Page 42 of Possessive Bratva’s Kidnapped Virgin

She was in the sitting room when I came down that evening, which was not unusual. What was unusual was what she was doing, which was standing in front of the small sound system she’d apparently connected to her laptop at some point, engaged in a debate with it about the volume level—pressing up, listening, pressing down, and listening again with focused dissatisfaction.

She needs a phone.

She looked up when I ventured further into the room.

“Your acoustics are wrong,” she said. “The speaker placement for a room of this shape needs to account for the ceiling height. The bass is getting lost.”

I looked at the speaker. “I’ll have it corrected.”

“I can tell you what to change. I’ve had this argument with audio technicians at six different venues.” She pressed the button once more, apparently settled on a compromise, and the room filled with something I didn’t recognize. The sound was low, melodic, piano-led, with a voice underneath it that made it feel like it had the music people chose for private evenings.

I set down my jacket and sat.

Mira had left dinner on the counter, covered and warm. I noted, not for the first time, that the people in proximity to Isla had a tendency to adapt to her preferences without making anything of it.

“Have you been to Portugal?” she asked, sitting across from me with an ease I couldn’t brush off.

I looked up from the food I’d been uncovering. “Once. Lisbon. Twelve years ago.”

“For work.”

“Everything at that point was for work.”

She pulled her own plate toward her. “Did you see anything while you were there, or was it entirely transactional?”

I considered the question with the honesty she’d established was the minimum standard of our conversations. “I saw the city from a car. I was there for seventy-two hours.”

The look she gave me told me how inadequate she found that experience.

“I went to a festival,” she said. “Three years ago, before… the business got busy enough that leaving felt impossible. I had four days and no client obligations. I walked until my feet gave up and then I sat in a restaurant until midnight eating things I couldn’t name.” She picked up her fork. “It was the best four days I’ve had in recent memory.”

“Where else?” I asked, and meant it not as social filler but as an actual request for information I found I wanted.

She looked at me with slight surprise, which told me the genuineness had been audible.

Then she told me about Oaxaca, where she’d planned a destination event and stayed four extra days on her own money because she wasn’t ready to leave. About a road trip through the American Southwest that she’d done alone with a bag and a playlist and no fixed itinerary.

“You moved to Las Vegas years ago. What was life like before then?”

She blinked, not saying anything at first.

“Well… it was okay. Just not enough for me.”

“Not enough in what way?” I pressed, not quite accusing but probing.

She shrugged. “Loss, family stuff, debt, you know, it became too much, so I decided to have a fresh start.”

“You lost your brother. Sorry about that.”

“You know?” she inquired, raising a brow. “Of course.”

“It’s not a secret, is it?”

“Nope.”

Then she asked, “Tell me about the last vacation you took and actually enjoyed. Or maybe a trip.”

It wasn’t a question about the operational Alexei Golovin or my empire; it was about me. And that suddenly made me feel… younger and lighter. A small smile left my lips before I reined it back in.