deeply and she took all of that away from me.
    Seeing her again has resurfaced all of those feelings of anger and resentment. I want to say that eventually I will be able to forgive her, that I will not hate her so deeply, but I don’t think ten years of anger can ever truly fade away.
    Tatyana is