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She leaped out of the bed, disturbingly aware that every time she thought about it, she became a bit wetter.
Also, that was a double no.No more thinking about her responses to them.
She took a shower, and while her intention had been for it to be cold—quick and invigorating—once she stood under the jets of water, it became cool, leisurely, and much needed.
The skin on her ass still flamed red hot, and the gentle tepid water eased it a lot. After lathering her body and washing her hair, she finally dragged herself out of the shower and slipped into a white terrycloth robe.
She had to think of the spanking as a receipt of battle, a battle scar. She had acted, and they had retaliated. Surely she didn’t expect them to not do anything. She would have lost all respect for them if they hadn’t countered her move.
It also meant they thought of her as a worthy opponent, someone capable of disrupting their status quo, and someone who they considered a threat. They hadn’t ignored her, hadn’t written her off as a nuisance who would go away once they stopped feeding her attention.
Their demands had been simple but clear. Back off, or a spanking would be the least of her problems.
When her phone rang, she hesitated to answer since it was Josh.
“Josh,” she said cheerily as if nothing had happened, which was how it should be. She was on track.
“Don’t 'Josh' me,” her cousin roared on the other end of the phone. The reception was much clearer, which meant he had landed somewhere with more civilization at hand.
“I know what you did, and this after…afterI told you they might be the Mafia.”
“Oh, Mafia-shmafia—”
“Ans, they can, like, justoffyou. Do you know what that means? Right now there’s probably a sniper, probably one of the Shlykov brothers themselves, pointing a laser dot on your forehead. What the fuck were you thinking? You have to stop.”
Ansley’s fingers automatically rose to her forehead, but then she promptly resisted the urge to check outside her floor-to-ceiling windows for a sniper. Yet she knew that wasn’t true. They didn’t send other people to do their dirty work. Oh my God, they were the Russian Mafia. And she had let them touch her. Okay so maybe she didn’t have that much of a choice. But shehadresponded.
“They’re not going to kill me,” she said instead.
“They’re totally going to kill you. It’s literally what they do to people standing in their way. No warning. They do it every fucking time.”
“Actually, I did get a warning.”
“Fuck, Ans. What did they say?”
“Well, they gave me a spanking and told me to leave them alone.” She slapped her hand across her mouth. Why did she tell Josh that? “I’m not leaving that alone,” she continued to change the subject. I’m absolutely not going to leave them alone until they call off their plans to demolish the whole block of buildings on Merring Street. Besides, I think I covered myself by making it a public thing, and if they’re the Bratva, then they can’t be stupid because if something suddenly happened to me, they’ll be the first suspects.”
“Wait, what did you say?”
“They’ll be the first suspects—”
“No, before that. They didwhatto you?”
“Oh, that. They spanked me like I was some petulant child who needed to learn a lesson.”What is wrong with me, she silently mouthed when she continued telling Josh things she shouldn’t. “I don’t, by the way, need to be taught a lesson. I know exactly what I’m doing, and if they think they’re going to scare me off just because they’re the big, bad Bratva, they have no clue who they’re dealing with. I’m not backing down to bullies. I—”
She stopped mid-sentence when her laptop pinged.
Oops.
All her bravado took a nosedive for a little while when the images popped up on her screen. Plan B.
“Josh, I have to go. Look, don’t worry about me. I’m fine. Nothing is going to happen to me.”
“You’re in over your head, and I’m coming back home.”
“I’m handling the situation. I’m standing up to the ogres. You should be proud of me. Stay where you are… or go where you were supposed to be going, and I’ll promise to be careful. Deal?”
“Ans—”
