Page 53 of Married to the Don (Kornilov Bratva Duet 1)

Viktor

Ican see the tension in Fedor’s shoulders as he walks into the office ahead of me and sits down at my desk. Usually, I’d order him out of my seat and give him a whack on the back of the head for being so bold, but today, I need him to stay calm.

“That seems like more than a fuck,” he says, pressing his fingers together and rocking in the desk chair. “It almost seemed like you two are … together.”

If he knew who Molly really was, he would have said so downstairs. Fedor is not subtle. His strength—and the danger of him—comes from his rashness.

Still, I find myself wondering if this isn’t some kind of game.

“She’s my maid.”

“That’s what you keep saying.” He purses his lips at me.

I sigh and drop down into the chair opposite the desk. The wood creaks under my weight. “Because you keep asking. She’s my maid, and I don’t want you touching her.”

“No fun,” he says, pouting his lip out. “She’s more my type than yours, anyway. You like the models.”

He isn’t wrong. Fedor already chose Molly, though apparently he doesn’t remember it. Beyond that, he always goes for the girl-next-door type. The innocent ones who never seem to know exactly how beautiful they are. I always found those girls to be boring in bed. I wanted a confident woman. Someone who knew how to use her body and, similarly, mine. The qualities I looked for in a woman didn’t go beyond how good I thought she’d be to fuck. Shallow, but true.

Molly has proven my theories wrong.

She’s a quiet kind of beautiful. She doesn’t need makeup or skimpy clothes to prove she’s sexy. I walked in and saw her in jeans and a sweater and felt my blood pressure rise. Though that also could have been because I saw my brother’s arm around her waist.

“I like my maid.”

My tone is harsh, and he lets out a sharp breath through his nose. “Fine. You called dibs. But please tell me when you’re done with her. It has been a while since I’ve had the opportunity, and I have some pent-up energy to expend.”

I want to wring his neck for even thinking about Molly like that. After everything he has done to her and Theo …

Theo is another important piece of this puzzle. The most important piece, perhaps.

If Fedor finds out that Theo is his, he will never leave Molly or Theo alone. It wouldn’t even be out of a desire to be a father, but a desire to claim what is his. To control someone. Plus, regardless of how he disregards the other laws of the Bratva, Fedor cares about family. He believes in loyalty the same way I do, though he has a shitty way of showing it. If he found out Theo was his, he wouldn’t stop until Molly had handed over custody, willingly or not.

Which is why they can’t stay here.

Fedor thinks she’s a maid now, but one day, he’ll stop by the apartment and Theo will let the whole story slip. Four-year-olds are not known for their superior secret-keeping abilities, after all. It will be an accident, but Fedor will find out the truth. He’ll learn that I didn’t kill Molly like I claimed, and more than that, that I invited her into my home and kept his son from him. And once Fedor knows I lied to him, he will be impossible to control.

“How did you get out, anyway?” I ask, shifting the subject away from Molly. “And why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

“Surprise,” he says, repeating what he said downstairs. “Kent has been working on something behind the scenes for a few months, and I told him not to tell you.”

I shake my head. “Why do I go to those strategy meetings with the two of you if you’re keeping things from me?”

Fedor frowns, a line forming between his brows. “Those weren’t strategy meetings. They were visits.”

If I’d known I was only there to keep Fedor company, I might have cut back on how often I visited. Maybe Fedor knew that, which is why he always made it sound like they were important.

“Good to know I took time away from work to gossip with you.”

He dismisses me with a limp-wristed wave. “You’re the leader. You don’t have to work if you don’t want to.”

That goes to show how little Fedor actually knows about what it takes to run the Bratva. Being the leader requires even more work. More time and energy and organizing. But I don’t have the desire or energy to try to prove that to him.

“What did Kent manage to work out for you? Last I heard, he was trying to lessen your charge to involuntary manslaughter, but even that wouldn’t have gotten you released.”

He leans forward across the desk, his mouth pulled up in a wicked smile, and whispers, “Bribery.”

“With what money?” I bark. “I had to drop off money for you to buy new shower shoes. Who the fuck did you bribe with shower shoes?”

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