Page 52 of Possessive Bratva’s Kidnapped Virgin

She looked away, and I said, “Eat with me.”

“Okay,” she said, a smile appearing on her face as she stood.

She’s beautiful.

I just couldn’t wait until she shared her worries with me.

*****

The police lights were gone later in the night.

I stood at the window and looked at the street below where federal vehicles had been parked for the better part of the day.

The street was its ordinary self. From a distance, you’d never know what went down.

That was the point of what Siroc had done today. He didn’t want destruction; he was too aware that a destroyed Golovin empire was worth nothing to him and that it was an unachievable task for him. What he wanted was a Golovin empire that was smaller, less confident, less able to absorb pressure. An operation that had spent its resources and goodwill defending against fabricated charges rather than expanding into the territory he wanted.

He had made a precise move.

My response would be more precise.

The shell company, the federal channels he’d compromised, the legal infrastructure he’d constructed over eighteen months—all of it visible now, traceable, the kind of evidence that could be turned with sufficient care and legal resources into something that moved in the opposite direction and with considerably more consequence.

Siroc White had humiliated my arm of the Golovin empire.

I did not forgive humiliation.

My thoughts went back to Isla.

She knew something.

She was going to tell me. Not because I was going to pressure her into it—I had tried pressure, and she was categorically immune to it, which was both a professional observation and something I found, privately and against my better operational judgment, admirable. She was going to tell me because she processed things on her own and arrived at a conclusion herself.

I would need to ensure she arrived before whatever she was carrying became load-bearing in a way neither of us could manage after the fact.

Siroc White had made his move.

He had aimed it at what he believed was the structure most likely to destabilize. He had miscalculated.

Not because the move was unsuccessful—it had achieved its intended public effect, and the story was already written. He had miscalculated because his model of what I was protecting was incomplete.

He thought I was protecting an empire.

But I was protecting a person.

Those required different responses. The empire response was legal, financial, and about reputation—containment, counter-filing, the exposure of the mechanism he’d built.

The person's response was different.

The person's response was what I had decided, standing at the window of the room I now shared with my wife.

No one was going to reach her.

Siroc White wouldn’t go scot-free.

Chapter Thirteen

Isla