Page 39 of The Bratva’s Stalked Pregnant Bride

I myself was running on stolen naps in my office, but I had been trying to keep out of the physical fights as much as I could. It was bad enough not explaining where I was going. Pretending I was working out at the boxing gym at three in the morning wasn’t going to cut it with Laurel when I came home with bruises I couldn’t cover up.

“Running on caffeine,” he answered, yawning hugely as he reached for a beer. “This’ll help me get an hour or two of sleep before I head back out.”

He filled me in on the people he was following, or had been following before they figured it out, hence the freshly busted knuckles. Aleks called the meeting to order, and we settled in for updates.

Over the past few weeks, we had discovered that the Collective, which had been a massive pain in our ass all over the world before being broken down and brought under control when their leader, Gavril, married into the family, now had a rogue faction. He wasn’t happy that someone he once trusted was terrorizing his new family and gaining traction.

Not just here in LA, they had started branching out to cause trouble for Lev up in San Francisco and Mat in Silicon Valley. It made me glad I hadn’t gotten around to pulling the surveillance I had on Canyon Vines. Nothing had happened to raise my suspicions further, but they could be biding their time. CJ wanted me to believe they had a sleeper cell waiting to be activated, but I couldn’t take it too seriously after learning the truth about Laurel’s relationship with the vineyard’s shady owner.

If he was seriously involved, though, that only raised my concern for Laurel’s safety. None of us were safe with all these attacks going on, and we were on the brink of a full-on turf war if we couldn’t find the head of this new operation and cut it off. None of us were safe, even on the best of days, in whatever tenuous moments of peace we could broker and maintain.

But my family was battle-hardened, used to watching their backs, and all of them highly trained to fight. Laurel was as soft and innocent as they came, shutting down at violence, going pale at overly raised voices.

Right now, she believed she was safe, and I would do everything in my power to keep her that way, but it would have been easier if she knew there was something she had to watch out for. She was with my sister and cousins now, all of them packing hidden weapons, all of them on high alert, and with a trained guard doubling as their driver.

What would happen if Laurel was out shopping alone? We were a lot more low profile than my Los Angeles cousins, since I hadn’t been in town long and didn’t go out too much. It bothered me that Rand knew where Laurel worked, but it was still up in the air if he knew who I was and what that meant if he was involved with this rogue Collective faction.

“Hey, Mik, wake up.” Luk thumped me in the back of the head, jarring me out of my thoughts. “How do you feel about helping me stake out this place in Santa Monica tonight?”

Everyone was divvying up assignments while I was beginning to think about how nice it would be to take Laurel back to Moscow. She’d be safe in my place there by the woods, and I’d set up a wine bar next to my brewery that she could have full reign over. I’d only argue with her for fun.

“Oh, yeah, that’ll be fine,” I said.

It meant I’d have to leave after dinner again with no explanation, but this was what it meant to be part of a family. Sacrifice, loyalty. I only wished I could share it all with Laurel. It would certainly help to keep her safe if she understood what we were up against and just how hard the shit could hit the fan at any moment.

But what would someone as pure as Laurel do if she knew everything about me? The answer came all too quickly because she already ran from one dangerous man, and Rand Eckvald didn’t hold a candle to me.

If Laurel knew everything I’d done in the past, would she believe I was worse than the man she hated most in the world?

I couldn’t protect her at all if she ran away, thinking I was the bad guy.

Chapter 23 - Laurel

By the time Mila, Nat, and Sofiya dropped me off at the restaurant, Mik was already gone, and while I waited around until a little past the time I normally left, he didn’t return. I had a car now, a big, luxurious SUV that seemed like overkill when it mostly slogged through traffic on the way home. Since I had gone in with Mik that morning, I was trying to pull up the app to order a ride when my car rolled into the parking lot, right in front of the restaurant doors.

Good, now I could get onto him about changing the menu again, but when I hurried over, it wasn’t Mik coming back to get me, but one of his drivers.

“Oh, hey,” I said, flustered when I opened the front passenger side. “I was about to call for a ride.”

It was already slightly uncomfortable to have a driver and sit in the back seat, but if I slammed the door in his face and went back there now, wouldn’t that be even weirder? Sometimes I didn’t think I was cut out to be rich.

“Boss’s orders,” he said curtly. He wasn’t exactly very friendly, but he did smile ever so slightly when he pointed to some papers I’d left on the passenger seat the last time I drove it. “Let me move all of this for you.”

“No, that’s fine,” I said, hurrying to the back. “It’s already crazy you had to come out here.”

“Boss’s orders,” he repeated with a mild shrug.

The traffic wasn’t as bad as usual since I had left late, but it still took a while to get back to the hills and wind our way up to the mansion. This particular driver sometimes manned the small gatehouse at the perimeter of the property, and when we passed through it, there was still a solid minute of driving before we pulled up at the front door.

“When you look up from the city, it’s hard to tell just how big some of these properties are,” I said. “I always feel bad when one of you has to bring the deliveries up.”

“Why?” he asked.

Okay, so much for conversation. I had seen Mik speaking to all his employees as if they were friends, or at least knew each other very well, and their slight Russian accents made me wonder if they followed him over to the US. Did they know I was only a temporary bride and there was no real reason to get to know me? They acted more like secret service agents than drivers.

Mik arrived home shortly after me, exhausted and on edge. “How about I cook dinner?” I asked.

“Did you recently read the news that you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar?” he asked, grinning. “Because even if you cook dinner, I’m not budging on the menu.”