Page 25 of Possessive Bratva’s Kidnapped Virgin

Next comes the not-so-easy part.

*****

She was at the window again when I came back. I was beginning to understand this as her position.

She turned when she heard the door. Still, her posture was controlled. Deliberate. She’d slept—the circles under her eyes had faded.

“Tonight,” I said.

Her control flickered visibly. “What?”

“The wedding will be tonight. The Golovin estate, civil ceremony, legally binding.” I watched her face. “The family will be present.”

The silence that followed moved through two stages. Disbelief first—a rapid blink, a fractional parting of her mouth. Then the anger, bringing a familiar heat, straightened her spine, bringing her away from the window. “You are announcing this to me. Again. Like it’s a schedule you’re reading. ‘Tonight, the wedding.’” Her voice quivered a bit like it did the last time she was furious. “I haven’t agreed—”

“You haven’t refused.”

“That is not the same thing as accepting, you arrogant motherfucker!”

I didn’t say anything. I could, but I didn’t. Not when the fear beneath her fury just let itself out.

She sighed deeply. Then she did it again, looking towards the window and then at my face again.

“I have terms. Conditions that must be in place if this fucking marriage is going to happen,” she bit out.

“What are your terms?” I asked.

She looked at me for a long moment with the expression of someone who had prepared for one kind of conversation and was planning for another. She moved to the couch and sat down, looking at her hands for a moment before looking back at me.

“My work,” she said. “It remains completely mine. No interference, no Golovin involvement, I won’t have clients thinking they’re doing business with a Bratva-adjacent company.”

“Agreed.”

“My name. Monroe-Golovin, as we discussed. Not dropped.”

“Agreed.”

“And…” She hesitated on this one in a way she hadn’t hesitated on the others, which told me it was the one that cost her something to say. “I’m not a prisoner. I won’t take public humiliation in any form. Even with the security. Even with, ” she gestured vaguely at the space between us, “all of this. I don’t want to feel like I’m being managed.”

I looked at her. “I can’t guarantee how things feel.”

“Then guarantee what you can.”

“You won’t be followed unnecessarily. You won’t be overridden on your own professional decisions. You won’t be asked to perform… wifely functions you haven’t chosen.” I held her gaze. “What happens between us, if anything, will be because you’ve decided it.”

She looked at me with those bright eyes that radiated a kind of warmth I couldn’t explain nor escape.

“The timeline,” she said.

“That’s non-negotiable.”

“Of course it is,” she pressed. “Why not?”

“Siroc White remains an active threat, and the intelligence on your location is almost forty-eight hours old. That’s why not.”

She huffed and looked away.

In that moment, I felt a crazy urge to hold her. Not just to feel her skin against mine but to hold her. To comfort her. It was an infuriating abnormality.