Page 73 of Marked By the Devil

He patted me on the back in agreement.

I headed upstairs to see if Wren was almost through with her “work” for the day, but with every step that brought me closer to her, I looked forward to when I could devote more of myself and more of my time to the one woman I wanted to make my wife.

Isabel cried in the distance, and I smiled as I imagined that sound in my home with Wren.

I couldn’t wait to give all my attention to the woman I wanted to make my wife.

The woman I want to make the mother of my children, too.

26

WREN

Viktor and his brothers and cousins weren’t joking around when they said they would provide protection for Brayden.

Adrik had been annoyed about it, but he relented.

They would use the eye-for-an-eye principle both ways. And I didn’t see a problem with that. It was the simplest code of honor as far as I was concerned.

Unfortunately, they were almost too late.

Nikolai and Lev were on their way to speak to him about relocating when they got word from a Bratva spy in the area that a car crash had happened earlier that day. It was only two days after I had snuck up on Brayden and spoken with him. It was only almost forty-eight hours of going through all the correspondence and evidence that he’d been collecting all this time. So much of it matched what we’d been finding through the hacked access that Trojan gave us into their programs and databases. But more, too.

It turned out that two days was enough for Smithson or someone else to suspect Brayden was acting off. They hired someone to run him off the road, and they’d almost succeeded in killing him. The fact that he was an agent at all got him security at the hospital, but it wasn’t such tight security that Nikolai and Lev couldn’t get in and speak with him. They had guards planted on the floor, too, posing as nurses.

“I didn’t do or say anything,” Brayden told Nikolai, who conferred with the rest of us. “But I think he knew that something was off. I was looking at places to rent in Columbus, back in Ohio where I grew up, and I think that he realized I was getting ready to quit and leave.”

He looked like a kid then, according to both of the Volkovs. Hurt, bandaged, barely surviving the accident.

They took over, though, relocating him to another hospital where Smithson wouldn’t be able to find him.

“I’m glad that they managed to get him away,” Elena said as we left lunch.

I smiled at her, glad as well.

This was another first, and I was having too much fun to let even this almost bad news about Brayden get me down.

Mila walked with us, quiet and observant. One day, I hoped to know why she was so cautious no matter where she was.

Elena had insisted that she needed to get out of the house for even an hour or so. To have “girl time”. Carina was too busy, but Mila and I were there to accompany her. Guards trailed us, but I was carrying anyway. I had a hunch Mila was too.

“And I’m glad we could have girl time,” she said as we headed back to the SUV I’d chosen as “mine”.

“I’ve never had it before,” I admitted with a shrug. My closest friends were my classmates at the academy and most of them were men, men I didn’t want to necessarily spend extra time with. I hadn’t had a chance to befriend anyone at the office here either, since my first day was apparently supposed to also be my last.

“Me neither,” Mila admitted plainly.

“Yeah. I third that.” Elena shrugged. “This can be the start of a new tradition.”

I smiled at her, charmed by her innocence and willingness to look for the goodness in life.

“Excuse me. Miss?”

We turned as three as our server rushed after us. It wasn’t a long walk between the café and where we’d parked, but it was a crowded lot and the construction crew nearby had equipment and trucks all over, looming higher than the cars.

“Someone called and left a message for your table just now.” He furrowed his brow at the scrap of paper. “The hostess jotted it down.”

I took it and read it.