Page 2 of Brutal Bratva’s Owned Hostage

"He got to you again."

"He did not get to me."

"Val." She set down her paring knife and folded her arms, the knowing look on her face making me prepare to be teased already. "Your face is flushed, baby.”

"That's just what irritation looks like."

"Mm-hm." Camila had a way of looking at me like she could see straight through whatever I was trying to sell her. We'd worked t together long enough that she knew most of my tells better than I did. "I'm just saying. A man that gorgeous chasing you around the casino for months, and you're telling me there's nothing there at all."

"There's nothing there because there can't be anything there. Camila, look at where we work."

"I'm well aware of where we work, hon. I clock in the same as you."

"Then you know what it means." I lowered my voice. "It's not just the name on the building. It's blood money, all of it. The casino, the lounge, this whole beautiful building we stand in every night. Isla married into that family. I love her, but I also know exactly what she married into, and I'm not looking to repeat it."

Camila's expression softened, the teasing edge fading into something gentler. "I know that. I'm not saying marry the man. I'm just saying… it's allowed to be fun, being looked at like that. Just a little. It doesn't have to mean anything."

"It's not fun. It's terrifying."

"Terrifying and fun aren't mutually exclusive, in my experience." She picked her knife back up and twirled a twist of lemon peel without even glancing down at her hands. "You know he only wants you because you keep saying no. A man like that's probably never heard the word no in his entire life, not from anyone who mattered."

"Which is exactly why I'm going to keep saying it, as many times as it takes."

"Sure you are." She didn't believe me. Worse, I wasn't entirely sure I believed myself.

There was something about the way Dmitri made danger seem like it might actually be fun that unsettled me far more than any of the quiet, calculating men who usually walked through that door. I knew how to read a violent man when he wore a serious face, when he sat heavy and silent at a card table and counted his chips without smiling. Dmitri wore his like a punchline, and I didn't know what to do with a threat that smiled like it was flirting. Those men I understood; Dmitri I did not.

"I don't want him," I said again.

Camila slid a tray of martinis toward me without looking up, already reaching for the next round of glasses. "Keep telling yourself that, hon. See how far it gets you by Christmas."

I didn't get the chance to argue further, because that was when Varley, our senior operations manager, appeared in the corridor. Every ounce of teasing air seemed to go out of the room all at once, like someone had cracked a window in the dead of winter.

Varley had a way of entering a space that was the exact opposite of Dmitri. Where Dmitri arrived like weather, sudden and impossible to ignore, Varley arrived like an inspection, quiet and faintly clinical. He was in his late forties, silver threading generously through dark hair, always dressed like he'd stepped directly out of a tailor's window display. He looked like a man who saw charm as a tool rather than a personality trait. I'd never once heard him raise his voice, and I'd also never once felt fully at ease in a room with him.

"Ladies." He said warmly enough, almost smiling, except for the fact that his eyes were already moving past us towards the bar setup. "I need you both sharp tonight. We have a private table starting within the hour, and I want no mistakes made anywhere on this floor. None whatsoever."

"Understood," Camila said, straightening instinctively, the teasing gone entirely from her voice.

"This isn't a usual night," Varley continued, and something in the careful evenness of his tone made the hair along my arms rise. "The men joining that table tonight are to be kept waiting under any circumstances. They are not men we allow to feel anything less than perfectly attended to, from the moment they walk through that door until the moment they choose to leave it. Am I making myself clear?"

"Perfectly," I said, matching his tone as closely as I could manage.

He held my gaze as though deciding whether or not to trust it, and then he was gone, moving down the corridor with his usual purposeful stride. As he moved on, he pulled his phone from his jacket pocket, murmuring something into it under his breath.

Camila exhaled slowly once he'd turned the corner and vanished from sight. "Well. That was ominous, even for him."

"That was Varley being Varley."

"No," she said slowly, setting her knife down again like she needed her hands free to think properly. "That was Varley being Varley plus something. I've seen him stressed before, Val. Every big fight night, every time the commission comes through for an audit. This wasn't that. This was—" She searched for the right word and didn't seem to find one she liked. "I don't know… careful? Like he's handling something breakable, and he already knows exactly how much it costs to replace."

“Maybe,” I answered, because I'd felt the same thing crawl up the back of my neck the moment he'd spoken.

By the time I returned to the main floor, the lounge had transformed in the unsettling way it sometimes did. It was a shift so complete it felt like stepping into a different building entirely. More security lined the walls than usual—broader men, quieter men, who didn't so much stand at their posts as loom over them. Dealers had repositioned themselves at the private tables tucked along the back wall, checking decks that had already been checked twice by someone else, snapping fresh seals on boxes of cards with the kind of ritual precision that told me this wasn't a night anyone wanted a mistake on.

The good liquor came out, not the top-shelf bottles we poured for our usual high rollers, but the ones kept locked behind glass in Varley's office, dusted off maybe twice a year for guests important enough to warrant them.

I felt the familiar knot in my stomach tighten as I straightened glassware that didn't need straightening, just to have something to occupy my hands.