Page 75 of The Bratva's Arranged Virgin Bride
“You knew me before I got married,” I reminded him. “You messed with my wife.”
“And you messed with mine,” he shouted, lunging forward as best he could.
I stepped back, holding up a cord that could connect to a car battery, snapping the copper clamp open and shut in one hand.
“Elaina despised you. She tried to get me to take her away from you, and I refused. I had no idea how many people you crossed back then, and her killers never answered to me. So, like I already told you, I had nothing to do with her death. You hadno right or reason to do what you did to Nat. It was uncalled for and unforgivable.”
“I think I’ll be able to sleep at night without your forgiveness,” he said with a bitter laugh. “Do you really think I believe you? Do you think this is over?”
I was done. I had much better things to do with my time than spend it with my worst enemy. Taking out my gun, I ended him with a single bullet.
“Yes,” I said to his slumped and silent form. “I do.”
On the way out, I tossed the padlock key back to the undercover guard. “Tell Arkadi I’ll have one of my guys come clean that up,” I said.
He shook his head. “He said he’ll do it. And, uh, he said to call him later.”
The man, who’d probably been through countless fights, looked mildly uncomfortable giving me the message. I had no idea if I was going to get yelled at or if we could finally sort out our baggage, but all I wanted was to get back home to Nat. My brother had been ignoring me for years now; he could sit and wait for me to get back to him for once.
When I found Nat in the kitchen of her new home, she was sitting at the table, looking anxious and on edge, not content and carefree like I’d left her.
“How do you like the place?” I asked. “Should I have furnished it more? I thought you might like to choose everything.”
She waved her hand. “It’s great. I probably will like picking out the furniture, but…”
“What?” I asked, sitting down across from her and waiting until she looked up at me.
“I talked to Mila,” she said.
“That’s good, right?”
“Yeah. We’re meeting for lunch tomorrow. It’ll be the first time I’ve talked to her since I learned she was hiding who you really were from me.”
“She was?” I asked, confused. “To protect you?”
“To protectyou,” she said with a humorless chuckle. “You already know I was pissed about the gallery in Milan.”
“You wanted me dead.”
“Worse than dead,” she admitted. “Brokenhearted. Shattered.”
“You could still do it,” I told her, my breath freezing in my chest. The look she gave me was inscrutable, and I would have rather gone out like Vissarion than hear her say that was what she wanted.
“I don’t want to anymore,” she said with a slow smile. “Just like you don’t want to take over my family’s organization.”
And the reason for that was because I loved her. She still wasn’t saying the words, but the meaning was there. Wasn’t it?
“Then what’s wrong?”
She swallowed and looked down. “Well, after Mila and I have a chance to talk, Arkadi is going to join us. Will you go, too? And talk to him?”
Was that what she was worried about? That I’d refuse to speak to my brother? I was the one trying to mend the rift between us all these years. Leave it to Arkadi to make me out to be the bad guy somehow.
I took a deep breath. That was for us to work out together. And what better time to start than tomorrow?
“Of course, I’ll be there. The only thing I want more than a reconciliation between Arkadi and me is for you to be happy.”
All the tension drained out of her, and her smile was once again sunny and bright. She jumped up to continue going through everything in the kitchen, and I could see she had started a list of things we needed.
I breathed a sigh of relief that she was no longer worried about meeting with her aunt the next day, and I hoped I was concealing my own newfound anxiety. This was it. I’d been wanting to bridge the chasm, but Arkadi still couldn’t stand me. He’d been contemptuous of me since we were kids. He might have helped rescue Nat, but that was all for Mila, not me. His wife would have never gotten over losing Nat, and he would give her whatever she wanted.
My wife wanted my family to get along, to be loving and close like hers was. I wasn’t sure I could give that to her, and it tore me up inside.
