Page 27 of Possessive Bratva’s Kidnapped Virgin

She looks at me like I’m answerable to her.

I had said that to myself and my brothers and meant it as a professional observation. Standing in the candlelit main room of the Golovin estate with the legal fact of her name now attached to mine, I was aware that it was something else as well.

She was my responsibility.

Not a possession. Not an asset, which was operational language and felt, looking at her, insufficient.

Responsibility.

I had not carried that weight before. Not like this.

Not for a person.

The operations were different—you protected the operation because the operation was the structure that everything else depended on. Family was different too—family was blood, history, and obligation that predated choice. But this was something else.

My wife.

I would need to determine what to do with that information.

I had known, from the moment I stood up from that poker table, that winning her was the simplest part of this.

Everything after this was uncharted.

I was not, by nature or training, a man who operated in uncharted territory.

I was going to have to become one.

Chapter Seven

Isla

I signed my name in blue ink on a document I hadn’t read.

That was the part that stayed with me afterward, beyond the ceremony, the candles, the Golovin family members watching with their various expressions of curiosity, assessment, and barely contained entertainment.

The part that stayed with me was the pen in my hand and the line beside his name. I was watching myself sign like I was another person. It was the fact that I signed it without reading the document first, which was so profoundly unlike me that it felt like evidence of something. I always read documents. I had read every vendor contract, every venue agreement, and every insurance addendum in my years of professional event planning with thoroughness.

I signed Alexei Golovin’s marriage certificate without reading a single line of it.

I think I knew, somewhere underneath, that reading it would make it too real too fast, and I needed the unreality to last just a little longer.

Isla Monroe-Golovin.

The hyphen was mine. I’d insisted on it, and he’d agreed without argument, which was somehow more unsettling than if he’d pushed back. I looked at my signature on the line and felt the strange doubled sensation of recognizing my own handwriting in a context so foreign it might as well have been someone else’s.

Someone else’s life. Actually, that was the feeling. I was standing at the edge of someone else’s life, watching myself step into it, unable to fully close the distance between the Isla who had been planning a charity gala forty-eight hours ago and the Isla who had just signed her name next to a dangerous man’s in a candlelit room full of his family. A family that clearly saw danger as ordinary.

The officiant shook our hands with a seemingly practiced warmth. He said something about wishing us well. I said something back. I don’t remember what.

Then it was done, and the Golovins came toward us, and I made myself stand still and receive them.

Mikhail came first. I didn’t need to be told that he was the oldest brother. The Pakhan. He was taller than I’d processed from across the room—three inches taller than Alexei. He was a quiet man with eyes that looked like they had seen a great deal and had organized it into a private understanding that he wasn’t under any obligation to share. He looked at me for a moment with the assessment of someone reading a document rather than a face, and then he said: “Welcome to the family,” in a tone that meant it as a statement of fact rather than a pleasantry. Somehow, it was more reassuring than warmth would have been.

Viktor was cooler. A lean, guarded man whose skepticism was visible on the surface. He shook my hand with the sharp courtesy of someone who had made a decision not to be impolite while reserving judgment. His wife, Sofia, came with him. She was dark-haired and sharp-eyed. She pressed my hand rather than shaking it, and said nothing except give me a small smile.

Then a hand found mine from the left—warm, quick, a squeeze rather than a formal gesture—and I turned to find a young and bright-faced lady smiling at me. I recognized her instantly. She was one of the two ladies sitting with Alexei’s brothers, the two ladies who were clearly too free with the guys to be their wives.

“I’m Anya,” she said. “He told us all about your fiery nature. You’ll make a perfect pair.”