Page 130 of Bratva's Intern

They’d noticed him.

And now they couldn’t unsee him.

My voice came out calm.

“Wren, what are you doing back here? Have you forgotten something again?”

The words tasted wrong in my mouth. A lie I wore like armor. Too direct, too strict after everything we’d been to each other.

“I—umm…”

“Who is this?” Boris’s voice dry and suspicious, slid in like a blade.

“Just an intern the university sent us,” I said smoothly. “He works a few hours a week during the summer. Temporary. Nobody important.”

Wren snapped his head toward me. I didn’t need to see his face to feel the hurt ripple off him. His body language saidenough. The way he stilled, how he parted his mouth slightly like I’d struck him.

He didn’t understand. Couldn’t understand.

Gennadi let out a raspy chuckle and muttered something crude in Russian I was relieved Wren wouldn’t understand. Then he switched to English. “He is… how you say… too pretty for only paper work, da? You fuck him, yes?” He laughed, eyes still too much on Wren for my liking. “From the look on his face, I say you fuck him a lot, eh?”

Wren’s face turned crimson.

I didn’t flinch. Didn’t look at him.

Couldn’t.

“Wren, go to my office and wait for me.”

Of course that only made Gennadi guffaw even more. I’d all but confirmed what he said, but I would rather he thought of Wren as the temporary intern I fucked when I had the itch than the truth.

That he was the most important thing in my life.

“Gentlemen—”

I walked off without looking at Wren, guiding them toward the elevators, my jaw tight so my molars were grinding against each other. Each step was deliberate. Calculated. My heart thundered behind my ribs, not from fury but from fear. From the sick knowledge that the men who’d seen Wren had a new variable to consider.

A new vulnerability.

And it was my fault.

I’d let him in. I’d brought him too close. I’d told myself I could protect him, shield him from this world.

But now they knew.

And that changed everything.

Would they believe Wren was a random guy?

I curled my hand into a fist at my side, but I didn’t give inand looked at Wren. As we neared the elevators, Boris slowed his steps.

“Is your boy any good?” he asked, accent thick, therin “your” nearly swallowed. “You have a pretty boy. He scream when you fuck him? Or he moan soft like a girl?”

Gennadi snorted, grinning like a wolf. “Ah, no shame from us, Maxim. We don’t judge. But… ehh… some of our people, they might have opinions, you know?” He waggled his fingers. “Say maybe Morozov goes soft. Dipping dick in man’s ass instead of carving empire.”

I didn’t look at them. I smiled as the elevator doors closed on Wren’s shocked face.

Calm. Cold. Composed.

---