Page 53 of Possessive Bratva’s Kidnapped Virgin

I had my way of dealing with things I couldn’t say out loud.

It was a method I’d developed since I was young, maybe younger than I should have needed to, as a child who grew up adjacent to chaos and had to develop a system for dealing with what the adults around me couldn’t or wouldn’t manage themselves.

It was quite simple: I took the issue and put it somewhere internal, somewhere with walls thick enough to contain it. Then I went about my day and returned to it when I really had to and put it back when I could. And, over time, the returns became less frequent, and the walls became load-bearing.

I had been dealing with Adrian for a long time before he died. After he died, I had dealt with the grief that came alongside guilt, relief, and love. And then I’d dealt with the debt and the changes it made me make.

But this midnight, as I continued to toss and turn in bed instead of sleeping, I understood this method of mine had reached its maximum capacity.

The note was still in the nightstand drawer.

I knew what the note meant. But I was only just getting real with myself enough to call it what it meant.

I had not been random collateral.

I’d told myself, when I paid the first installment to the account number with no name, that I was buying a clean break. That the payments would close the ledger and the ledger would stay closed.

I had been wrong.

I sat up. And that was when I felt the silence of the penthouse. It was too quiet, and that made my thoughts even louder. The space beside me was empty, and it wasn’t surprising because 1 am was still too early for Alexei to be in bed. So I got up and stepped out of the room.

As I shut the bedroom door, my mind went to the room beside his private office. The one that was his private study and strategy room, or so. I felt drawn in that direction, for a reason I couldn’t make out. I headed there.

I pushed the door open and stopped.

He was there.

Of course he was.

It was fitting. Alexei was in the middle of a room that existed for thinking, surrounded by reports that he’d arranged with geometric precision.

He looked up when I appeared, and I saw him read me completely in the way that he’d stopped concealing around me recently. He definitely saw something in my face that made him put down the document he was holding.

He didn’t speak. He waited.

While most people who waited for you to speak filled the space with a prompt, an encouraging noise, or a question, Alexei waited like he had made a deliberate choice to leave a space open and was leaving it open completely, with no edges that required you to fill it quickly or fill it in a particular direction.

It was, in its way, the most patient thing I had ever encountered. And that prompted me more than any form of pressure.

“I need to tell you something,” I said.

He nodded once.

Walking past him, I crossed the room and sat in the chair across from the desk. I folded my hands in my lap and looked at them.

“Adrian was in Siroc White’s circuit, you know that part,” I said. “What you don’t know is that Adrian was a compulsive gambler. He left a ton of debt…” I paused and sighed. “To me. I always knew he had debts, I mean, he owed me a lot, too. But I never in my wildest imagination thought he owed such a large amount of money to people like Siroc White. A few days after his death, Siroc White’s people reached out to me, and that was when I knew.”

Alexei neither spoke nor looked like he was about to. So I went on.

“I had no choice but to bear the debt since we were all each other had. I took extra jobs and shifts to start paying. And I did pay. Regularly. At first, I was sad but surprised at how much money I could really make when I put my mind to work and nothing else. But then, the calculations became real to me. I started to see how, regardless of how frequently I paid these guys, the interest was growing abnormally. Then I became overwhelmed. It became clear to me that I didn’t have a way out unless I made one for myself.”

I looked up at him as I said, “And so I made one. I changed my name from Monroe-Vega to just Monroe, which was more common, and left. I came to Las Vegas and started my life from scratch. I saved up from working three jobs for years, then I set up my event planning company. I didn’t hear from Siroc White all those years, and I made myself believe that was done. Until he came back again. His guys abducted me out of nowhere, and I ended up in your poker room. You know how the rest of the story goes.”

Alexei was still. Completely, utterly still. But I couldn’t stop there. Not when he still had more things to hear from me.

“Recently, he’s been moving again. Once he sent me flowers, I guess that was for me to know he could get to me. And then, a few days ago, after the initial check that I thought was a raid, I found a note from him under the door.”

I sighed again before speaking.