Page 28 of The Bratva’s Stalked Pregnant Bride

Nothing to warrant ordering a hit on him and taking care of things neat and tidy, but I was still digging, not convinced I wouldn’t find a reason after I saw firsthand what he was capable of. That alone had me rethinking the hit, or better yet, taking care of him myself, but I was just getting settled in with my American family. I didn’t want to rock the boat, and Rand was powerful enough in his own right that his disappearance would be highly investigated.

On the ride into the restaurant, it was hell pretending I was ignoring Laurel, and I got into my office as quickly as I could before I gave away our marriage. Right now, anyone who heard me holler that she was my fiancée in order to shock some sense into Rand believed I did it solely for that reason. I still hadn’t decided when or how to announce it, and it was the least of my worries.

To distract myself from the information dead end on the loser wine merchant, I called CJ to see if she could dig up anything more for me. Also, I tentatively asked if she’d found anything new on Laurel.

“Nothing interesting,” she said. “Straight A student in high school, didn’t go to college, previous work experience at the place in Virginia you already know about, and I found some evidence that she used to work for Canyon Vines, but somebody tried to scrub her from their website.”

“I know about that,” I said. “It’s nothing.”

“Are you sure?” CJ asked. “Why would she lie about it and try to cover it up? Nothing good ever comes from lying.”

“She cleared that up for me,” I said, though I still wasn’t completely sure that I was getting the whole story.

“Confront her about it,” CJ said. “She’s your employee. You have the right to know.”

“About that,” I said, asking her to have Mat join so I could fill them in on the latest upgrade to my relationship with Laurel.

There was a long silence before CJ started to say something, but Mat quickly shushed her. Neither of them thought it was a good idea, but Mat at least had no room to talk about how I acquired my wife.

“Can you two keep this between us for now?” I asked. Without going into any detail about my little white lie about my father, I told them I was going to eventually announce it to the rest of the family as being real.

“I hope you’re right about Laurel not being part of anything,” CJ said, sounding concerned. “For your own sake.”

“Oh, I’ll be fine,” I said. If Laurel was truly involved with any groups that were trying to take out the Fokins, I’d deal with it when there was proof. And all I could do was wait and see what turned up with CJ’s advanced search, or grill Laurel myself.

Since she had opened up to me about growing up in a dysfunctional household, and after what kind of hell I could assume her ex put her through, I decided to go easy on her and leave that option on hold for now. I’d either find out she was still hiding things related to Rand, or she’d open up more eventually.

After all, it wasn’t like I wasn’t keeping secrets of my own.

The most important thing was that Laurel was safe with me, and for the moment I was fairly confident that she had just gotten into a bad situation and wasn’t part of anything shady. I wasn’t letting Rand off the hook, though, and assigned a team to watch the vineyard and follow him in case he decided coming to LA again was a good idea.

I ducked out at lunchtime to meet my cousin Nat at her art gallery. The designer in charge of the dining room decor was already there with a bunch of paintings earmarked, and we spent about half an hour going back and forth about which ones would be best for my vision.

“Modern,” I repeated for the tenth time. “I know exactly what you were hired to create, but I’ve seen your work, and I know you do more than just classical designs.”

Todd sighed and put away the portraits he had been trying to convince me would fit in if they were in the right frames, and once Nat showed him the painting she’d been working on just for me, he finally got on board.

“Oh, okay. Now I can work with this.”

I was glad, and while I admired art and did enjoy bright splashes of color as much as anyone else, I didn’t quite understand why he was so excited about these splashes of color.

“You must be amazingly talented,” I told Nat after he left.

“You can’t tell on your own?” she teased, offering me some tea. “I’m off caffeine. Kolya thinks I stay up too late.”

I grumbled and accepted some weak herbal tea to spend a little more time with one of my favorite cousins. She and I were close to the same age, along with her father’s kid sister, Mila, and whenever they visited Moscow, we’d spend the days dodging Aleks and my old man to run rampant around the city.

Her husband, Kolya, was once one of our most despised enemies, and there was a time when Nat would have just as soon cut his balls off, so it was funny to me that now she was giving up coffee for him.

“I’m going to make an announcement soon,” I said, letting her pile cookies onto my plate. “I’m going to need you on my side if some of the others aren’t enthusiastic about it. Especially my father.”

Her eyes widened. “How bad is it that Uncle Kon might freak out?”

“It’s not bad at all. Just back me up when the time comes.”

Since I refused to say anything else, she remembered she was busy and sent me on my way, and by the time I got back to the restaurant, the shipment of glasses had arrived. Back home, I was more concerned about brewing great beer than what the place people sat to drink it in looked like, but this was a completely new venture. LA was riddled with restaurants, and more of them flopped than succeeded.

Decor supposedly could make or break a place, and one thing I was confident that Angelenos would like was the ultra-modern design. Aleks had hooked me up with the Czech glassware company he used for his own restaurant, and I was excited to see Laurel’s reaction to the high-end, exclusive design they came up with.