Page 41 of The Bratva's Innocent Sold Bride
At the car, CJ jumped in, staring me down, all but daring me to lift her bodily out of the car and race away without her again.
“If you promise to do exactly as I say when we get there, you can go.”
She visibly relaxed, agreeing without hesitating for once. So, yes, I was taking my wife and dog to the aftermath of a raid.
Chapter 25 - CJ
Did I really just win an argument with Mat? And now that he was letting me go to the scene of a crime, was I having second thoughts? He’d done his due diligence, calling his second in command to ensure no one was in the offices, which were closed on weekends, so no one had been there to get hurt.
I plied him with questions, the main one being who would break into a charity. There would be very little money in the office, and the equipment certainly wasn’t worth much. A dozen or so low-level computers, some phones, and a whole bunch of random sporting equipment and toys for the center. The charity wasn’t political, and the president or any of the handful of paid employees weren’t on anyone’s shit list.
I told Mat all this, but he remained frustratingly tight-lipped. He knew something, and it was something he refused to share, no matter how I hounded him. My second most important question was how he knew about it before anyone actually involved in the organization found out.
That was when I learned he was spying on anything related to my father.
“There’s a reason for it, CJ,” he snapped, all but ordering me not to be mad.
The only thing I could think of that didn’t keep me from boiling over with outrage was the fact that he was Bratva, and it wasn’t just the upstanding members of society who knew he’d married me. Any one of his enemies could have decided to try to hurt him by attacking something attached to me.
But that was ridiculous. It was a kid’s charity for goodness’ sake. I was starting to think like I was in some sort of mafia movie. It was probably just ordinary criminals trying tosteal something for a quick buck, nothing more. I refused to be as paranoid as my stony husband.
Once we were there, I gasped at the damage visible just from the outside. Every window was smashed, the door hung open on broken hinges, and even the handicapped parking signs in the small parking lot had been knocked over. While I didn’t savor being on the committee with all those catty women, this charity was near and dear to my heart, and it ached to see the wanton destruction.
“What happened to the security system?” I asked in a low voice. How was the place not swarming with cops?
“Stay in the car with the dog,” Mat said, already out and striding toward what was left of the front door. He held a gun loosely at his side, and the guard followed him, running to check the side of the building.
Like hell I was going to stay in the car. He’d told me himself the place was empty and the ransackers long gone. I wouldn’t be there if that weren’t the case. I was sick of getting left behind.
“You have to stay, though,” I said to Artem, leaving the windows half down as I hurried after Mat into the office building.
The two-story building was all for the charity’s administration team, with an open reception area and interview room for new volunteers. The rest of the first floor consisted of the higher-level employees’ offices. The second floor had offices for part-time employees, a training room for volunteers, a huge storage area, and a small kitchen and meeting room.
I had to put my hand over my mouth to keep from sucking in a breath at the devastation. The receptionist’s desk was nothing but splinters of wood, the computer was cracked shardsof plastic. They must have taken a baseball bat to it all. I ducked into the interview room so Mat wouldn’t see me as he and the guard made a quick run through of the first floor and headed upstairs. The interview room was as bad as the reception area. Nothing was recognizable, and all the pictures of our volunteer get-togethers were ripped from the walls and smashed.
It made me sick, and I didn’t want to see upstairs, so I headed back to the car, stopping just before I reached the door when I heard a muffled thud and a distinct grunt from above. A louder noise, then a shout, and I was racing up the stairs before I could think. What if something had collapsed onto Mat and he was hurt?
It was worse. Three strange men, decked out in all black, with ski masks covering their faces, had been hiding up there, lying in ambush. I barely stifled a scream as I ducked behind the stairwell door, peeking through to see Mat barrel into one of them and knock him over as another swung at his head with a broken chair leg.
Before I could shout a warning, his guard decked him before he could finish the downward swing, giving Mat enough time to whirl out of the way. He ruthlessly slammed his fist upward into the attacker’s chin, causing his head to snap back. I winced at the brutality, horrified and… impressed.
Mat kicked the feet out from the third man, then lunged across the floor for his gun, which he must have dropped. Two clicks sounded in the room, and as fast as it started, Mat and his guard had control of the situation. One man was out cold from the uppercut, and the other two had guns pointed at their masked heads.
Then Mat saw me. I was frozen in place, waiting for his roar of anger, but he only swore and told me to bring a rope fromthe trunk of the car. In a daze, I did it, running faster than I ever did before, terrified that those men would somehow break free.
I needn’t have worried because apparently one of the attackers had pissed Mat off, because he was now also unconscious. The third one was silent as the guard tied him up, then moved to do the same to his buddies.
“You,” Mat growled at me, putting his gun away. “Out. Now.”
“There’s no reason to leave now,” I said, taking out my phone and snapping pictures of the wreckage to help the police investigation. Then I remembered who I was married to. There would be no police.
Still ignoring the order despite his dark scowl, I cataloged everything in case it might be important. When the guard unmasked the men, I took their pictures, too, even though I was determined to get them off my phone as soon as I transferred the pics to Mat. They were the stuff of nightmares, but Mat had taken them down almost effortlessly. It had been like watching a gruesome ballet, and kind of hot.
When more of his men arrived to take over, he took me home, leaving the guard with the others. Once we got there, I was oddly exhilarated, and put Artem out in his run so I could transfer the photos. Hurrying up the stairs to the computer in our bedroom, I logged into my cloud storage to share them with Mat’s account, but before I could enter my password, he pulled me out of the chair and spun me to face him, hands tightly gripping my arms.
“You shouldn’t have been in there,” he said, a muscle in his jaw working as he swept my face with furious eyes. “I told you to stay in the car. After you disobeyed that order, I told you to get back to the car.”
“But, Mat, at that point they were—”
