Page 65 of The Bratva's Innocent Sold Bride
That made Mat laugh, an almost hysterical sound as he leaned back to look me over. “Maybe I will,” he said, then in a lower voice, “Are you all right?”
I nodded, then burst into tears. “Artem,” I said. “They chased him into the woods.”
He shook his head, smiling. “He’s at home, he’s fine.”
It was only then that I could relax and stop holding on for dear life. Mat found me; he found our dog. We were safe, and soon we’d all be together, the way it was supposed to be.
Chapter 40 - Mat
CJ was alive. Aside from a few red marks around her throat and a scratch on her cheek, which I would take into account when I was dealing with Anatoli, she was alive and well. Nothing else mattered.
It took a long time before I released her from my grip, needing to feel her warmth and her heartbeat close to me. It had almost taken too long to find her. There were two locations on CJ’s list that Anatoli had been to recently, this one and the one that we now knew was supposed to be an ambush to take me out of the picture. My old tech specialist, Delta, thought we should head to the other one, since it was closer and there was no indication that there was anything out here.
CJ was my new specialist now. I made the last-minute decision to go with my gut and head out to this place in the middle of nowhere. It was like CJ was guiding me, calling out to me through the numbers on that screen.
Right now, Masha had her foot on a neatly zip-tied Anatoli while she called in the ambush to the team who were dispatched to the other site to cover our bases. Lev was poking around the underside of the old camper and stood up, facing me with a grim look on his face as he held up a small packet.
Explosives, probably rigged from the materials he stole from one of my warehouses. I gently set CJ aside and leaped across the sandy lot to ruthlessly kick Arcadi in the gut. That roused him from unconsciousness enough to sneer at me through the blood that ran down his face.
He was going to blow the whole place up if he didn’t get what he wanted. I was going to kick every last tooth out of hismouth. As I reared my foot back again, Masha ordered me to stop.
“He’s already in bad shape. We agreed we need info before we take care of him.”
She was right, and I growled for her to get him out of my sight before I decided whatever he could tell me about the rest of his organization wasn’t worth watching him die right now. She and Lev hauled him to the car they followed me in, and dumped him in the trunk. I returned to CJ’s side, where she stood frozen and staring.
“You’re not okay,” I said, pulling her close to keep her warm. “Let’s get you home so that dog can stop whining.”
She smiled slightly at the mention of Artem and rolled her eyes at my false irritation. Leaning against me, we ambled to the car. I wasn’t going to tell her about the explosives Anatoli had rigged to the trailer. There was no need to know now that she was out of harm’s way. And she would stay that way.
In the car on the way home, she turned to me, reaching out to put her hand on my arm. “You found me.”
“Of course I did.”
“If I had been able to see that info sooner, Delta might have found this place before he even took me there,” she said.
I let my foot off the gas a little to turn to her in astonishment. Was she suggesting if I hadn’t fired her and taken her to LA to get her out of Anatoli’s reach, none of this would have happened?
I cleared my throat to keep from swearing. “And if you’d listened and stayed at home today, we wouldn’t need that information because you’d still be at home.”
I didn’t mean to sound so gruff. I was still shaken from the sight of that explosive device, waiting to blow my wife to pieces.
“I know,” she sighed. “I should have listened. I—I’m sorry.”
My mouth dropped open. What was this? Was her spirit broken? I couldn’t have that. “I wish you had trusted me.”
“I did,” she said, flapping her hands in her lap. “I believed you sent Garik to get me. I checked his ID and everything. I trusted you so much, and I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to trust Terrence, or Anatoli, or whatever we’re calling him.”
“We can call him that asshole from now on,” I said, reaching for her hand.
She huffed a small laugh. I should have shared more with her from the beginning, or better yet, never put her on the project, foolishly thinking she’d be safe from such a man behind a computer screen. And yet, she’d been pivotal in helping me find him and bring him down. I was going to tell her all this because I wanted everything out in the open, including the meeting with her father, but we pulled in through the gates, and she was already tugging on her door handle to get into the house.
The dog leaped on her as soon as she was through the doors, somehow sensing she was on her way home. She fell to her knees, kissing his head and apologizing.
“Was he so scared?” she asked in the baby voice I found so enchantingly cute. “Poor, poor Artem.”
“It was a good thing this time, he was so scared. If he hadn’t stayed put, it might have taken longer to find him.”
She hugged him harder. “Is he a genius? Is Artem a genius and a good boy?”
