Page 35 of Possessive Bratva’s Kidnapped Virgin

"And now that we've done it?"

"Now we stay another hour," I said, "because leaving immediately would suggest he's driven us out. And then we leave because we're choosing to, not because of anything he's decided."

She nodded once, then said, "Alright."

And then, because she was Isla and incapable of leaving any dynamic without at minimum one adjustment: "But I want champagne first. I've earned champagne."

“Anything.”

I signaled the bar.

*****

Another hour later, just like I’d said, we left.

The two hours had done what they needed to do—consolidated the message, allowed it to circulate, and given the room sufficient time to observe and integrate. Several conversations I'd been monitoring had shifted in ways that suggested the alliances Siroc had been quietly cultivating in Golovin-adjacent circles were undergoing rapid reassessment. This was the expected outcome. Men like Konstantin Believ didn't remain attached to losing positions, and the loss of Siroc's position tonight had been visible to everyone paying attention.

He hadn't left. He was still at the east bar when we exited, still watching, still calculating. I felt his gaze at my back through the door and found I had no particular feeling about it. He would move eventually—tonight had not resolved the problem; it had simply changed its shape. The escalation would come in a different form, probably through the legal thread Dan had identified, probably within the next two weeks.

I would be ready for it.

Isla had her heels in her hand, and the domesticity landed with a strange, uncomfortable weight.

“Give me those,” I gestured to the heels as we walked towards the elevator.

“Nah, I’m good,” she answered.

And that was when the elevator opened, and Dan stepped out of it, giving me a sharp nod.

The elevator ride back to the penthouse was quiet. She was looking at the elevator door, her expression in the partial reflection of the glass beside her, thoughtful and private.

"He was scared," she eventually said, almost catching me staring at her lips.

"Siroc,” she clarified, her gaze still on the steel door. "He was angry. But underneath it, he was scared, and he was very annoyed that he was." She paused. "I've worked a lot of events for people with power. You learn to read the difference between a man who's in control of a room and a man who needs everyone to believe he is. He's the second kind."

I looked at her for a moment. "Yes."

"And you're the first."

"I try to be."

She turned from the door then and looked at me directly, in the way she had that I was still getting used to—with her full attention.

“Does it work?" she asked. "Being that controlled. Does it actually make one safer, or does it just make everyone around you feel like they're handling something that might break if they're not careful?”

"Both," I said. "Depending on the person."

"What about for you?"

"It keeps things… manageable." I paused. "When things are manageable, outcomes are predictable. When outcomes are predictable, the people I'm responsible for are safer."

"And when they're not manageable?"

I looked at her. "Then I make them manageable."

She held my gaze for a long moment. "What about the things you can't make manageable?"

She had been a bound woman in my poker room, and now she was sitting across from me in the back of my car, asking questions that nobody asked me, that I had apparently decided to answer.