Page 54 of Possessive Bratva’s Kidnapped Virgin

“Now I see that some debts don’t die with the debtor.”

I waited for his anger. His accusations. His walking away or thunderous yelling.

But I was not prepared for how much I dreaded it.

I wasn’t prepared for how stripped bare I felt in that moment of waiting for him to speak or at least react. I felt more exposed than I’d ever been since the warehouse as I watched him process all I’d just revealed.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” I expressed. “Not for surviving. I’m sorry for bringing danger into your life.”

Then he turned to face me completely, and the calm his face radiated terrified me.

“This changes everything,” he said. “Siroc did not just humiliate me; he totally planned this. He banked on using your history as leverage.”

If I was guilty before, I was bathed in guilt now.

I stood abruptly, walking towards him.

“I could leave,” I rushed, my voice sounding frantic even to my own ears. “I could disappear again. I can’t keep being your weakness. Believe me, I never meant to trap you. I could just—”

“Stop.”

I stopped.

“The fault structure of this situation,” he said carefully, “is not something I’m assigning tonight.”

“Alexei—”

“You brought danger into my life.” He held my gaze. “I brought danger into yours. It is not one-directional.”

“What I’m doing with this information is figuring out the shape of what we’re actually dealing with. Not assigning fault.” He looked at me with the directness that had stopped being something I flinched from. “There’s a distinction.”

“I know,” I said. “But if I had told you sooner—”

“Yes,” he cut in, his tone not softening. “You should have. That cost us time I can’t recover.”

Us.

Not me.

Not the business.

“What would I have to do,” he started, “to make you understand that you are not a variable I’m calculating the removal of?”

The question did not sound rhetorical; it was actual. He sounded like someone who understood that something he’d communicated had not been received and was asking what delivery would actually work.

“You only care now because your empire is threatened,” I spat, my voice low.

“Don’t give me that. You never trusted me enough to tell me the truth,” he snapped.

His voice was so sharp it made me think of a whip.

I did trust him.

Still, he was right.

Did that make me agree with him? Absolutely not.

“I didn’t know full disclosure was part of what I signed, Mr. Golovin,” I retorted, sarcasm clear in my tone.