Page 8 of Bribed & Bred By the BRATVA
Roman looks me over, eyes narrowed. “You called a meeting. You never call a meeting. What’s going on?”
“I got married,” I say.
Silence. It is the clean kind, the cut before the blood. Nikolai is the first to move. He leans back in the chair, mouth tilting. “Got married to who?”
“A woman I met at the hospital.”
Roman laughs once, the sound hard. “You’re joking.”
“‘I’m not.” I pour whiskey but don’t drink it. “Her name is Isabella. Her brother is sixteen and was dying waiting for surgery they’d never be able to afford. I offered the only bargain that mattered. And now she is my wife.”
Nikolai whistles low. “You bribed a woman to be your wife?”
“It’s an honest contract and it gave immediate results for both parties,” I say.
“I’m sure it fucking did,” Roman grumbles, dragging a hand over his face. “It’s a bit fast.”
“We all like to pretend we need time,” I counter. “But we don’t. We need certainty.”
Roman’s jaw ticks. He circles the desk because he is a man who prefers momentum to thought. “You married a stranger on instinct. That isn’t certainty. It’s madness.”
“Instinct is the only certainty worth having,” I answer. “I saw her and knew. I feel like I’ve been waiting for the shape of my life to declare itself. Then I saw her, and it did.”
Nikolai sips his drink, watching me over the rim. “What does she know about us?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Apart from that when I say a thing will happen, it happens. And that her brother is alive because I chose her to be my wife.”
“And what does she think about you?” Roman asks.
“She thinks I’m insane,” I say with a shrug. “She isn’t wrong.”
He barks a laugh that has no humor in it. “Good. That way she won’t mistake you for something soft.”
Maksim calls. I put him on speaker. The line carries the thin cry of a newborn from far down a corridor. “You married?” he says, no greeting at all.
“Yes,” I eye my brothers wondering which one of them sneaked a message to our brother. Our leader.
“Is this a joke?” he asks.
“No.”
He exhales. “Clara sends you a curse and a kiss. She says your timing is appalling.”
“I seized an opportunity.”
Nikolai stretches his legs. “What do you want from us?”
“Your acceptance,” I say. “Understand that she is under my protection. No tests. No games. If anyone so much as startles her in these first days, I will remove the problem at the root.”
Roman’s eyes flick like knives. “You expect trouble?”
“I expect the world to notice when I change it,” I say. “Keep your men from being curious. Keep our enemies from thinking a wife means weakness.”
Roman’s mouth goes thin. “A wife is leverage.”
“A wife is a legacy,” I correct. “I want a child. As soon as possible.”
Nikolai grins like a fox. “There it is.”
