Page 91 of Caught By the Bratva Boss

He was way more like Daniil than I had ever thought.

Smiling down at him, I bent and pressed my lips to his ruffled hair. “Of course, I’ll be ok. Would you like me to help you brush your teeth and tuck you in?” He nodded. So that’s what we did.

He even asked if I could leave before he fell asleep. Which, of course, I did, but that left me with nothing to do but climb back into my cold bed and switch on the TV.

Loneliness bit at me. Timothy was right. I needed him more than he needed me. Biting back a sigh, I switched on the news, not because I wanted to know what was going on in the world, but because I needed to. I felt so disjointed, so out of touch with everything that was happening in the real world.

And that was my fault because it was safe here within the four walls of my beautiful bedroom, where I had a man who doted on my every need and a little boy who realized I was lonely and scared.

It was time to face up to things. And step one of that was to catch up on things going on in the world. The first story was something to do with international politics, and I got so bored that I was drifting off by the time the second story came on.

My eyes snapped open. Gluing themselves to the screen. They kept flashing between a building that looked so familiar. An old art deco theater and the ruins it was now. I knew that building, or at least, I had seen it before it had become a smoldering pile of brick and ash.

A massive fire had ripped through a private screening, killing some of the country’s richest and most influential people. It was a tragedy and still under investigation.

Letting the thick quilt fall to my lap, I leaned forward, eyeing it. It looked familiar because I had been there before. Sure, when they had taken me inside, I had been knocked out, but Daniil had carried me from that place.

It was the same theater that I’d been kept prisoner in and almost auctioned off. And now it was nothing but rubble. It couldn’t be a coincidence. I didn’t believe that all those people, the very people who had wanted to buy and hurt me and Timothy, had died by some kind of accident. Not when I knew Daniil.

I didn’t even think about it, swinging my legs out of the bed, I went in search of him. And it didn’t take long to find him. He was in his office, sitting behind his desk and talking to one of his men, but his head lifted when I approached the open doorway.

“Lily.” Half rising from his chair, his face broke into a smile that seemed to be half happiness and half worry. “Is everything ok?”

I let my eyes sweep over his handsome face, and it was handsome, but he looked a little tired. He hadn’t been sleeping, and that was my fault.

“Everything’s fine. Timothy is asleep, and I was hoping we could talk.”

There was a moment of surprise at my words, and then he nodded. “Of course. Do you want me to come upstairs?”

I shook my head. No, I didn’t want to go back up to my gilded prison. I wanted to start acting like me again.

The two men exchanged looks, but when his man walked towards me, he had a wide smile on his face. “It’s good to see you looking so well, Miss Ridgeway,” he said politely and with no hint of a lie in his voice. He seemed genuinely pleased.

“Thank you.”

Daniil didn’t say a word until the sound of his footsteps drifted away to silence. Coming around the desk, he perched on the edge of it, the muscles of his arms rippling. He had the nicest arms of any man I had ever met. It was hard to keep my eyes off them.

“Are you ok?” he asked again, his eyes sweeping over my body. Guiltily, I tore my eyes away from those forearms and met his.

“I’m fine. I just wanted to talk. I didn’t mean to interrupt your meeting.”

He was in front of me in a second. His hands closed around my hips. “You never have to apologize for wanting to talk to me. I will always make time for you. Now what’s on your mind?”

His fingers squeezed my hips in time with my thundering heart. It felt better than good to be touched by him again. I’d forgotten how amazing it felt to be alive.

“The fire.”

His hands slipped away from me instantly. Reaching up, he headed back towards his chair, tugging at his hair as he went.

“What about it?” He asked with a sigh.

I stood there by the open doorway. “Are you not going to ask which fire?”

He lifted his eyes to meet mine. I expected to see some kind of barrier there, something that would tell me that he wasn’t about to be entirely honest with me. But they just looked tired.

“I think we both know what fire you are talking about,” he said softly.

“Yeah. Did you set it?” I asked bluntly, and he didn’t even flinch.