Page 16 of Possessive Bratva’s Kidnapped Virgin

“Cold-blooded would be leaving you to manage this alone.” My voice came out sharp again. “Cold-blooded would be the outcome Siroc had arranged for you before I intervened. What I am offering you might be unpleasant and unconventional, but it is non-negotiable and also, by any measurable standard, the better option.”

“Non-negotiable.”

I wasn’t surprised that it was the word she capitalized on.

“Yes.”

“I will never be your wife.” She stepped closer, her chest rising and falling with the speed of the argument, eyes blazing. “I don’t care what logic you’ve assembled. I don’t care what Siroc White does or doesn’t plan. I would rather—”

“Take your chances on the street.” I met her eyes. “Yes. You’ve said.”

The words stopped her.

We were standing very close. Again. I was beginning to understand that this was a pattern she fell into when she was too angry to monitor her own proximity. That the argument brought her forward by increments until the distance had collapsed without either of us explicitly closing it. I was also beginning to understand that I was not taking the available step backward.

“You said this isn’t desire,” she said. Her voice had dropped to something quieter than the argument, and her eyes moved across my face with the sharp focus of someone reading text they need to understand precisely. “You said that very clearly.”

“I did.”

“Would you touch me?” It wasn’t inflected as a question. “If I agreed. If I—if this happened. Would you actually—”

“Yes.”

The word came out unambiguously, because I had been raised in a world where the only thing more dangerous than an honest answer was a dishonest one. And she seemed like someone who knew the difference between the two.

The silence that followed my admission was not hostile. Not exactly.

Her eyes didn’t leave mine.

I stepped back, internally fighting the pull that opposed my movement.

“There is no other option,” I said. My voice had returned to its normal tone, and I was grateful for that, at least. “I am not asking for enthusiasm. I’m not asking for trust, or warmth, or anything that isn’t legal cooperation.” I picked up my jacket from the back of the chair. “But this is happening, Isla. You can hate every part of it. You can hate me. That changes nothing about the conclusion.”

I moved toward the door.

“The answer will still be no,” she said behind me, her voice quiet but resolved.

I stepped out of the room and shut the door behind me.

The corridor was quiet and cool. In a way, it was exactly what I needed—regulated, predictable, free of honey-blonde women who shoved me and then asked questions that required honest answers. As I walked on, my pulse was not at its resting rate.

This woman had now disrupted my resting pulse twice in a twenty-four-hour window. That was twice more than anyone had managed in the preceding three years. The word yes had left my mouth without a single moment of deliberation in a situation where every other word I’d spoken had been carefully assembled before delivery.

She was going to agree. Not tonight—tonight the answer would be no, exactly as she’d said. But she was also not a woman who let pride override survival indefinitely. She was organized. Practical. Her mind worked in outcomes even when her heart was working in fury.

She would see it.

And in the meantime, I had a Siroc White problem to begin dismantling.

Chapter Five

Isla

I didn’t sleep. I simply couldn’t.

I tried. I lay on the bed that wasn’t mine in the room that wasn’t mine and stared at a ceiling that probably cost more per square foot than my monthly rent, and I tried to make my body relax. But my body resisted, anyway.

Marriage.