Page 36 of Brutal Bratva’s Owned Hostage

The room slowly began to breathe again once they were gone, conversation resuming in low, careful murmurs, with dealers returning to their hands like nothing had happened.

I stood there a moment, my wrist still faintly aching where he’d gripped it. Dmitri’s eyes moved everywhere at once. I was uncertain whether the fury simmering all around him was directed at me for somehow allowing the situation to escalate, or at something else entirely.

What I saw when he finally looked at me unsettled me more than either possibility. He wasn’t angry at me at all. He was furious that it had happened in the first place.

He crossed the floor without another word, taking my arm gently, nothing like the rough grip the guest had used moments earlier. He guided me away from the main floor toward a quieter service corridor tucked behind the bar. Only once we were alone did he speak in a voice that was almost controlled.

“Are you hurt?”

“No. He didn’t grip hard enough to actually hurt me, just enough to be unpleasant.” I rubbed my wrist absently, more out of habit than any real pain. “This happens sometimes, Dmitri. It’s not unusual working on a floor like this. I’ve dealt with worse before, plenty of times.”

Something sharper flickered across his expression at that, his jaw tightening in a way that told me I’d just said the wrong thing.

“It doesn’t matter what you’ve endured before,” he said, his tone low in a way that told me he was really trying to sound cool. “What matters is what I will tolerate now.”

“You can’t just erase years of context because—”

“I’m not erasing context, Val. I’m telling you the rules have changed.” He stepped closer, close enough that I had to tilt my head up slightly to hold his gaze. “You are my wife. That means something in this world, whether or not either of us fully anticipated what it would mean when we stood in front of my family and made it official. It means nobody puts a hand on you and walks away without consequence. It means the moment your name became tied to mine, you stopped being someone men could treat carelessly without it costing them something.”

“So what happens to him? The man who grabbed me?”

“He gets a conversation he won’t forget, and a permanent ban from every property connected to my family. Whether it goes further than that depends on how he handles the conversation.” Something flat and certain settled into his voice; none of the earlier warmth left in it. “I’d prefer it doesn’t go further. That decision isn’t fully mine. It’s his.”

The words weren’t romantic in any traditional sense. There was nothing soft or reassuring in his voice as he said them. They were territorial in a way that reflected exactly the world he came from.

I felt a strange, complicated mix of safety and pressure as I listened to him. Safety, because the exhausted part of me that had spent years dealing with men like that guest alone finally understood I wasn’t doing that alone anymore. Pressure, because being someone’s wife inside a world like his apparently came with a chain that made it impossible for me to remain invisible.

“It’s time people understand exactly where you stand,” Dmitri said, like he was concluding a plan in his head. “That you belong under my protection. In this world, that truth changes everything about how people are permitted to treat you.”

“I don’t know if I fully understand what that means yet. Practically.”

“It means guests like the one tonight will learn that touching you has consequences that have nothing to do with casino etiquette and everything to do with the name that you now carry. It means staff who might have looked the other way before will understand there’s no looking away anymore, not where you’re concerned. It means the floor itself operates differently around you now, whether you notice the shift or not.”

“I don’t want to need that kind of protection,” I said quietly. “I want to be able to handle a room on my own, the way I always have.”

“You can handle plenty on your own, Val. I’ve watched you do it for weeks now, and I’ve never once doubted it. This isn’t about whether you’re capable. It’s about the fact that in my world, a man putting his hands on my wife isn’t a workplace incident to be managed politely. It’s a provocation, and provocations get responses.”

“Okay,” I said, mainly because I didn’t have a better response. And again, some part of me, however uneasy it made me, understood that arguing the point further wasn’t going to change the fundamental picture of what protection meant to a man like him.

“Okay,” he repeated, his shoulders loosening slightly now that the immediate threat had been handled and the harder conversation had been had. His hands cradled both sides of my face, his eyes boring into mine, searching. “I need you to actually believe what I just told you, not just accept it because arguing feels exhausting tonight.”

“I’m working on believing it,” I whispered, then chuckled and rolled my eyes.

“What?” he asked, his smirk already finding its way to his face. “You’re sexy as fuck when you roll your eyes, but I want to know what you’re thinking.”

“You,” I said. “Being all tender when you looked like the god of war himself just a moment ago. You were so furious.”

“Not at you, baby. Never at you,” he said, his tone solemn.

“Baby?” I repeated, unable to stop my smile as he shrugged like it wasn’t the first time he’d called me that. “I’d rather you weren’t furious at all, though. Even if it’s not at me.”

“Can’t always be helped.”

He reached out and brushed his thumb gently along the wrist the guest had grabbed, his touch careful like he was trying to overwrite the memory of the rough hand with something gentler. It reminded me of why I’d stopped being afraid of his silences weeks ago.

“It’s high time the world knew,” he said again.

And I didn’t say anything else as he brought his arms around me because the ‘how’ would come later.