Page 14 of The Bratva's Forced Kidnapped Bride
It was a tight fit, and for a brief second, I thought my hips would betray me, but I scraped through, pulling myself out onto a patch of half-dead grass by a sprinkler head. I was on the side of the house, and for the moment, no one was around. There were also next to no hiding places besides the few agave plants that were barely as big as me, and a few useless decorative patches of cacti. Staying low and close to the side of the house, I made my way around to the back, spotting a small guest house beyond the pool. The stone wall was beyond that, and then nothing but sandy hills and open desert.
A certain death sentence if I couldn’t find my way back to the road, or any other kind of civilization. Still, Anatoli had shown his hand and all but warned me I’d be dead before our first wedding anniversary. No way I was staying around to find out if he meant it, or end up back in that chair again.
Drawing the gun from my waistband, I held it firmly in front of me, ready to use it on anyone who tried to stop me from gaining my freedom.
Chapter 12 - Anatoli
Was I actually glad about the reprieve when I had been dreaming about having Masha in my grasp for so long? The fact that I hadn’t touched the sparking clamp to her smooth, velvety skin even once made me lash out at the man who stood at the top of the stairs.
“What’s so important?” I snapped.
“Your Uncle Miron,” he said, holding out a muted cellphone. “He swore it was urgent, and he does sound upset.”
I nodded, taking the phone, and headed toward my private office. He followed me a few steps, looking anxious, which seemed out of character, though I didn’t know this particular guard very well.
“What? Did he say something to you?”
“No, it’s just that I—” he stammered. “When I answered, he was raving about speaking to you immediately. I accidentally said you were with your wife.”
I didn’t swear. I didn’t even hit him. I only nodded and slammed myself into my office.
“Uncle Miron,” I said, determined to ignore the guard’s unwitting slip of the tongue. Maybe he hadn’t noticed.
Miron was the lesser of the two evils when it came to my father’s brothers. He was the third of six children, with my father being the eldest and the heir to our vast holdings. He wasn’t much easier to deal with and was just as antsy about what was going to happen now that Konstantin was dead, but I trusted him a bit more than Leonid, though that wasn’t saying much.
“The Collective is leaning on us hard, Anatoli,” he said. “You must come back and help us deal with them.”
Ah, good, the Collective again. As if I wasn’t sick to death of hearing about them. “I thought you were in talks with one of their leaders to join forces,” I said. Actually, perhaps I should have been grateful to them since they must have been bothersome enough that Miron hadn’t noticed my guard’s slip of the tongue regarding my new bride.
“You just said the most important part,” Miron sighed. “Oneof their leaders. There are too many cooks in that kitchen, Anatoli. Just as there are in our family now. It’s going to end in a battle between me and Leonid, who thinks he’s finally in charge after all these years. The man is pushing seventy,” he said, the sound of his footsteps tapping against tile coming through the phone as he paced. “And I’m not much younger. Even your Aunt Nadia thinks she’s suddenly entitled to throw her hat into the ring. Your Aunt Nadia, Anatoli.”
His disgust was clear, and with good reason. My Aunt Nadia, the youngest of my father’s siblings, spent her life shopping and collecting husbands. The first two had died after going against her whims, and the two after that were lucky to get away with divorces that only drained their bank accounts and not spilled their blood.
“Nadia?” I laughed. “How will she find the time between fashion shows?”
“She’ll poison us all eventually if she thinks she has a chance at everything. And she’s raging that Leonid is considering letting that slip of a girl, Ava, have it all so she can crawl back to the safety of her family.”
“Ah, right, Ava. Konstantin’s widow,” I said, half amused, half irritated that my family had descended to such depths. It was one thing to be brought low by an enemy, but they weredoing it without any outside forces. “I never did get the wedding invitation, so I was shocked to learn he was married at all.”
There was a long grumbling sound before Miron answered. “Speaking of lost wedding invitations.”
Shit. I walked right into that myself. “So, is joining with the Collective completely off the table?” I asked, the words tumbling out in a rush to distract him.
He wasn’t distracted. “It’s shameful enough you didn’t stay and fight for what should have been yours,” he said, making me bristle with anger. “But to take a bride without any of us meeting her?”
“Konstantin was the oldest. I never had any claim—you know what, no. I won’t go into that again. And as for any brides I choose to take, it’s none of your concern.”
“I hope she’s made of sterner stuff than your brother’s choice. And less avaricious, too.”
There was no getting around it, no disputing what he already knew. “She’s a Fokin,” I said, shocked at the pride in my voice.
I half opened my mouth to tell the complete circumstances, but clamped it shut again. Miron was congratulating me, going on and on about what an important ally the Fokins were.
“To think you were trying to take them down not so long ago,” he said, almost dreamily. Yes, the Fokins were very big fish, and I’d caught one. “I never would have said this twenty years ago, but aligning is better than fighting. And look how it went when you tried to fight them?”
I didn’t bother asking how in hell he knew so much, because it went without saying that my family had been keepingtabs on me from the moment I walked away all those years ago after my father’s unexpected death. There was no denying the Fokins had caused me a setback, but I was well on my way to righting that wrong.
‘You really must return,” he said when I stayed silent for too long. “And bring your bride. After everything, we’re still family, Anatoli. And family must come first. A reunion and a celebration of your marriage will be just the thing to bring us all together again.”
