Page 39 of Obsession of the Bratva

Immediately, everyone fell silent. That was the thing about my eldest brother. He never needed to raise his voice. He simply decided conversations were over.

“What matters,” Kliment continued, “is whether this situation creates vulnerabilities.”

His eyes settled on me. “How long are you planning to keep her there?”

I stared at him because I knew that was the real question. Not who attacked us. Not who was responsible for this mess. It was Vera. Always Vera. I looked away first, my gaze falling on the ruined facility. Toward the smoke. Toward literally anything else.

“I don’t know.”

That answer surprised all of us, including me, but Kliment’s expression didn’t change.

“What’s the end goal here, Nico? I am sure you must have planned something before you kidnapped her in broad daylight?”

The honest answer was that I had no fucking idea anymore. At first, the goal had been to make her suffer and hurt her. I wanted to make her understand exactly what she had done to me. Then she arrived, and everything became complicated because hatred was easy from a distance.

Up close? Not so much.

“I’ll figure it out,” I said finally.

Kliment didn’t seem convinced. Neither did I.

“We’ll handle this first,” he said, motioning towards the attacked warehouse. “Then we’ll revisit the other situation.”

The other situation. As if Vera was a logistical problem. I almost laughed, but instead, I nodded.

“Fine.”

The discussion moved on as we got to work immediately. Security footage was rounded up and possible suspects marked. Fyodor immediately began looking into financial trails and supply routes to figure out if it could have been a client. These were the kind of conversations I usually excelled at, but today I found myself distracted. My thoughts kept drifting home.

To Vera.

To the look on her face that morning. To the way she’d called Adrian’s name. To the fury that had followed when she discovered my surveillance records. To the fact that she wasn’t scared of me anymore. She was angry. And somehow that was infinitely worse.

By the time I returned home, it was nearly midnight, and I was exhausted and annoyed. It had been a long day, and I was covered in smoke. All I needed was silence and sleep but the moment I stepped through the front door, I knew I wasn’t getting it. Voices drifted from the living room. Female voices. Plural. I stopped and frowned, wondering if Ilana might still be there, but then I remembered.

Shit.

The revenge.

Right after the morning episode, I’d arranged for tonight’s little performance. I had invited two women for dinner and drinks, which was enough to make Vera miserable. At the time, it had seemed like a brilliant idea. Now I wanted nothing more than to go to bed. Unfortunately, it was too late for that since the women were already here, and if I knew Vera at all, she would be pissed.

I entered the living room and immediately spotted the problem.

Vera.

She sat in an armchair near the window, her arms crossed and jaw clenched. Her eyes were blazing. Jesus Christ. She looked furious. One of the women noticed me first and immediately puckered up.

“Nico!”

She stood at once, and the other followed, both of them smiling at me. They were scantily dressed, and anyone who saw them would know exactly why they were here. Despite that, my attention remained fixed on Vera. Her gaze locked onto mine, and the room seemed to disappear. For several seconds, nobody spoke.

Then one of the women slipped an arm around mine. “Long day?”

“Very.”

My eyes never left Vera, and the first crack appeared immediately. Her jaw tightened. Good. A dark part of me enjoyed that, even though I wanted to send these two girls on their way. Completely ignoring Vera, I moved toward the sofa and sat down, and the women settled beside me instantly. One on each side.

Touching. Laughing. Trying.