Page 69 of Brutal Bratva’s Owned Hostage

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for surviving something you had to walk into. Just—” Her voice caught slightly, some old fear still working its way through her. “Just don’t make me feel that particular fear again anytime soon, if you can help it.”

“I’ll do everything in my power to make certain of that.”

“God, I love you. I’m so glad you’re safe,” she let out, kissing the side of my face.

“I’ve missed those kisses more than anything,” I confessed, smiling at her.

“And he’s back to being my teasing, flirtatious husband,” she remarked, half-rolling her eyes.

“Always your husband.”

“And forever.”

“Did I ever tell you I love it when you roll your eyes like that?”

“Okay, enough talking, Dmitri Golovin.”

“I love you, baby.”

Her fingers cradled my face. “We survived.”

“We did.”

Epilogue

Valentina

Two years had changed Las Vegas in ways most people walking the Strip would never notice.

Not that it became quieter. The city never really went quiet. It was just different. The Golovin empire still sat at the center of everything that mattered on this stretch of desert, but the chaos that once ran just beneath its polished surface had settled into something steadier and more deliberate. Power that used to feel like a held breath now felt consolidated and better controlled.

Dmitri wasn’t the reckless force he’d once been inside that system. I’d watched the shift happen slowly—over months rather than any single dramatic turning point—until one day I looked at him across a boardroom table and realized he’d become something closer to an architect than a weapon. He had become the man who quietly designed the structure other people relied on rather than the one who charged headfirst into whatever fire needed putting out.

I’d built something of my own in that same stretch of time, having completed my degree virtually. My event company had grown from a half-formed idea into something real, something with actual clients and a small, capable team and a reputation built on precision rather than scandal. My name meant something different now on the Strip than it once had. Not the hostess who’d married into danger. Not the woman who’d survived a raid and a war. Just Valentina Golovin, who threw the kind of events people actually remembered for the right reasons.

We didn’t live in constant motion between danger and reaction anymore. We lived deliberately now, each day chosen rather than simply survived. The space between us wasn’t defined by fear anymore. It hadn’t been for a long while now.

That evening, I stood beside Dmitri on the penthouse terrace, the same one where I’d once arranged candles and nervous honesty before a night that nearly took him from me completely. Standing there now, I felt none of the old tension.

“You’ve been quiet tonight,” Dmitri said, glancing over at me, his arm settling naturally around my waist the way it always did when we stood out here together.

“I’ve been thinking.”

“About?”

I turned to face him properly, something warm and nervous building in my chest despite two years of practice at being honest with this man about exactly what I felt.

“I’m pregnant, Dmitri.”

He went still.

For a moment, neither of us said anything and the city’s distant hum was the only sound filling the space between us. I searched his face for whatever reaction was coming and found no real clue.

Then he simply pulled me closer.

No shock. No hesitation. Just complete acceptance like this had always been the final, missing piece of a life he’d never quite known how to imagine for himself until I’d walked into it and rearranged everything.