Page 87 of Possessive Bratva’s Kidnapped Virgin

The lamp on her side of the bed was still on—she'd fallen asleep reading again, the book closed on the nightstand, her hair spread across the pillow in the warm light. She was turned slightly toward the center of the bed, toward where I would have been.

I looked at her for a moment longer than I needed to.

Then I put the expression away—all of it, the weight, the warmth, and the clarifying fear of having something real to lose—and let the other version of myself settle into place. The one that had existed before she entered this world. The one that walked into rooms and made them quieter. The one that calculated and moved and did what was necessary without hesitation or sentiment.

I was going to need him tonight.

But I looked at her one more time before I turned away, because I had learned, in the past months, that the things you were fighting for were best kept visible.

I walked downstairs, through the security office, out through the side entrance where the vehicle was waiting.

Siroc's final move was already in motion.

So was mine.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Isla

I knew something was wrong before I was fully awake.

I reached across the bed and found the sheets cool on his side. Not recently vacated. Cold.

He’d been gone for a while.

I sat up. The bedside lamp was still on, my book closed on the nightstand where I’d left it.

I got up and walked to the dressing room. His dark suit was gone. It was one of those he wore when he was working, not attending. The holster mount on the rack was empty.

He’d left without waking me.

Every other time he’d left for something operational in the night, there had been a hand on my shoulder to wake me. Then a kiss to say goodbye even when my body was still asleep.

He hadn’t done that tonight.

I stood in the dressing room and looked at the empty holster mount and understood, without much drama, that tonight was the night.

I showered and dressed, because whatever came next I intended to meet it upright and conscious, not sitting in a robe waiting for news that someone else had decided I was entitled to receive. I put on dark clothes—a navy blue chiffon blouse and black pants—and made my hair into a low bun.

I knew where the summit was.

Not from Alexei—he’d been meticulous about the details he withheld, and I respected his meticulousness even as I worked around it.

The summit was supposed to be at the Harrington. The actual location, based on what I’d assembled, was the Voss building on the east side—a private event space, nondescript exterior, the kind of place chosen specifically because it didn’t look like anything worth looking at.

*****

I heard it before I saw it.

Sirens, multiple, converging from two directions. And underneath them, the flat, distant crack of something I hadn’t heard since the forest road and hoped I wouldn’t hear again but recognized immediately.

I parked two blocks out and moved on foot, the way Alexei had taught me, without realizing he was teaching me: stay close to structures, keep your head down but not your eyes, move with purpose rather than speed because speed attracted attention and purpose looked like you belonged.

The perimeter was already established; I could see that in the positioning of the men who weren’t in uniforms, the stillness that was too deliberate to be bystanders. Alexei’s people. Layers of them, the way he’d described a properly constructed containment: concentric, overlapping, no gap exceeding the time it took a threat to travel through it.

I found the gap that wasn’t a gap— the service entrance on the building’s north side, the one the containment had left covered by a single man rather than two because the internal security had already cleared the interior and the north side was considered the clean side. I watched his rotation for ninety seconds and moved through during the turn.

Inside was organized chaos, which was different from actual chaos. People were moving with direction and purpose, voices low and clipped.