“I didn’t read—You tricked me.”
“I gave you a contract. You chose not to read it thoroughly before signing.” I fold my hands on the desk. “That’s not a trick. That’s a lesson in due diligence.”
“Don’t you dare lecture me about due diligence.” Her voice rises. “You buried a marriage clause in an employment contract! That has to be illegal. It has to be—”
“It’s unconventional, certainly. But I have very good lawyers.”
She paces in front of my desk, heaving in large breaths as she does. I watch her process the information, cycling through disbelief and fury and something that looks like panic.
I should probably feel guilty about this. I don’t.
What I feel is relief. Because two hours ago, I was listening to Wallace and Tillman threaten her life, and now she’s mine. Protected. Safe from whatever those bastards had planned.
It started with a bug.
Something about those two rubbed me the wrong way the first day I met them, so after our first meeting, I had Pavel sweep my new office for surveillance devices. Standard procedure when taking over a hostile company. What I didn’t expect was to find three different listening devices hidden in the walls, all feeding back to servers controlled by Wallace and Tillman.
So I returned the favor and had Pavel plant our own bugs in their offices. If they want to play surveillance games, I’ll show them how a professional does it.
This morning, that decision paid off.
I was reviewing acquisition reports when Pavel patched the feed through to my laptop. Wallace’s voice came through first, followed by Tillman’s. Then a third voice, female and familiar.
Kirsten.
I listened to the entire conversation with my hands balled into fists beneath my desk. Heard them accuse her of accessing documents she shouldn’t have, and the confusion in her voice when she admitted she didn’t understand what she’d seen. Heard the fear creep in as they laid out their threats.
She was innocent. Completely, utterly innocent. Just a woman who stumbled onto something she shouldn’t have and now found herself caught in a web she couldn’t possibly comprehend.
And they were going to use her. Threaten her. Turn her into their spy or destroy her life trying.
I wanted to storm up there and put bullets in both their heads. To watch the life drain from their eyes while they realized who they’d crossed. It took every ounce of self-control I possessed to stay in my chair and keep listening.
But when Tillman mentioned making her life “very, very unpleasant,” something inside me snapped. The kind of snap that leads to plans rather than violence.
I couldn’t protect her as her boss. The power imbalance was too obvious, and any intervention would only make things worse for her. Wallace and Tillman would simply wait until I wasn’t looking, then strike when she was vulnerable. But as her husband?
That changes everything.
In the Bratva world, a man’s wife is untouchable. Sacred. Anyone who threatens her threatens the family, and the consequences are severe. Wallace and Tillman might not know the specifics, but they know enough about our world to understand the implications.
By marrying her, I’ve drawn a line in the sand. Cross it, and they answer to me. To my brothers. To our cousins. To every ally the Karpov name commands.
She’s under my protection now. Whether she likes it or not.
“This is kidnapping,” Kirsten spits out, still pacing. “False imprisonment. Fraud. I could call the police right now and have you arrested.”
“You could try,” I acknowledge, “but I wouldn’t recommend it.”
She whirls on me then, and her cheeks are pink with rage. “Is that a threat?”
“It’s a statement of fact. If you go to the police, they’ll ask questions. Questions about why someone would go to such lengths to marry you. That leads to the documents you saw. The documents that Wallace and Tillman are so desperate to keep hidden.”
She stops pacing. “What do those documents have to do with anything?”
“Everything.” I gesture to the chair she abandoned. “Sit down, Kirsten. There are things you need to understand.”
For a moment, I think she’s going to refuse. Her chin juts out stubbornly, and she curls her hands into fists at her sides. But then something in her seems to deflate, and she sinks back into the chair.
