Page 10 of Forced & Owned By the Bratva Boss

“You know I don’t believe in coincidences. Someone tipped them off, and I’m going to find out who. Until then, keep the Mexicans in check. We need to regain their trust, and they won’t respond well to duress. It’ll give them more reasons to withdraw, and a war is the last thing we want right now.”

Ruslan nods once, and I know he understands completely.

Faint bass from the nightclub vibrates through the damp concrete beneath the soles of my shoes, thumping in matching rhythm with the cold anger ticking in my chest.

I glance around the empty lot, then raise a brow. “Where’s the girl?”

Ruslan opens his mouth and, as if on cue, Sergei and two of my other men emerge from the rear exit of the building, dragging Audrey between them.

They have her by both arms, their grips unyielding. With a synchronized grunt, they shove her forward.

She stumbles into the open space, her heels clicking sharply against the pavement before she catches her balance.

Sergei and the boys immediately fall back, taking up their stances a few meters behind her, with their hands crossed and their eyes on alert.

They leave her to me.

I step forward, closing the distance between us, and corner her against the wall.

The light from the club’s sign spills faintly into the alleyway, cutting through the darkness. It catches the edges of her hair, haloing her in a glow that brings back memories of the time I approached her in Cascade’s corridor.

I don’t let the thought linger. I invade her personal space until I can feel the warmth radiating off her skin in the cool night air.

I reach out, roughly grabbing her chin with one hand, and force her face up.

About a year ago, she would have shrunk under my gaze. But not tonight.

“I warned you, didn’t I?” I growl. My thumb presses hard against her jawline. “I told you never to show your face again around me or my clubs. So what the fuck do you think you’re doing here?”

Instead of flinching, she lifts her chin higher, leaning into my grip rather than pulling away. She stares back at me defiantly, as if she completely belongs in my space.

Something has shifted. Audrey is different now—harder, entirely composed, a far cry from the amateur bartender who once mistook my attention for tenderness. The vulnerability I admired is completely gone.

“Trying to work? Because that’s what I was doing before your goons came to grab me like I’m a piece of meat.”

I tighten my grip on her jaw, pulling her closer. “Don’t do that shit with me, Audrey. Don’t fucking play dumb. You’ve done it once, remember? You thought you could ruin me by bringing down Cascade.”

Audrey smiles. It’s quick and wide, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Oh, that one, I did. I accept it wholeheartedly. Too bad you’re a corrupt asshole who paid his way out of facing the consequences.”

I narrow my gaze. “That smart mouth could get you into trouble, you know?”

“No, I don’t know.” She smirks. “Unlike you, I’ve got clean hands. I don’t have truckloads of skeletons hidden in my closet. I know you like to believe the world revolves around you, Igor. Newsflash: it doesn’t. I’m not here because of you.”

I try to read her eyes, but they’re guarded.

My annoyance sparks, growing more intense by the minute. “So it’s a coincidence that you end up working the bar during the grand opening of Velour? You think I’m stupid?”

“You really want me to answer that?”

“Audrey.”

“I didn’t call the police, Igor,” she says.

Her voice is calm. There isn’t a single tremor in her tone, no pleading, and no tears in her eyes, unlike before she stormed out of my hotel room one year ago.

And now, her utter composure unsettles me far more than her panic ever could.

“I’d suggest that you and your boys go figure out who ratted you out, because it certainly wasn’t me,” she says, and makes a move to step past me, to break the suffocating proximity, but I don’t let her.