Page 14 of Brutal Bratva’s Owned Hostage

“You want to tell me what that was, boss?”

I didn’t miss the humorless sarcasm in how he called me by my title, something he usually only did when we were joking, considering I’d insisted on him calling me by name several years ago.

“You heard the meeting.”

“I heard you volunteer to marry a hostess you’ve known for months in front of your entire family, minutes after Mr. Varley suggested locking her in a room and interrogating her.” Roman kept his voice low, meaning he was more worried than he was willing to let on. “I’ve known you a long time, Dmitri. I’ve never seen you decide anything that fast.”

“Some decisions don’t need time.”

“Or you’re not thinking clearly because you haven’t slept, and because watching a man die in front of her hit you harder than you’re willing to admit.”

I stopped walking long enough to look at him properly. Roman didn’t often push this hard, and the fact that he was doing it now told me he genuinely believed what he was saying.

“Maybe both things are true,” I said finally. “Doesn’t change what I’m doing.”

He studied me a moment longer, then nodded. “Then I’ll start making arrangements. Quietly, until you’re ready to make it public.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. Thank me once we’ve confirmed whether that evidence against her was a frame or the real thing. Marrying her doesn’t make the question disappear, Dmitri. It just changes who’s allowed to ask it out loud.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Are you? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you made a decision about the rest of your life in under a minute.”

“I know exactly what I did in there.”

Roman studied me a moment, his tone even lower as he said, “I’ve watched you walk away from every serious relationship you’ve had in ten years the second it started requiring anything real of you. I’m not judging, you know that. But this is the first time I’ve watched you run straight toward something instead of away from it.”

“Noted,” I said instead of whatever he was expecting.

Of course, he was probably right.

But as I took the elevator up alone, watching the numbers climb, all I had in my head was how to explain this to her.

Chapter Seven

Valentina

I spent most of the afternoon pacing the length of Dmitri’s penthouse, unable to sit still long enough to finish a single thought before the next one crowded in behind it.

Someone had used my name to access things I’d never touched. Confidential records, restricted schedules, whatever else had fed into the raid that put dead men on that casino floor and two more in my apartment hallway. I knew I hadn’t done any of it. Knowing that didn’t change the fact that my name was attached to it now, that it was now permanent in whatever files the Golovin organization kept on people who’d become liabilities.

I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t go to work, not that any part of me wanted to walk back onto that casino floor. I couldn’t even trust that the people around me believed I was innocent, and that uncertainty ate at me worse than the fear of the men who’d already tried to kill me.

What frightened me most was the possibility that Dmitri might not believe me either.

Just then I heard the sound of the elevator doors opening down the hall. Although nothing but silence followed the sound, I knew who it was.

Dmitri.

He’d been gone since morning for some meeting he wouldn’t fully explain. Every version I’d imagined of what might be happening downstairs had gotten steadily worse the longer he was away.

He came in quietly, and that told me more than anything he could have said out loud. Whatever had happened in that meeting had stripped something out of him that I’d gotten used to seeing, and the absence of it unsettled me more than I expected.

“What’s wrong?”

He didn’t answer right away, crossing the living room slowly. Even the careful way he chose his steps told me he was deciding exactly how to say whatever came next.