Page 6 of The Bratva's Innocent Pregnant Bride
Alina jumped right back in. “I’m going to take snowboarding lessons, did you know that, Dan?” she asked. She was so damn cute when she asked me the next question, I started to melt faster than snow in LA. “You’re going to watch me, aren’t you? Will you take a lesson with me?”
Aleks looked triumphant as I squirmed.Just tell my only daughter who adores you that you’re not going to be there for Christmas, his face seemed to say.
Damn it.
“Should I book you in?” he asked.
“Artie says he can beat me in a sled race, but he’s wrong,” Alina continued, referring to her little cousin, Lev’s son, not CJ’s dog. “You’re betting on me, right?”
“You’ll be there to bet on her, won’t you?” Aleks asked, grinning. He may as well have been holding a gun to my head. Alina’s hopeful smile was more difficult to refuse than any threat.
“Go ahead and add me,” I sighed, smiling at Alina and promising I’d watch her go snowboarding, but that I’d have to see her in action for the sled race since I took betting very seriously.
She cracked up and ran out of the room, her six-year-old energy not letting her waste anymore precious time on a call.
“I knew you wouldn’t disappoint her or the rest of the kids,” Aleks said.
He knew all my cousins’ children had me wrapped around their little fingers. If Alina didn’t convince me, Lev would have called next to get Artie on the phone, begging me to roast marshmallows or something with him, all the way down to our newest member, Nat’s newborn son Aleksander, cooing at me.
Once I ended the call with him, I looked up the resort online. It was a huge old lodge that was well off the beaten path, and it would just be the family for the weeks we were there since there were so many of us. As nice as it looked, I’d be climbing the walls once the sun went down. However, the city wasn’t too far of a drive down the mountain and there were plenty of more grownup things to do at the resorts and clubs there. I’d suck it up and spend the days with my family and then go prowling for real fun at night.
I had been compiling a list of companies that I suspected were tied to the Collective. I could research them just as easily in Aspen as in LA, in the hopes of finding out who was running the California chapter of the multinational organization that had been hounding us.
It had been little more than a month since we took out the Santinos who were responsible for almost killing Masha, but the Collective was like a freaking unbeatable video game, continuously spawning dangerous new bosses. It pissed me off, but I was good at games. I wouldn’t stop until they were eradicated, and not just from my newfound home here in California, but in Russia, where they’d been annoying my family. They had to go, vacation or no vacation.
But damn it, I only had a few days to get ready for this trip. I still considered it a waste of time, but now that I’dpromised my littlest cousins I’d be there, I had to show up and show out. I had eight of them to buy Christmas presents for, and there was no way I was letting Rurik, who was certainly going to be better prepared than me, or Mat, who had CJ to help him choose, have better gifts under the tree.
It didn’t take long to find an online toy shop and a shred of holiday spirit might have started sneaking in a little as I began filling the cart.
Chapter 4 - Paisley
On the way back to my apartment, I tried to calm myself down with logic. That only made it worse, not better. The people who left Axon all had too much in common. The ones I knew were definitely suck ups, always volunteering for extra work and quick to throw their coworkers under the bus to make themselves look better. According to the gossip, the ones who left before I started working there were equally annoying.
Each and every one of them had left without notice. This was a great source of talk because it inevitably made extra work for everyone else. It was kind of a meme. If someone got overly frustrated they’d threaten they’d be the next to walk out. If someone especially pissed off management we’d joke about them being the next to disappear. It didn’t seem so funny right now.
All of them were on that list. Three had check marks next to their names and one of those had just been confirmed dead.
So maybe they got themselves into positions to know too much. Did my boss think I knew too much now? She had refused to believe Mr. Caraggio had given me permission to go into his office, and the more I thought about it, why did Mr. Caraggio leave the way he did, all sweaty and anxious as if someone was chasing him?
Pretty much the same way I left.
My parents and I weren’t close. In fact, we hadn’t spoken since my birthday four months ago when they made their dutiful call. We probably wouldn’t speak again until Christmas when I made my dutiful call. There was no way I could drag them into this, but could I stay at my place where anyone could easily check HR records for my address?
My apartment wasn’t ritzy or anything, far from it. But it was in a relatively safe neighborhood and I knew the people who lived around me by sight at least. There was a gate that opened with a code but as I drove through it that afternoon it seemed awfully flimsy. And people were notoriously lazy, scooting in behind someone else before it shut again.
Once I was inside I pulled all the blinds and paced around in the gloom, not sure what to do but definitely not feeling safe or secure. I was so worked up, the ordinary sounds of a delivery person on the walkway outside made my heart jump and I imagined I’d hear ruthless pounding on the door at any second.
My phone rang and I jumped out of my skin, inching toward where it lay on the kitchen table like it was a dangerous animal. I expected to see Erica’s number or someone else from Axon and sank into a chair with relief when it was only my best friend Marlowe.
When I answered, she sounded even more upset than I felt. “I have the hugest favor to ask of you,” she said breathlessly. “Do you have any vacation time at all? Sick time? Any way you can take some time off?”
I couldn’t laugh despite somehow finding myself with all the time in the world. Even if I wasn’t already fired, there was a nonzero chance I was now on that list waiting for my checkmark. Nothing could get me back in the Axon building again.
“What’s going on?” I asked. I wasn’t going to share any of this with Marlowe and risk putting her in danger, too.
“One of my girls got meningitis and is in the hospital,” she said. “I need an emergency replacement and it’s kind of a big job, out of town.”
Marlowe ran an elite nanny agency in Beverly Hills. She started it with her sister, both of them babysitting for families inposh neighborhoods for years, building up enough of a clientele to need to start outsourcing. Eventually she gained such a reputation that she was booking jobs months in advance and one of the families she’d been working for since tenth grade invested the seed money to open her agency. I was one of her employees on and off during high school and college. I loved kids and it was usually pretty easy money, eat a pizza, watch a movie, maybe play a few games and then put the kids to bed.
