Brawn: Lethal Darkness MC by Leah Wilde

door and jammed my key in the lock. “C’mon, c’mon,” I begged, “open up, please.” It finally gave way and I burst inside as Katy drove away.
     
    I shut the door behind me and paused for a moment to listen. The house was deathly still and completely dark. No lights shone on the ground floor. So far, so good. I just had to make it to my room and climb into bed. Then I’d be safe enough to sleep for a while before I had to wake up and interpret the insane twists my life had taken over the last twenty-four hours.
     
    My thoughts were a swirling mix of my father, the biology tests looming in front of me, and, underneath it all, Micah. What was I supposed to make of everything that had happened with him? I shook my head. That would have to come later. For now, safety lay in my room. Everything between here and there screamed danger.
     
    I looked up from the bottom of the stairs. From what I could see, the light in my father’s office wasn’t on. I slipped off my heels and crept up, one stair at a time, craning my neck to see if there was anything moving on the second floor.
     
    My feet made shushing noises in the carpet. I reached the top landing. No movement. No light. My room was at the end of the hall. I relaxed and let out a long, whistling sigh, letting the tension seep out of my shoulders. Taking the five long steps to cross in front of my father’s office to the door of my bedroom, I reached out a hand to grab the knob.
     
    But it opened before I could get there.
     
    My father stood framed in the doorway. He was a massive, glowering hulk. I could almost swear his eyes were shining through the darkness. His arms were crossed in front of his chest and I could see one angry vein thudding in his forehead. When he spoke, his words were brutally short and vicious.
     
    “You’re in a lot of trouble, Paris.”

Chapter 8
    Micah
     
    Four Months Later
     
    “Micah, my good friend,” said the man in a thick Russian accent. He spread his arms out wide to pull me into a hug. “Welcome, welcome,” he said, patting me on the back. “It is good to see you. It has been very long.”
     
    “Good to see you, too, Sergei,” I said.
     
    “Come, sit, please.” He pointed at the chair across from his desk as he returned behind it and settled in, crossing his hands over his fat belly. Snapping his fingers at the pale young teen standing at attention on the far wall, he barked, “Alexei, go get a drink for my old friend, Micah. Vodka.”
     
    “Little early for vodka, isn’t it?”
     
    “Never too early for vodka.”
     
    “You’re a Russian through and through,” I remarked.
     
    “Ah, what can I do? It is in my blood.” He leaned forward in his seat and eyed me up and down. “You don’t look so well,” he said bluntly.
     
    “Yeah, well, you look like shit, too, you fat old man,” I retorted sarcastically.
     
    Sergei chuckled. The chains looped across his chest bounced as he did, dazzling in the light from overhead. We were sitting in his office in an underground bunker on the far side of town. It looked like an out of business deli from the street level, but anyone who knew anything about the shadier businesses that ran through this city knew that more money and power was concentrated in the Bratva’s headquarters than just about anywhere else that wasn’t the Lethal Darkness clubhouse or that rotting dump the Knives of Fury called home.
     
    He patted his stomach and shrugged. “It is true. Perhaps I am a bit heavy these days. But, that is the life we lead, no? I drink the best liquor, eat the best food, fuck the prettiest women. I have no complaints if I must gain a few pounds as a result. Cost of doing business, you might say.”
     
    Nothing he said was surprising. Sergei had always been a man of appetites, to put it nicely. To put it not so nicely, I might have said that he was a fat, greedy pig. But saying such a thing to the man’s face was a quick path to more pain and suffering than I