Page 53 of Brutal Bratva’s Owned Hostage

“He mentioned it was private.”

“Private isn’t the word I’d use. Sacred, maybe.” She smiled with something knowing in her expression. “Whatever he’s carrying with him from that city, he leaves most of it at the water’s edge when he comes here. I’ve never once seen him bring a woman along to watch him do it, and I’ve worked for this family long enough to have met a few who might have wanted the invitation.”

I thought about that long after she’d gone back inside, watching Dmitri return from the dock with his jacket slung over one shoulder, looking more relaxed already than I’d seen him look in the past few months. Something about her words settled warm and significant in my chest, a confirmation of something I’d already started to suspect on my own, that whatever this place meant to him, I’d somehow become part of it too.

The beach stretched private and empty in front of the house, nothing but pale sand and gentle waves as far as I could see, distant security positioned far enough away to remain essentially invisible, yet close enough to respond instantly if anything required it.

I settled beneath the sun that afternoon with my thoughts drifting more freely than they had in longer than I wanted to admit. I felt the constant vigilance I’d carried since the raid slowly loosen its grip.

Dmitri watched me intermittently from where he sat nearby, something quietly attentive in his expression. It was like he needed regular confirmation that I was actually real, actually safe, actually still there beside him in this improbable pocket of calm we’d carved out of an otherwise relentless war.

“You keep looking at me like I might disappear,” I said eventually, without opening my eyes.

“Would you blame me?”

“Hmm, no,” I admitted. “Actually, I think I understand exactly why you’re doing it.”

The distance from danger changed something between us; it was subtle but undeniable. There was no urgency here, no immediate threat demanding either of our attention, only space, wide and open. That space slowly softened everything we’d both carried, easing by degrees I only noticed once they’d already happened.

By late afternoon, after the staff had left for the day, we found ourselves walking along the shoreline together, the ocean pulling gently at our feet with each retreating wave.

“Tell me something you’ve never told anyone,” I said, watching the horizon rather than him, giving the question room to breathe.

He considered it for a long stretch of silence, the only sound the gentle rush of waves against the sand. “I used to want to leave. Before any of this, before you, before I’d fully accepted that I was always going to inherit some piece of my family’s world whether I wanted it or not. I spent most of my early twenties trying to figure out what an ordinary life might have looked like for me, somewhere far away from Vegas, somewhere nobody knew the Golovin name.”

“What stopped you?”

“Mikhail, mostly. Not by force. By example. Watching him carry the full weight of leading this family made me understand that leaving wasn’t actually possible, not without leaving him to shoulder everything alone. I told myself eventually that staying was a choice rather than an obligation. I’m not sure I fully believed that until fairly recently.”

“Recently as in—”

“As in since I met you. Watching you choose to stay, despite every reason this world has given you to run, made staying feel less like resignation and more like something worth actually choosing.”

I found myself smiling at him, something warm blooming in my chest at his words.

“Your turn,” he said. “Something you’ve never told anyone.”

I thought about it seriously for about a minute.

“I used to think I wasn’t allowed to want anything for myself. Everything I did growing up was in service of not being a burden, not creating trouble, keeping my own wants small enough that nobody else had to accommodate them. Even coming to Vegas felt like sacrifice rather than choice, something I did for my family rather than something I wanted for myself.”

“And now?”

“Now I think I want things. Real things, for myself specifically, not just things that make life easier for everyone around me.” I glanced over at him, something steadying in the honesty of saying it out loud. “You’re one of them, actually. Which terrifies me a little, given everything, but there it is.”

He reached over and took my hand, lacing our fingers together.

“I didn’t realize you wanted me,” he said, his voice deliberately low.

“You didn’t know that, really? I told you, intimacy doesn’t mean nothing to me.”

He was silent for a few more seconds before he spoke again.

“What else do you want?” he asked, after a while. “Beyond me, I mean. Things you’ve never let yourself say out loud.”

“I want to finish my degree eventually. Business, maybe, though I’ve thought about switching to something that actually interests me instead of something practical. I want to travel somewhere that isn’t connected to any version of danger, just for the simple pleasure of seeing a new place without needing an exit strategy.” I laughed a little at myself. “I want a dog, honestly. Something ridiculous like that. A dog who doesn’t care whose wife I am or what danger might be circling us.”

“We can get a dog.”