Page 38 of Possessive Bratva’s Kidnapped Virgin

I noticed it from the window of the bedroom as I pulled my hair into a bun after hours of logging into my work accounts and keeping track of the next events. It was parked on the cross street half a block from the penthouse with the type of stillness that I had learned, recently and against my will, to distinguish from ordinary parked cars. Ordinary parked cars didn’t have someone in the driver’s seat. Ordinary parked cars didn’t have tinted windows rated past the legal tourist-facing limit.

I clocked the make and the color. I kept my breathing even and went out of the room, opening my laptop and staring at the vendor email I was supposed to be responding to for eleven minutes without reading a word of it.

I thought about telling Alexei about it. But then, I didn’t. I did not tell him about the anonymous flowers, either.

I wasn’t sure why.

*****

The storm arrived on Saturday without much warning.

The forecast had said a chance of rain, which in Las Vegas usually meant a twenty-minute pretense of precipitation followed by the sky returning to its default indifferent blue. This was different. I heard it before I felt it—a change in the pressure of the air against the windows and a distant rumble that sounded more serious than normal.

By 8 pm, the sky outside the floor-to-ceiling glass had turned grey, which meant the weather had decided to be thorough.

I closed my laptop and moved away from the windows.

That was the first concession. I told myself it was practical—working near the windows in lightning wasn’t sensible regardless of anxiety—and sat at the kitchen counter instead, trying to read since Mira had gone home.

The first crack of thunder hit twenty minutes later.

I was completely fine. I set down my book and put both hands flat on the counter. I looked at the kitchen wall and breathed the way I breathed when events were going catastrophically sideways, and panic was the least useful available response.

But I couldn’t block out the chaotic noises from becoming real in my head. The sound of the door when they’d pulled me out of the second vehicle had been a crack of heavy metal on concrete that had reached into my chest the same way the thunder just had. The darkness of the hood had been absolute in a way that made the storm-dimmed apartment feel, despite the lights, like it had narrowed around me.

I was being irrational. I knew I was being irrational. Knowing didn’t help.

The power flickered.

And then there was one second of darkness—not even a full second, a half-second; lights, screens, and the hum of the building’s electronics cut out and then returned. It was the kind of flicker that ordinarily happened in storms. I was off the kitchen stool before the lights came back on and in Alexei’s short hallway before I’d made a conscious decision to be there. I stood with my back against the wall that had no windows and my hands at my sides, and I breathed.

In.

Out.

Another crack of thunder followed, this one rolling. I hugged myself tight as the windows at the end of the hall lit briefly white, and I closed my eyes.

That was when I heard those footsteps that were both dominating and almost silent.

Alexei.

It was too early for him to be here, and he was still in his work clothes with his jacket over his arm and his sleeves rolled. He looked at me like he was looking for something.

He didn’t ask if I was alright.

He stepped closer, set his jacket over the nearest chair in the living room, and held out his hand.

I looked at it.

“Come on,” he said, giving me a steady look that didn’t give space for a no, despite not being commanding.

I put my hand in his.

He led me through the hall to the bedroom. He sat on the edge of the bed and waited, looking at me.

I sat down beside him.

The thunder moved through again, muffled now by walls and distance, and I registered it and did not move, which felt like progress. Alexei sat with complete stillness that seemed like being present and not being controlled.