She landed on her back hard, and the air left her in a rush. The crack of her skull hitting the hard wood made her ears ring, and flashes of light bounce in front of her vision. Her brother stood beside her, his sadistic smile promising all kinds of disgusting pain.
“Konstantine, God, I’m your sister.” Survival instinct reared up, but she didn’t even know why she bothered trying to reach the human side of him.
“Little sister, those are only words. Blood doesn’t matter when you betray the family. You’ll get punished like the rest of the cattle that think they can leave. You know far too much about what happens inside of the organization, and that makes you a liability. You know how we handle liabilities.”
Yeah, she did, with flame torches, screwdrivers, and a million and one other forms of torture.
“You’re a sick motherfucker.” She scooted back on her ass, but he didn’t follow her, just crossed his arms over his chest and smiled sadistically at her.
“Yeah, I am, but it’s pretty fucking fun, Kettah. I can see on your face you remember the screams coming from the basement, the sounds of the things we like to do to the ones that think they can screw over a Milokov.” A shiver worked through her, and Konstantine laughed. He got down on his haunches, his smile one of macabre satisfaction. “You have no idea the pleasure I will derive from making an example of you, Kettah, and Father has given me free reign.”
“Did you ever love me, Konstantine?” She stared into his hazel eyes, ones that matched her own. How had he turned out so cruel and evil?
“Little sister, when did you become so weak?”
Curling her hand into a fist, she didn’t think, just swung out and connected with the side of his face. He grunted in pain, and she watched in satisfaction as his lip split and blood welled at the wound. Bringing the back of his hand to his mouth and wiping the blood away, he looked down at the red streak on his pale skin. “He won’t let you take me away.”
Konstantine threw his head back and laughed, and it truly was a sickening sound. “Kettah, that lion is as good as dead. In fact, he will wish he hadn’t faked his own death and just slit his own throat once Father gets a hold of him.”
Viktor was coming? Here? Commotion came from the stairs, and her heart rate increased. Was that Maverick? Had he taken care of things downstairs, or was Konstantine right, and there were just too many of her father’s men for him to handle alone? Her brother kept chuckling, and the sound of something being dragged came closer to the bedroom. Oh God. She covered her mouth as two burly, one of them Sevastian, dragged a clearly drugged up Maverick and threw him onto the floor.
“Sorry, Boss. The fucker was a machine downstairs. He broke Sevastian’s nose, and he nearly took off my left arm.” The shifter she had never seen before let go of Maverick. “Good thinking on bringing the tranquilizer, though. Gave the asshole a triple round, and still he came after us like a pissed off rhino. Finally I hit him two more times, and he went down.”
Konstantine looked down at her, wiped his mouth once more before grinning, and turned to walk over to Maverick.
“You stay the hell away from him.” She tried to push herself up, but her brother was before her in the next second and kicked her so hard in the belly she slid across the floor. Gasping in pain and clutching at her abdomen, Kettah blinked back the tears and forced herself not to throw up. “You asshole.” The words came out of her on a wheezed breath, but that only had Konstantine and the unknown shifter chuckling. She noticed Sevastian by the door, a hard, unreadable expression on his face.
“Huh. I can smell the stink of his claim on you a mile away.” Her brother laughed again. “Not that it wasn’t a little hard in tracking you down once we got to this shitty little down. I’ll give the lion credit, he did a pretty good job of hiding from us for this long, but once we started asking around for the lion shifter, it seemed the only person they knew that fit that description was a Maverick. Hell.” Konstantine looked around. “Looks like he has a pretty nice setup here. Hiding like a coward when he should have just been a male and come to us if he wanted out.” Her brother shook his head. “To fake your own death, use the body of a druggie lion shifter, and was smart enough to make it look like him that burned up in that crash…” He gave her a hard, unforgiving look. “Frankly, it pisses me the fuck off.”
Kettah pushed herself up until she was sitting. “Let’s remember that he could have killed you where you slept, Konstantine. All of you assholes in fact.” She looked at the other two men and snarled. Her cat was right there, ready to protect the male she cared about immensely. He was lying on the floor, his hands twitching, but the tranquilizers that had been injected into him were potent and rendering him without function. His eyes were open, and she knew he could see everything, but couldn’t do anything. Oh God, she had to protect him, had to make sure that even if she died Maverick would be okay. But how could she make that happen when she couldn’t fight off one, let alone three male shifters? Before anyone could say another word, the sound of steady footsteps getting closer and closer had her looking toward the broken door that hung from the hinges, and everything in her screamed when her father walked in. He looked so proper with his pressed grey pinstripe suit and his silver gleaming cufflinks. He glanced around the room with clear disgust, and when his gaze landed on her, and then on Maverick, his smile grew.