Page 9 of Brutal Bratva’s Owned Hostage

“You were right,” she admitted, so quietly I almost missed it. “About all of it.”

“I didn’t want to be.”

That earned the first real look she’d given me since the hallway, like she hadn’t expected me to say that. I meant it. Being right about the danger she was in felt nothing like a victory.

“What happens now?”

“You don’t go home. Not until I know who sent those men and why, and not until I’m certain they’re dealt with. Until then, you’re under my protection. Under Golovin protection.”

I expected the argument. Some part of me almost hoped she’d fight me the way she had earlier that morning—sharp, certain, and furious—because at least that version had felt like her. Instead she just nodded, slow and exhausted, entirely depleted of whatever fight she’d been running on since the raid.

“Is this what your life always looks like?”

The question caught me off guard. I opened my mouth, my typical answer already at the tip of my tongue—the deflecting answer I gave most people who asked me anything close to that question, something charming and evasive that would have gotten a laugh out of her any other day. But looking at her face, open and stripped of every defense she usually had around me, I couldn’t quite make myself say it.

“Some version of it. Not always this way, but yes. Enough of it that I stopped noticing a long time ago.”

“How do you live like that?”

“You stop calling it living, eventually. It just becomes the shape your days take.” I hadn’t said that out loud to anyone before, and saying it now, to her, felt like handing her something I usually kept locked well out of reach.

She didn’t say anything for a while after that. Neither did I. The silence between us wasn’t something I was used to with her. There was none of the sharp, teasing tension that usually crackled whenever I got close enough to her. This was quieter and heavier. It was the kind of silence that came from two people looking at how different their lives actually were.

If anything, watching her sit across from me in that quiet booth made the distance between her world and mine clearer. However, the difference felt less like a wall and more like something I wanted to close.

I didn’t tell her that.

My phone had gone off twice on the drive to the restaurant, both times Alexei, both times ignored. I knew what he wanted. He wanted an accounting of exactly how much damage last night had done to the family. He wanted assurance that whatever loose end I was currently protecting wasn’t going to become a bigger liability than the raid itself. Alexei thought in ledgers even when the subject was blood. It was one of the things that often made him impossible to talk to about anything that didn’t fit neatly into a column.

He called a third time, and this time I answered, keeping my voice low enough that she wouldn’t catch every word.

“You’re not answering your phone,” Alexei said, without any greeting at all, which was exactly how he always opened conversations he considered overdue.

“I’m handling something.”

“You’re handling the hostess.” It wasn’t a question. Alexei rarely bothered with questions when a statement would do the same job faster. “Roman told me what happened at her building. Two more bodies, Dmitri. That’s three men in 24 hours connected to one woman who isn’t family or anyone with a stake in our business.”

“She’s a witness. Whoever’s behind the raid clearly doesn’t want witnesses walking around.”

“Then hand her to someone who can process that fact professionally instead of parking her at a table and feeding her dinner.” I could hear the edge under his usual flat calm, the tightness that meant he was choosing his words more carefully than he wanted to. “I don’t need to tell you how this looks.”

“I don’t care how it looks.”

There was a pause on the other end before he said, “That’s exactly what concerns me.”

“I’m on this, brother. I’ll call you in a few hours. Handle whatever needs handling with the police and the building.”

He let me hang up without arguing further. I knew it would come back around eventually, probably with Viktor weighing in as well, both of them lining up on the side of caution the way they usually did whenever I let something matter to me more than they considered reasonable.

I set the phone face down on the table and looked back at Val, who was watching me with an expression that suggested she’d caught more of that conversation than I’d intended.

“Everything alright?”

“Family business,” I said. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Okay,” she breathed, taking a slow sip of water.

By the time we left the restaurant, I’d already made a decision I hadn’t bothered running past her.