Page 23 of Secret Baby of the Bratva
She lies to me in that moment. Boldly. Calmly. The lie tastes better than most truths I hear every day.
I step closer, close enough to watch her pulse leap again. My eyes stay on hers. “You’re sure.”
She swallows, but her voice doesn’t waver. “I’m sure.”
I study her for a long moment, then step back. Her shoulders relax the faintest bit, but not enough to be mistakenfor relief. She knows the game as well as I do now: she throws her stones, I let the ripples spread.
Each day she tempts me to set sharper snares.
I change the cadence of my footsteps in the hall to see if she’ll react. She does, her head turning before I come into view.
I drop my voice into steel when giving her orders, gauging whether she’ll falter. She doesn’t. She nods once, tight but confident, and carries them out.
I set her in rooms with men who would happily test her nerve, then watch from a distance as she handles them with that same cocktail of fear and defiance. The Bratva contact had lingered too close, too bold with his questions, but she hadn’t folded. She’d held the case until the exchange was finished, her fingers white-knuckled but steady. I saw everything.
She knows I did.
Annie Vale is not safe. Not from me, not from the world she’s walked into. But she’s useful in ways I hadn’t considered. Beyond that, she’s interesting. That’s rarer.
I could break her, if I chose. One order, one demonstration, and all that defiance would shatter into something easier to manage.
Maybe I don’t want easy.
I want to see how far she’ll push before she cracks. I want to watch what happens when the girl who thought she could play games in my house learns the rules I write as we go.
So I let her circle closer, let her think she’s the one probing the edges. All the while, I stand at the center, quiet, waiting.
She doesn’t know it yet, but every test she gives me is one I’ve already prepared her for.
When the moment comes, when the game stops being stones tossed in still water and turns into something deeper, darker—she’ll realize what I’ve known since the first time she held my gaze in defiance.
I’m not studying her to decide whether to keep or crush.
I’m studying her to see how long she can last before she bends.
***
The estate sleeps lightly, the way predators do. Guards shift outside, boots crunching over gravel; the faint hum of security cameras bleeds through the walls if you know how to listen. I should be in my study, drowning myself in ledgers and maps, in the next move that will keep everything balanced. Instead, I wander the hallways like a man trying to outrun his own thoughts.
That’s when I find her.
The sitting room is half lit by the moon. Tall windows frame the grounds beyond, their glass silvered by pale light. She stands near one of them, her back half turned, hair catching in the glow like strands of metal thread. She doesn’t hear me at first. Or maybe she does—maybe she always knows when I’m near. When she turns, it isn’t surprise that flashes across her face. Startled, yes, but not frightened. She doesn’t step back. She just waits.
No sarcasm this time. No sharp smile to hide behind.
I move closer, my steps deliberate. Each one narrows the space until her back nearly brushes the cold windowpane. The glass reflects the faint rise of her breath, the tension pulling her shoulders straight.
Her voice is quiet when it comes. “Do you always hover?”
The question doesn’t sting; it interests me.
I study her, let the silence stretch long enough that she begins to shift beneath it. Her chin tilts up a fraction, that same defiance I’ve seen in every glance, every move she makes.
“Only,” I murmur, “when you look like you might run.”
Her breath catches—soft, involuntary, but I hear it. The sound slides into me in a way I don’t expect. The moment stretches thin as wire, charged enough to snap.
She’s too close. Or I am.
