Page 37 of Brutal Bratva’s Owned Hostage

Chapter Sixteen

Dmitri

The estate sat high above the Strip, monuments of glass and stone meant to remind anyone standing on its terraces how far above the ordinary city they'd climbed, literally and metaphorically. We used it for exactly this kind of night—occasions that required the family's wealth to be seen rather than merely felt. Tonight I'd invited everyone who mattered. From politicians who owed us favors and casino executives who needed reminding where their loyalty was to financial partners who'd want to understand exactly what my marriage meant for the alliances they'd built their fortunes around.

This wasn't just a wedding reception, even though that was what the invitations said.

It was a declaration.

Val stood beside me for most of the evening, visibly overwhelmed beneath the composed surface she was working hard to maintain. I stayed close to her the entire night out of plain awareness, not out of the possessive insecurity Vale had tried to accuse me of weeks earlier. Every conversation happening around us carried weight beyond its surface pleasantries. Nobody in that room was simply congratulating me on a marriage. They were quietly recalculating power structures across the entire Strip, watching to see exactly how this changed the balance our family had spent generations building.

Some of them looked at Val with open curiosity, trying to place her, trying to understand what qualities had earned her the Golovin name. Others watched with the kind of careful assessment reserved for anything that shifted the ground they'd been standing on comfortably for years. A handful didn't bother hiding their resentment at all, old money circling new arrangements the way it always did, threatened by anything it hadn't personally approved.

I ignored all of it. I'd learned years ago that reacting to a room's undercurrents only fed it.

A state senator I'd known for years approached us near the bar, shaking my hand with the warmth of a man who understood how much his political survival depended on staying useful to my family. "Dmitri. Quite the announcement tonight." His eyes moved to Val, though he was careful enough to keep his assessment brief. "Mrs. Golovin. A pleasure."

"Senator." Val's voice came out steady and poised, with nothing in it betraying the exhaustion I knew she was carrying. "Thank you for coming."

"Wouldn't have missed it. Your husband doesn't extend invitations lightly, from what I understand." He smiled. "I imagine there's quite a story behind how the two of you met."

"There is," Val said, giving nothing more than that. I’d watched her perfect that pleasant deflection of hers over the last hour.

The senator laughed and moved on toward the next cluster of guests waiting for his attention. Val exhaled slowly once he'd gone, her shoulders dropping half an inch before she caught herself and straightened again.

The evening went on with music threading carefully through conversation and champagne circulating at the pace that kept guests loose without letting anything slip too far toward carelessness. Underneath the surface, criminal alliances dressed themselves up as ordinary business networking, the same way they always did at events like this, everyone performing legitimacy for everyone else's benefit.

When I told my brothers about the reception, they’d agreed—more like Mikhail said, and they agreed—that I should hold the party with myself and Val being the sole hosts. They agreed that it made a more powerful statement if I was seen without any of my older brothers and, besides, it was my wedding reception. Not that their security teams and right-hand men weren’t coordinating on the security of the whole estate.

Val handled herself considerably better than I'd expected, given everything. I watched her navigate conversation after conversation with grace. Only I could see the way her hand found the stem of her champagne glass and gripped it too hard whenever someone's question edged too close to territory she wasn't ready to discuss. And then I would intervene and steer the person, whoever they were, towards others.

"You're doing well," I told her quietly, during a brief lull as we crossed toward the terrace for air.

"I feel like I'm performing a play I only got the script for this morning."

"You're performing it convincingly."

"That's not entirely reassuring, somehow." She glanced up at me, a wry expression on her face.

“You look breathtaking tonight,” I told her, bringing my hand to her waist.

She was wearing a black silk dress that stopped right on her knees, the cinched waist area covered in sequins. It was sleeveless, and her earrings dangled close to her jaw, bringing attention to her beautiful face.

“You said that like a dozen times already,” she remarked, chuckling lightly. “You also said you would have insisted on another dress if you knew this was what Isla bought for me.

“Hm. And that remains true. But having a private viewing after the reception is a comfort.”

“Don’t think about it. I’m exhausted.”

“We’ll be home soon. I promise. I took her hand and squeezed it. My chest swelled with something I wasn’t sure I could describe as she sighed in relief and brought her head to my shoulder.

For a stretch of time after that, standing together near the terrace doors, everything felt stable. It felt like something closer to an ordinary evening than the carefully staged theater it actually was.

Then the lights went out.

It happened instantly. Every light in the estate died at once, the music cutting mid-note into a silence so complete and sudden that it felt fundamentally wrong.

Guests began shouting almost immediately, stumbling in the sudden dark, reaching for exits that had gone invisible along with everything else in the room. Champagne glasses shattered somewhere nearby. Someone screamed, and chairs scraped along the floors.