Page 88 of Possessive Bratva’s Kidnapped Virgin

I moved along the interior wall. Then I found a sightline, chuckling inwardly at the thought of the wrong answer I’d given when Alexei and Dan had asked me what a sightline was, and took it.

I saw Siroc before he saw me.

I’d imagined that on a night like this he’d look like the danger I’d associated with this world, but what I saw was a man in his fifties in a good suit, backed against a pillar at the room’s far edge. And he was unraveling.

He was looking for his people. And his people were not there.

He scanned the room in a slow arc, and his eyes landed on mine and stopped.

I didn’t move.

I don’t know what he’d expected to find in my face. Fear, maybe. At least, I’d been his designated pressure point for months, the emotional lever he’d been pressing.

What he found was simply me looking back at him.

He crossed the room. I stayed where I was.

He stopped two feet from me with the remains of authority still evident in his posture.

“Mrs. Golovin.” His voice was even and controlled.

I thought of correcting him. But then I concluded it wasn’t important.

“Mr. White.”

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Neither are you,” I said. “Not anymore.”

Something shifted in his eyes—a flash of something too fast to name, there and gone. He was still trying to find the version of this interaction in which he could still shape the outcome.

“Your husband sent you,” he said. “As a message.”

“My husband doesn’t know I’m here.”

He studied me. I let him.

“You understand,” he said, “that this changes nothing. The structure of what I’ve built doesn’t collapse because of one compromised evening. These things are resilient, Mrs. Golovin. They are designed—”

“He already dismantled it,” I said. “The whole damn structure. You lost. Not tonight. Tonight is just when you find out.”

His jaw tightened. The composure was still there, but thinner. I could see the effort it took.

“You know what your mistake was?” I questioned. “It was not the ambush, not the camera, not even the photograph. The mistake was thinking I was only useful as a lever. Because what you actually did was show me exactly how much I’d changed, because the woman in that photograph couldn’t have stood here and looked you in the eye. But I can.”

“You think love is a foundation,” he said. “You think what you have with him is structural. It isn’t. It’s a liability. It is the single point of failure in everything he’s built, and I have spent —”

“You lost the moment you tried to own me. The moment you looked at a woman grieving her brother and decided grief was a tool. That was when you stopped being dangerous and started being desperate,” I said, cutting him off.

“Men like you only understand leverage. You look at everything and ask what it’s worth and who it can be used against. But men like Alexei don’t win by force. It’s why they always do.”

“I’d watch if I were you!” he spat, his voice and expression sharper than I’d ever seen.

My body tingled in a way that had nothing to do with Siroc snapping and everything to do with Alexei being around.

I heard him before I saw him. Not footsteps. It was more than that. The room changed pressure, the way a room changed when someone walked in who had always been the most dangerous person in it.

Siroc saw his face before I turned, and whatever remained of the composure dissolved.