Page 25 of Brutal Bratva’s Owned Hostage

“And now you do.”

“Now I do.” I crossed back toward her, just long enough to press a brief kiss to her forehead, quick but deliberate.

She held my gaze, and I could clearly see something steadying behind her expression despite the fear in her eyes. “Come back.”

“I intend to.”

I left her there by the window and took the elevator down with my mind already splitting in two directions at once—half running through every contingency for whatever waited at that club, and half circling back to the breach still sitting unresolved in my own systems.

Someone inside my protected space had spent days quietly extracting exactly the kind of information that mattered most. They had done it carefully and patiently in a way that told me they understood what they were looking for and how to avoid getting caught doing it.

A raid outside was a known danger, the kind I’d handled a hundred times over and understood how to manage. But whoever was moving quietly through my own systems frightened me in a way the raid waiting at that club simply didn’t.

The city stretched out as we pulled away from the building. Somewhere out there, someone was watching my family’s operation with patience and precision. And somewhere behind me, in a penthouse I’d never once considered vulnerable until tonight, the woman I’d married to keep safe sat waiting for me to come home, unaware that the danger closest to her might not be the one she already knew to fear.

By the time the club came into view, its façade lit up against the dark, I already understood something. Whatever waited inside that building tonight, the more dangerous problem was still sitting quietly in my own systems, waiting for me to identify it.

Chapter Eleven

Valentina

I heard Dmitri come home before I saw him.

The penthouse door shut harder than usual, followed by the uneven weight of his footsteps moving through the entryway. I sensed none of his teasing energy, none of that careless stride of his. It was exhaustion being controlled by sheer will.

When I found him in the hallway, the sight of him stopped me cold.

There was a shallow wound along his side that had darkened that part of his shirt, blood gone tacky at the edges where it had started to dry. Bruising bloomed along his jaw, already deepening toward purple. Whatever had happened at that club tonight, it hadn’t gone smoothly.

“Don’t look at me like that, I’m fine,” he said, the smirk appearing on his face despite the evidence suggesting otherwise.

I didn’t hesitate. I took his arm and guided him toward the bathroom before he could argue. A practical part of me took over while the rest of me screamed in my head. I’d learned where the medical supplies lived in that cabinet over the last few days, which was a fact that would have terrified me a month ago and now simply felt like one more piece of the life I’d married into. I pulled out gauze, antiseptic, the small suture kit I’d playfully asked Nadia to demonstrate.

Dmitri sat on the edge of the tub and let me work. Unusually quiet, he was watching me with an expression I wasn’t used to from him. It was something closer to surrender, like he was simply too tired to be composed and had decided to let me see exactly how he felt.

“You’re better at this than I expected,” he said eventually, watching my hands move over the gauze with a steadiness I didn’t entirely feel, my fingers working faster than my racing thoughts would have suggested was possible.

“I’m aware.” I tied off the bandage a little tighter than necessary, some of my frustration bleeding into my hands. “Doesn’t make it less terrifying, watching you walk through the door like this.”

My hands shook slightly as I cleaned the wound along his side, the antiseptic stinging enough that he hissed through his teeth once, quiet and controlled.

“What happened?”

“Raid attempt at one of the clubs. We got there before it went fully sideways.” He said it evenly, watching the ceiling rather than me. “Fast response. Controlled damage.”

“That’s not an answer, that’s a summary.”

“It’s the summary you need.”

I set the gauze down harder than necessary, my frustration rising faster than I expected. “I’ve learned enough about you to know when you’re simplifying something so I don’t have to actually think about how bad it was.”

He didn’t deny it, which told me everything the careful phrasing hadn’t.

I finished wrapping the wound in silence, my jaw tight. Once I’d taped the last edge down, I sat back on my heels and looked at him properly, all the fear I’d been holding back finally breaking loose in my voice, sharper and more raw than I’d intended to let it become.

“This isn’t nothing, Dmitri. You can’t keep coming back like this. Bleeding, bruised, giving me two sentences and expecting that to be enough. I need you to actually come home in one piece. I don’t think I can keep doing this if every night ends with me wondering whether you’re going to walk through that door at all. It’s… I don’t know, I just don’t want it!”

My voice cracked on the last part, more emotional than I’d meant to let it get, but I didn’t take any of it back.