Page 78 of Possessive Bratva’s Kidnapped Virgin

“My empire has survived things that would have ended most organizations,” he said. “Twice, we came close to collapse and rebuilt from the frame. I know what loss costs and I know what recovery requires.” He paused. “Siroc’s reach doesn’t frighten me. I’ve dealt with his caliber before. I’ll deal with it again.”

I waited.

“What frightens me,” he said, and his voice dropped into a lower tone, “is you being taken from me. That’s the variable I don’t have a contingency for.”

His admission hit harder than any vow.

I reached over and put my hand over his. He turned it, palm up, and held mine.

“Okay,” I said softly.

“Okay,” he echoed.

I leaned forward and pressed my forehead to his chest. He didn’t move, didn’t shift or adjust or make it easier or more comfortable. He just let me be there, his hand resting at the back of my head, warm and certain.

I breathed. And again. And slowly, by increments, the pressure behind my ears began to ease. The frequency of the gunfire grew quieter.

His heartbeat was steady against my forehead. I focused on that. Just that.

In and out. The same rhythm. Patient and constant.

My own heartbeat began to follow it.

*****

I got up carefully, so as not to wake Alexei, and moved through the dark to the bathroom doorway.

The mirror again. Same woman as earlier, but hours had passed, and so had something in my face.

I looked at myself for a long time.

I thought about the event planner I’d been weeks ago—the one with the mapped-out trajectory and the clear professional identity. She’d had very firm ideas about what her life was supposed to look like. Those ideas had felt so solid at the time.

Every single one of them was gone.

And I was standing in the bathroom of a Bratva man’s penthouse, having survived a gunfight in a forest, having held my own until my husband came back from the dark.

I looked at the woman who had done those things without recognizing her completely—but not, I realized, disliking her either.

She was harder than the woman before her.

She was afraid of the right things, now.

She wasn’t running from any of them.

I stood there until the cold of the tile floor crept up through my feet and the silence of the house settled around me completely.

Then I went back to bed and lay down beside Alexei and put my hand flat on his chest, over the steady beat of his heart.

He didn’t wake. But his hand came up, slow and unconscious, and covered mine.

I closed my eyes.

I was exactly where I had chosen to be.

That, I understood now, made all the difference.

Chapter Twenty