Page 61 of Possessive Bratva’s Kidnapped Virgin

Then he turned around and left.

I looked back at the box. It was small and wrapped in plain brown paper.

I moved closer and opened it. Inside the brown paper was a white box, the kind that might hold jewelry. Inside the box, on a bed of white tissue, was a single poker chip.

It was heavier than I expected when I picked it up, the kind used in serious games—real weight, real construction, not the decorative tourist versions.

Engraved on one face, in the small precise font of a professional engraving service, was: A.M.

My brother.

Adrian Monroe.

I might have screamed if this same package had come to me when I was in my cozy apartment. But now it came here, in Alexei’s penthouse. The same Alexei who now knew what exactly had been chasing me for years.

I had no urge to scream.

This had been made, which meant it had been planned in advance of whatever moment required its delivery, which meant Siroc White had been holding this particular instrument for a specific occasion and had decided the occasion had arrived.

I turned it over.

The other face had a small strip of paper adhered to it; it was clearly adhesive-backed.

The clean text read:

“What happened to him can happen again.”

I stood up like someone who’s just remembered they were on a mission and walked out of the room, the chip in my hand.

Alexei was in his study.

Of course he was. The study, or library as he insists on calling it, in the morning was his thinking space, or I had begun to understand it as that.

I found him there with Dan, the two of them bent over the desk with the focus of a working session in its productive middle phase.

They both looked up when I came in, even though I neither knocked before coming in nor made a sound.

I set the chip on the desk between them.

I did not apologize for the interruption. I did not deliver any sort of what could be called a preamble. I set it down and looked at Alexei with the clarity I’d woken up with, which had been through the package and the initials and had still come out the other side still intact.

“It came with a note,” I said. “It’s a threat and a reminder simultaneously. He’s telling me that I can be lost the same way Adrian was lost.”

Dan had his phone out. “When did it arrive?”

“It was 10:40 when it got to me. Marcus cleared it before it reached the floor.” I looked at him. “Same methodology as the flowers. The engraving was definitely commissioned in advance. Whoever holds it has been waiting for a moment that justified using it.”

Alexei turned the chip in his hand. His jaw was tightly set the way it got when he was handling something significant under the controlled surface.

He set the chip down and looked at me.

“Are you alright?” he inquired.

The question was in the tone I’d learned to distinguish as his actual inquiry rather than social mechanics. I had no reason to be anything but honest.

“I’m frightened. But I’m also past the point where my being frightened is an end.” I met his gaze. “I want to be part of the response.”

Dan looked at Alexei.