Page 17 of The Bratva's Forced Kidnapped Bride
“I’ve had incendiary devices hidden in all those locations, and I can detonate them at any time.” Reaching over again, he magnified one of the areas. “This building must have a thousand employees in it on any given workday.”
I looked at his bandages, wondering if I could move fast enough to tear the stitches out. He stood, taking the tablet from me with a soft smile on his face.
“Don’t worry. Their safety is completely up to you. I don’twantto kill all those people.”
“Like hell you don’t,” I snapped.
“You wound me,” he answered, actually looking somewhat offended.
“Not badly enough,” I muttered.
But there was no way to get a warning to anyone about his bombs. There was nothing I could do but comply.
He ignored the jibe, chuckling as he told me we’d be leaving soon, getting on his phone to arrange a jet as he walked away.
“How soon?” I asked. It was early fall in southern California, and still balmy, but it’d be much colder in Russia. “I need to pack. And what do you mean by acting like a happy wife? Are we talking tea with your grandmother?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he tossed over his shoulder, halfway up the stairs.
He snapped at one of the ever-looming guards, who hurried over to my side to hustle me out the front door. A couple of minutes later, a car rolled out of the garage, and a few minutes after that, Anatoli hurried out to slide into the backseat beside me.
“How am I supposed to make a good impression on your family when I’m wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a freaking sparkly heart on it?” I asked.
I also wanted to ask who the hell picked out the wardrobe in my closet, because everything was so sickeningly cutesy. It was insulting, which I guess was the point.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said again, not glancing up from his phone.
“Since the fate of my family and their employees depends on it, I’m kind of worried,” I said.
He looked up then, fixing me with his gray stare. “I’ve told you two things in the last couple of minutes. One was that I didn’t want to have to kill anyone, and the second was not to worry about it. It’s time you remember who you are and start listening.”
“Wait,” I said, feigning ignorance as I bristled at his imperious tone. “I thought I was your wife. Your happy wife. And that’s a whole lot of words to tell someone to shut up.”
He heaved out a sigh. “Masha? Shut up.”
I clapped my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing, but remained silent for the ride to the airport, where his private jet was waiting and ready to go. Despite the failed escape attempt and the fact that most of my family’s buildings were rigged to blow at the least provocation, my spirit wasn’t broken. Quite the opposite, they were up.
He’d pretty much promised he wouldn’t press the button if I played my part, and we were heading to a new location. I didn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, so his promises meant next to nothing, but a new location meant new opportunities. I would no longer be in the middle of the desert,but in a city. I didn’t know Volgograd, but all I needed was one little phone call to warn Mat or Aleks, or anyone I could get a hold of, to take away the threat hanging over me.
And as long as he wanted me to play his devoted bride, I had to hope that meant the next few days would be torture-free.
Once we were in the air, the quiet and reserved flight attendant wheeled out a feast, and I dug into it with gusto, not having eaten since my lunch break before getting tied up in the basement, which seemed like it was days ago.
“Glad to see a little high voltage didn’t damage your appetite,” he said, offering me seconds of the rich chocolate cake.
With a shrug, I accepted. “You eat when you can,” I said, a lesson from my father. “And you’re also shoveling it in, so I’m assuming it’s not poison.”
“Unless it’s a poison I’ve been building up an immunity to,” he said dramatically.
Was Anatoli trying to be funny? It was working, or else I was still not quite recovered from the electric fence.
“That only happens in movies,” I said. He raised a brow, putting a bite of cake from his own plate onto a fork and holding it out to me. Feeling my cheeks getting hot, I gobbled it up, glancing away and clearing my throat.
This was weird. I shouldn’t have been getting along with him, but at the same time, I was exhausted from the mental ups and downs he’d been putting me through, as well as just plain exhausted from my escape attempt. And now we were on an overnight flight to Russia, where I’d be expected to act like we were madly in love and not sworn enemies.
“So, um, tell me about your family. What should I expect?”
“My brother just died,” he said flatly. He waved a hand against my automatic attempt at condolences. The mere thought of losing Lilia was enough to make me want to double over, but he didn’t seem too broken up. “We weren’t close,” he said. “It’s a long story.”
