Page 59 of The Bratva's Captive

I almost did a double-take at him calling me Boss like that, in here. I was keeping everything going while Father recovered slowly, but I really didn’t want to take over completely. Not like this. My father’s rule couldn’t be over. He wasn’t that old.

“Thank you.” I took the papers and watched him go. These documents were further proof that all of Sloane’s debts had been dealt with. Once she told me her last name and her social security number, it was a simple matter of tracking down those she owed money to. While I could’ve paid off the loan sharks and debt collectors, I opted to have them killed instead. Those fuckers took advantage of her for too long, so it made more sense to have Hugo’s men and several other Ivanov soldiers kill them all. It had taken an extra day or two to track down her ex who’d put her into debt in the first place, but as of last night, he was nothing more than a rotting corpse.

I personally went to see her old apartment and pay a visit to her landlord. I let him live but with a painful lesson of what happened when he took advantage of people and increased rent for the hell of it. I doubted he’d ever father children after how I’d beaten him, and I doubted he’d be brave enough to ever screw over another tenant again.

Maybe wanting to kill anyone who bothered Sloane was a sign of how close she was getting to me, but I didn’t care. They were all expendable as I kept my promise to her of handling all her woes.

So long as Sloane stayed here as my mistress and the future mother of my heir, nobody would bother her ever again.

Hugo left after he gave me the paper, but I wasn’t alone for long. Nik came to see me, but he didn’t bother to knock. He let himself in and dropped into the chair across from me.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He shrugged, rubbing his face. He wouldn’t try to lie to me and tell me that nothing was wrong. I saw it clearly in his eyes and in his demeanor as he slouched into the chair that he was stressed.

“I can’t find anything.” He wasn’t merely whining. We were all that fed up with how difficult it was to investigate who had poisoned our father.

“Sooner or later, something will come up.” It felt like a stupid platitude to offer him, but I believed that no secret could stay hidden indefinitely.

I hoped that was true with Sloane too. I couldn’t stop this hunch that she was keeping something from me. And I would stay curious about it until I knew exactly what she was being slightly secretive about.

“Yeah,” he said with a heavy sigh. “I know something will come up.” Then, perking up as if he was shoving his worries aside, he sat up straighter and smiled at me. “No one can keep a secret forever.”

I raised my brows as I closed the laptop I’d been working on.

“And that’s why I’m wondering when you are going to tell me what’s going on.”

“What are you talking about?”

He grinned. “I’m talking about why Hugo’s men went all scorched-earth as you killed the loan sharks who wanted money from a particular woman named Sloane Black.”

I shrugged. “That was nothing more than keeping a promise with someone.”

His smile widened as if he were calling my bluff.

“No one will ever complain about my taking out the trash.” The world didn’t need men like those guys.

“Sure, sure. So, who is she? When will I meet her?” He wasn’t giving up about this.

I narrowed my eyes, possessive and not liking how my brother would even talk about her.

“You clearly have adjusted your opinions about keeping a woman around longer than one night to be this relaxed and satisfied.”

“I’m not relaxed,” I argued. “I’m just as impatient to find someone to punish for trying to kill Father as you are.”

He held his hands up in a truce. “I know. Of course, you are. I would never question your loyalty to the family. But fuck, it’s not a crime to want to keep a nice piece of ass around for a little bit.”

She was much more than a piece of ass.

“But you can’t hide her from the family forever. It looks like you want to keep her around, and I can’t blame you. A man only looks as happy as you are when he’s getting some.”

I wasn’t merely getting some. Sloane was showing me how every other woman I’d had before her was a pale substitution forgoodsex.

“Where is she? Who is she?”

“She’s my mistress,” I explained, which wasn’t anything shocking. They’d all had dalliances with mistresses too. So had our father. “And you can meet her in an hour. At lunch.”

I wasn’t bluffing. After I dealt with more things in the office, I went to my floor and made sure she was wearing a bra this time.

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