My laugh comes out thin and disbelieving. “You want me to join the Bratva?”
“You’re already halfway there, Ayla.”
I shake my head once. “No.”
His jaw tightens.
“No because you don’t understand it yet,” he says, “or no because you think saying no fixes anything?”
“Both.”
Something dark flickers in his eyes at that, gone too fast for me to name.
He reaches past me and picks up the little handgun from the table, checks the chamber, then sets it back down with maddening calm.
“If war gets worse,” he says, “wives go on lockdown. Especially Sovereigns wives. The other women tied to made men get moved, protected, accounted for. Loose ends don’t exist when bullets start flying.”
Wives.
I rub at my forehead with two fingers, suddenly exhausted all over again.
Of course in his head there’s no difference between wanting something, claiming it, and making it real by force of will.
“At least tell me what ‘joining’ actually means.”
That gets his full attention.
He leans one hand on the table beside my hip, boxing me in without fully touching me, and his voice goes flatter. More formal in a way that makes my stomach knot.
“It means you stop being unofficial. You stop being a vulnerability someone can exploit by claiming you don’t belong to us.” His eyes stay on mine. “It means your protection actually means something the second I’m not in the room.”
“And another tattoo,” he adds.
Rage sparks hot and immediate. “You mean anothermarkon my skin!”
He doesn’t flinch.
“Yes, but properly. Publicly.”
I step back shaking the table slightly before I can stop myself.
The movement makes his whole body go alert.
“Publicly.” I repeat. “In front of your men?”
His mouth hardens. “Yes. If it is done before the Bratva, no one questions what you are after.”
I just look at him.
My chest feels too tight.
“What if I don’t want to be what you decide?”
His expression doesn’t soften, but his voice lowers.
“Then you stay mine without the ceremony, and it stays dangerous.”
Dangerous
