Page 59 of The Bratva's Forced Kidnapped Bride
Several sharp thuds on the door had us both jerking upright. Heavy fists knocked again, along with the sound of scuffling feet. More than one person. But we were in the middle of nowhere, how could my family have found me so soon?
“Damn it,” Anatoli hissed. “I should have messaged Yury to get the car.”
He looked like he wanted to punch a wall, between a rock and a hard place. He couldn’t kill anyone in my family, but he wouldn’t let them take me. I could read it all on his face and reached for his hand.
I grabbed his shirt and tugged it on, then jumped up to get my jeans. I waved for him to hide in the bathroom. “I’ll deal with them,” I said.
“Like hell you will,” he said. Refusing to hide or cower, he went to the door in my place, only a blanket slung around his hips, and threw open the door.
A burst of childish laughter rang out as the sound of flip-flops slapped down the walkway outside the room. Just a bunch of rowdy kids with nothing else to do in this dead-endneighborhood. I sank back onto the bed, my hand on my chest, and let out a tense laugh.
Anatoli slammed the door, not finding it funny. He looked around the room as if seeing where we were for the first time.
“No more of this,” he said. “No more running and hiding.”
“It’s fine,” I said, but he shook his head, giving me a look that was more suited to when he first captured me. It was a look I wasn’t about to argue with.
“It’s not fine. I’m not letting you be an outcast from your family. I’m ending this.”
I reeled back from his words, spit out with the force of bullets, frozen under the weight of his hard stare.
Chapter 42 - Anatoli
There was never a time in my life when I thought I could be so selfless. I had been on my own for so long that I only ever had to look out for myself. But no longer. There was no way I could give Masha up, but to keep her by my side would be asking her to sacrifice too much.
The one thing still threatening to tear us apart was her family, and I couldn’t exactly get rid of them. I didn’t even want to anymore, because it would have caused her too much pain.
“Are you kidding me?”
I turned to see her glaring at me, as furious as if we hadn’t just crawled out of bed together, totally in sync at last. It looked like she was ready to break the headboard off the bed and use it like a baseball bat to beat me to a pulp.
“There’s no way I’m letting you end this,” she said, her eyes dark with anger.
For a split second, I was confused. Wouldn’t that be what she wanted? I reached for her and shook my head when she stepped back, just about breathing fire. “I’m not ending us,” I said. “Nothing’s coming between us ever again. I’m ending the feud.”
She let me pull her close then, wrapping her arms around me, her heart thudding in her chest. I leaned back, glaring down at her. “I fucking love you, Masha.”
Her jaw dropped, and she blinked rapidly several times. I waited for her to say something, namely that she felt the same about me, but she only eased herself down onto the bed and stared at the closed curtains in our dank little room.
“How are you going to do it?” she asked, as if I hadn’t spilled my guts all over the floor in front of her.
“I’m going to make a deal,” I said. “I have something I think your cousin Mat will be very interested in.”
She rolled her eyes. “They’ll just shoot you and take me back,” she said.
I snickered. “While you are the thing I hold most dear in this world,” I said. “I wasn’t speaking about you.”
She pelted me with more questions, but time was of the essence now. Instead of messaging Yury about coming to move Masha’s sister’s car, I had him get the plane ready. It might have been quicker to speak to Daniil or even the big boss, Aleks, but I wasn’t feeling too friendly toward those two at the moment. And Mat was based in my old stomping grounds, his wife a tech genius. I’d only deal with them.
No amount of cajoling could get me to spend the night and start for Silicon Valley in the morning. I’d had a concussion before, along with bruised ribs and a bashed-in face. This had to end, so we didn’t have to jump at every kid’s prank. And if they believed Masha was still with me against her will, there was no telling what they’d do, including going after my family in Russia.
They were pains in my ass, but they’d accepted Masha with open arms, and she seemed to like them, craziness and all. She wouldn’t want them to be under siege, either.
We arrived in San Jose in the wee hours of the morning, and Masha suggested we go to her old apartment to get some rest until it was a civilized hour to drive to Mat’s house.
“Nope,” I said, hustling her into a hurriedly acquired rental car. “If you don’t think they’re watching your old apartment, I’m going to think you’re losing your edge. And sorry,but your family hadn’t been acting too civilized, so Mat can haul his ass out of bed.”
She gnawed on her lip the whole way, alternating between reaching for my hand and thinking better of it. Her loyalty was one of the things I admired most about her, among so many other things, and I felt like I finally had some of it. But was it enough? She was clearly worried that this wouldn’t work, but was it because she didn’t want to be a young widow, or because she didn’t think she had the strength to go against her most beloved cousin face-to-face?
