Page 60 of The Bratva's Forced Kidnapped Bride
A block before we arrived, we switched seats, and as she drove up to Mat’s gatehouse, I ducked down in the back at her insistence.
“Your plan won’t work if you’re dead before you get to talk to him,” she argued when I balked. Enough said.
She parked near the door and warned me to hang back until she spoke to him, then marched up to the door with all the bravery I expected of my fierce wife. The guard at the gatehouse must have radioed ahead, because Mat threw open the door before she could knock.
“Damn it, Masha, we’ve been worried sick. I was getting on a plane tomorrow to help search for you.” He grabbed her shoulders, looking her over. “How did you get away? And where’s that bastard, Ovinko?”
Without a backward glance, she shoved him back inside. A few minutes passed, and I only heard a few shouts from Mat. Then she appeared in the doorway again and waved me over. Inside, Mat stood, tense and furious, but didn’t aim a gun at my head when I crossed the threshold. He looked highly dangerous despite the fact that he wore a robe over blue striped pajama pants.
“You’ve got five minutes,” he snarled. “Please believe you won’t make it out of here alive if you take one single step out of line.”
Masha swatted him in the arm, but he never took his steely gaze off me. “Mat, you promised you’d listen.”
“Now that you’re safe, I don’t have to do a damn thing,” he said pugnaciously.
“You do if you ever want to see me again. You said you’d give him ten minutes.”
As he looked at her, he realized she was deadly serious, and I could tell it was killing him. I almost felt sorry for him. He motioned for me to go ahead of him into an office, and I calmly took a seat. Masha perched on the arm of the chair, hovering protectively in case anyone should get trigger-happy. I reached for her hand and squeezed it, making Mat just about pop a vein in his forehead.
I took a deep breath and began describing my baby, the software I’d been honing and perfecting for the better part of a year. It was so damn amazing at collecting information that it would have made me a billionaire if I hadn’t gone so far, and now anyone who used it ended up breaking all sorts of federal laws. But people like Mat Fokin didn’t care about such things.
It was so amazing in its surveillance capability that there was nothing else like it. When I finished explaining all its bells and whistles, Mat gave me a hard stare, ready to shoot me all over again.
“Bullshit,” he said.
“Have your wife look it over,” I said. “It’s on my laptop in the car.”
After a little back and forth, because he didn’t want me within a thousand yards of CJ, as she probably rightly hated my guts, he sent someone to fetch my computer. When CJ finally came down, she looked me over as if I were a venomous spider, but took the laptop and fired it up.
Masha opened her mouth to speak, but I squeezed her hand. She gave me an exasperated look, but I wouldn’t have her beg on my behalf. I was going to fix this for her and give her back her family.
After a tense half an hour, CJ snapped my computer shut and rolled her neck. “It does seem pretty great, but of course I’d need to do more testing.” She had a lot better poker face than the last time I saw her.
“What’s the catch?” Mat said. “And why should we trust you?”
“I only want you not to renounce Masha as a traitor. She’s never once gone against you. Trust is earned, so I suppose you’ll just have to wait and see about me.”
Masha huffed and stood up. “You shouldn’t be upset with me anyway, or Anatoli,” she said. “And you should trust him because he’s giving you this incredible tool that you could very well use against him. All because he—” she stopped, glanced back at me. I nodded. She turned to CJ. “He loves me, CJ. The way Mat loves you.”
CJ made a horrified face, shaking her head in disbelief.
“Enough,” Mat said. “It’s freaking four in the morning. CJ will look at the program when she has time.”
“Take all the time you need,” I said, standing and nodding for her to keep my laptop.
“Another reason to trust him,” Masha said. I shrugged. Not really. There was nothing on it except the program. I wasn’t stupid and still didn’t trust Mat as far as I could throw his ass.
Mat made some noises about Masha staying behind while I got the hell out, but I didn’t have to put my foot down about that because Masha did it fine on her own. As unhappy as he looked about it, I made it out to the car without getting the back of my head blown off, and Masha fed directions to her apartment into the GPS.
We were safe for the moment, but if things blew up, I would fight for her and just hope the fallout didn’t destroy what we had together.
She let her head fall back on the seat, her eyes closed, still gnawing on her lip, still anxious. The outcome of this meant everything to her. She had told them that I loved her, not that she loved me. Would she still stay with me if her family actually made her choose?
Chapter 43 - Masha
The longest three days of my life passed by without a word from Mat or CJ. Every time Anatoli’s phone rang, I jumped, then pretended I didn’t, and that I wasn’t disappointed or upset when it wasn’t either of them. For the most part, I was content in the little bubble we created in my apartment.
If Anatoli was as anxious as I was, he wasn’t showing it, and if he noticed that the increasing wait was bothering me, he didn’t mention it. He just set up a workspace on my tiny kitchen table and started working. He got in touch with his oldest and most loyal friends in Volgograd to get them to come work with him, slowly putting the pieces of his shattered empire back together. He let me listen in on long, arduous meetings with his uncles, finally straightening them out so they finally knew who was in charge. It was either that or sink on their own, and with what remained of the international Collective, they didn’t dare.
