Page 11 of Brutal Bratva’s Owned Hostage

“It’s absolutely a tell,” he argued, fully smirking. It was the kind of smirk I’d spent six months learning to distrust and was starting, against my better judgment, to actually enjoy. “Your shoulders come up half an inch right before you fold. Every single time.” Then he added, teasing, “More like you’re giving another shade of sexy.”

“Half a what?” I chuckled, incredulous. “You’re making that up.”

“Watch.” He dealt again, and sure enough, three hands later, I caught myself doing exactly what he’d described, shoulders creeping up toward my ears the second my cards disappointed me. I threw a chip at him in mock outrage, and he caught it out of the air without even looking, still grinning like he’d won something far more satisfying than a hand of cards.

“You’re better at this than you should be for someone who learned an hour ago.”

“Maybe it’s from years of watching men lie to each other across a card table. Must have picked up a few things.”

“Clearly,” he agreed, studying me with warmth behind his eyes, making heat climb up the back of my neck.

Somewhere in the third hand, I laughed at some ridiculous face he made losing a pot he’d clearly been bluffing on the whole time. He went still for half a second, something flickering across his expression that I couldn’t quite name, before the smirk came back.

“That’s….” he started, pausing like he was still trying to digest what he was about to say. “It’s the first time you’ve laughed, really laughed, since that night.”

I shrugged, not having a response.

After that, something between us shifted, subtle but undeniable. I caught myself watching him in the gaps between hands, noticing details I’d spent months deliberately ignoring—the exhaustion beneath his usual confidence, the sharp, quick intelligence he hid behind recklessness, the loneliness tucked under all that easy charm.

We’d been at it for more than two hours when the storm hit, sudden and loud, rain slamming against the glass hard enough to rattle it faintly in its frame. Neither of us moved to leave. The lounge felt sealed off from the rest of the world in a way that made leaving seem beside the point. Watching lightning flash white against the neon skyline, the conversation between us slid into something more honest than either of us had planned on.

“Do you ever get tired of it?” I questioned. “All of it. The danger, the… constantly watching your back.”

“I don’t know how to live without it, honestly. It’s shaped every year of our lives since we were old enough to understand what our family actually did for money. Chaos is just the water I swim in. I wouldn’t know how to swim in anything calmer.”

“That sounds lonely.”

“It is.” He said it plainly, and something about his honesty undid me a little. “What about you? What shaped you before all this?”

I hadn’t expected the question to be turned back on me, and I found myself answering before I’d fully decided to. “I spent most of my life trying not to be a burden to anyone. I guess I still do. I think I built my whole personality around not needing anything from anyone.”

And then I went on. “Now I’m living in a penthouse with a security detail because a man I barely know decided I was worth protecting.” I laughed incredulously. “I don’t really know what to do with that.”

“You could start by letting yourself need something from someone for once. Might not kill you.”

“That’s rich, coming from a man who hasn’t slept a full night since I got here.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?”

He didn’t answer right away.

“Maybe it isn’t,” he admitted finally. “Maybe we’re both terrible at the same thing for different reasons.”

“That’s the most honest thing you’ve said to me since I’ve known you.”

“Don’t get used to it. I have a reputation to maintain.”

But there was no real teasing left in it, none of the usual armor he wore even when he was joking.

Something in his expression went soft in a way I hadn’t seen before. The silence that followed didn’t feel uncomfortable. It felt charged.

He reached toward me slowly, and I let him, watching his hand rise without any of the panic I expected to feel. He brushed a strand of hair back from my face. My pulse picked up in a way that had nothing to do with fear.

I let my eyes drift shut as he leaned in.

Then his phone vibrated on the table between us, and I flinched, the moment shattering instantly.