Page 2 of The Bratva's Innocent Pregnant Bride
I hadn’t even taken a bite of the steaming cinnamon rolls the cook placed on the table and already I had a toothache from too much sweetness. Could there have been a little stab of envythat I hadn’t found the right woman to get all ridiculous with yet?
No. In fact, hell no.
As we settled in at the table, Rurik mentioned something about needing a new coat, joking about being in LA for so long that he’d gotten rid of the parkas and winter gear necessary for winters in Moscow, but not at all necessary in southern California.
“Are you moving up here too?” I asked. While Rurik did keep things close to his chest, this was something I was sure he would have shared with me.
He shook his head. “No, for Aspen.”
“He doesn’t know yet,” CJ said when I looked even more confused.
“You’re moving to Aspen? That’s not even in California is it?”
“It’s in Colorado,” Masha said, rolling her eyes, but I bet she had to Google it when she first found out. We’d only been residents of the US for less than a year. And why was she in the loop about something before I was?
CJ pushed a couple of printed out papers to me, a big, tentative smile on her face. “We’re all going for Christmas,” she said.
“The four of you?” I asked, then quickly corrected myself when Masha scowled. “I mean, five of you?”
“All of us,” Rurik said. “The whole family. For three weeks.”
My jaw dropped. All of us? What hotel could even hold us? “Aleks is okay with this?” Three entire weeks? A turf war could start and end in that amount of time.
“It was his idea,” Masha said. “We were thinking about going to Mexico, but this sounds fun. I haven’t skied since I was around ten.”
“It was his idea,” I repeated slowly, because I couldn’t believe it. Did I really have to give my family a reminder of what we’d been going through? And what was still a very real threat?
“The Collective have been quiet,” Mat said, easily reading the thoughts that had to be written all over my face.
“Hmm, do you think they could be waiting for every last one of us to bury our heads in the snow?”
CJ snickered at my sarcasm but this was no joke. “Our intelligence shows that they’re scattered, running scared.”
“Especially after Anatoli and I handed them their asses,” Masha said smugly.
They had managed to track and kill the top dog at the time, and taken out a good deal of their upper management in the same coordinated attack, but the Collective wasn’t out of the game, not by a long shot.
“We were only a few minutes behind you,” I said, not wanting any credit to go to Anatoli.
We arrived in the aftermath and thought she was Anatoli’s hostage. Things got a bit messy after that, and it was clear Masha was remembering it, and not fondly. I might have been somewhat overzealous in my beatdown of her husband, but all I knew was my favorite cousin had been missing for weeks and then turned up with our archenemy, covered in bruises. He was lucky I didn’t kill him then and there.
“I’m not buying that there’s no danger,” I said, quickly changing the subject back to the Collective, who were certainly still looming in the background, biding their time.
“Just look at this place,” CJ said, pushing her printouts closer to me.
“Nobody’s saying there’s no danger,” Mat interjected. “But there’s just less danger right now. Why not have a nice family Christmas together?”
Oh, he was long gone. Completely and utterly yoked. I looked down at the picture of the place they’d booked and while it looked great, I couldn’t imagine anything more stifling than three weeks with my family in a secluded mountain lodge. Oh, I loved them and would die for them, but they were all so stodgy lately. I could never count on my bookish younger brother Rurik to get up to any fun, either.
“I think you’re crazy,” I said. Not only did sitting around with cups of cocoa while watching a fire sound as bad as getting my fingernails peeled back—and yes, it had happened—they were insane to think the Collective was no longer a threat. “Almost an entire month away from home?”
“We’ll obviously still have security monitoring everything,” Mat said, looking severely disappointed in me.
I shook my head, getting up, feeling like this trip was a waste of time. I thought we were going to get down to business, put together a solid plan to stay ahead of the international group that had been whittling away at our businesses in Moscow and down in LA. They’d even followed Masha up here, nearly ending her life, for God’s sake.
No, they were going to hide out in a winter wonderland for most of December.
“It’s Christmas, Dan,” CJ said, reaching for my hand as I pushed back my chair.
