Page 77 of Caught By the Bratva Boss

My eyes fluttered open to find her staring straight ahead. She hadn’t closed her eyes at all. Letting out a sigh of frustration, I leaned my forehead against hers with a groan. “The arrangement is over. Things are different now,” I mumbled.

“Why? Because of the baby?”

Cupping the back of her head to keep her close to me, I shook my head. “No, not because of the baby, Lily. Because you are so important to me, and I want us to be together.”

“What if I can’t—”

“I’ll wait as long as you need me to. Just as long as you are mine.” I rubbed the tip of my nose against hers softly for a second. “Just don’t push me out.”

“Ok,” she said softly, right before her lips found mine again, but not before I had seen the lie in her eyes.

She was still playing her part. Or the part she thought I wanted her to play anyway. And it was driving me insane. I didn’t want this pretend Lily. I wanted the real her. The her I had fallen in love with before those men had taken her away from me.

As gently as I could, I pushed her away from me. My anger was already rising, and I didn’t want to be around her when it erupted.

“Get some sleep now my love, and I’ll wake you up tomorrow with breakfast before our doctor’s appointment, ok?”

“Ok.” She didn’t even look at me as she slipped under the covers fully dressed and turned her back on me. Sighing, I headed towards the door. I wanted, no, I needed things to be better between us, but how could I make this happen when she was faking being ok?

She didn’t want me to touch her, and yet she let me kiss her. She agreed with everything I said without one smidge of emotion in her voice.

She was a robot. No, not a robot. She was like a zombie, animated on the outside but dead on the inside, and there was nothing I could do to help her but give her time.

“Good night.” I hesitated at the door and stared at her back. “I love you, Lily.”

She didn’t answer me. With a sigh, I left her alone. I wasn’t a very patient man. I never had been, and I didn’t know how I could help her.

Except I did. I knew one way I could help her. I could keep my promise to her and take out all those that had hurt her, and I knew just where to find the next one because I had ordered him taken to one of the warehouses on the docks for questioning.

A smile tugged at my lips as I rushed down the stairs and grabbed my car keys. The idea of hurting someone who had hurt Lily made my heart beat a little faster in anticipation.

I wasn’t good at being patient. But one thing I was good at was exacting revenge. Screaming bloody revenge.

And I was about to get that revenge for Lily.

Chapter Thirty-One

Daniil

“Please.” The man tied to the chair in the middle of the brightly lit room begged again. He tried to move his hands up to beseech me, but the ropes didn’t give. And even if he could break free, the bones in his arms were shattered. His fingers were twisted and bloodied. “Please, I don’t know anything. I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

I pushed the memory aside. It didn’t matter who I spoke to, who I threatened, or who I hurt. They were in the wind. No one knew where they were, and as the days turned into weeks, I was growing more and more frustrated.

How could I ask Lily to heal and get on with her life, our lives, when this was still hanging over our heads? Patience. That’s what Anya told me I had to have, and I was trying, but God, it was hard, especially when Lily was pretending that she was fine.

She wasn’t fine. In fact, if anything, she was getting worse. I rarely heard her laugh anymore, not even around Timothy. She was just going through the motions. I missed her smile. The one she got when she thought no one was paying attention to her.

God, I missed everything about the way she used to be before I sent her away, and they had taken her. Guilt ate me up inside.

And the only way I could deal with it was to hunt. I tore the city apart looking for every single person who hurt her. It beat sitting at home and watching her withdraw into herself second by second.

“You didn’t come home last night.”

The whispered accusation made me pause. Turning my head, I saw Lily, bundled up from throat to ankle, sitting at the very edge of her bed with her hands clasped in her lap.

Hesitating, I sighed before going to her door. “I know.” I leaned against the frame and took her all in. She’d gained a little of the weight back now, but her eyes still looked haunted. There were dark smudges under her eyes, and her cheeks were hollow.

“I know.” Another sigh left my lips as I tore my eyes away from her. “I had some things to take care of. How did you sleep?” I changed the subject because I didn’t want her to worry, which was impossible because I could see from the way her eyes grew cloudy that she was already worried.