Page 28 of A Secretary for the Bratva Boss
A sloppy, amateur mistake.
FUCK.
The same carelessness that had her walking into my office in Friday's clothes. This is what she does to me. She makes me forget. This isn't Daniil's failure. It's mine. I didn't give the order. I assumed she would... what? Just obey?
"Track her phone.Now."
"Already done. She's on the C train. Moving uptown. The route will pass by her apartment."
"Her apartment." My lip curls automatically. The place she was being evicted from. The place that represents everything I'm trying to erase. "Get the car. Now. You and me."
I don't grab a coat.
The ride is torture. The train is a straight shot, underground, efficient. We are in a ten-ton armored Maybach, trapped in the gridlock of a Monday night. Every red light is a personal insult. Every taxi that cuts us off is a threat.
Daniil is silent, driving with an aggressive, focused calm that’s the only thing keeping me from climbing into the front seat and ramming us through traffic.
My hands are fisted on my knees.Why did she leave?
Was it the lesson? The spanking? Too much, too soon?
No. She... she leaned into that. She took off her own skirt.
The gifts. It was the gifts. The "hostile takeover" of her closet.
She's still trying to be that girl. The one from foster care, the one who asks for nothing, who can't accept a gift because she's spent her whole life being told she isn't worthy of one.
Did I not do a good enough job? I told her she was mine. I showed her. I branded her, inside and out. And shestillleft.
The wound in my chest—the one that never healed, the one that festers every December—rips open. I'm thirteen again. It's two days before Christmas. The smell of pine and burning tires. The sound of sirens in the snow. My parents, gone. Ripped away. Not a goodbye. Just... an emptiness.
I have family. My cousins. Uncles. Dima, in the front seat. They love me. They helped raise me. But I don'tbelong. Not really. Not in the way that matters. I am thePakhan. I am the center of the wheel. But I am not… anchored.
Until her.
She walked in, and for the first time since I was thirteen, the world didn't feel... hollow.
And now she's on a train, running back to the hollow.
"She's exiting the station," Daniil says, his voice pulling me from the memory. He turns the final corner.
"There."
I see her. She's walking fast, collar pulled up, a small, defiant figure against the dark, grimy street. She disappears into the foyer of her building.
"Stop here," I command. "Wait."
"Anton—"
"Wait." I get out. I'm not going to storm in. I'm not. I'm going to... talk to her. I'm going to bring her home.
I yank open the heavy glass door to the foyer, a cold, prepared speech on my lips.
And I seeit.
The filth from the Christmas party. Alex. He's lunged. He has his hand on her. His dirty, worthless hand is clamped on her forearm.
She's screaming.
