Page 14 of Forced & Owned By the Bratva Boss

I simmer with rage, feeling my insides boiling. “But I have,” I stress wearily. “We went through this yesterday. I told you how I got here. Lola? Your manager? She’s the reason I have this job. I was working the local bar by the beach and she happened to be the special guest we were hosting one night. Lola was pleased with my services, so she talked to my boss and extended an offer to work at an elite nightclub. The pay sounded good. I couldn’t refuse and my boss, at the time, had no problem with it. The end.”

My chest heaves by the time I’m done talking, and a cloud of silence settles between us.

Igor neither moves nor makes a sound. And worse, his face stays placid, with no emotions betraying his stoic expression.

After an awkward moment of uncomfortable silence, he shrugs lazily. “Sounds pretty convenient to me.”

I drag a hand through my hair, groaning in frustration. “So you’re still saying I’m lying?”

“I’m saying I don’t believe in coincidences, Audrey.” His voice gets a pitch higher, finally exposing a sliver of his frustration. “You did it once. You had motive. You still have motive. All you’re trying to do is mess with me.”

“For God’s sake!” I snap. “Not everything is about you. This is a coincidence; it just happens to be a bad one. When Lola offered me this job, I didn’t know you owned the place. If I had even the slightest idea that accepting the offer would lead me back to you, I’d have turned it down in the speed of light.”

I might be imagining things, but when Igor’s jaw ticks, I think I see a flicker of something uncertain in eyes.

It doesn’t matter. I’m too bitter to care about how much impact my words may have.

“You know something, Igor?” I say. “If you’re looking for who to blame for this, blame yourself. I’m not the one who approached me in that hallway at Cascade. You did. Fine, I’ll admit I had a crush on you. A silly, stupid crush that made me do things I honestly regret. But you put everything in motion. And with the way it ended, you shouldn’t find it hard to believe that I want nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with you.”

Hands in his pockets, he crosses his desk and circles me like a predator. His gaze darkens by the second as his anger rises to the surface.

“Say whatever you want. I won’t believe you.”

I bite down on my lip to keep myself from speaking. It would be better to ignore him, to pretend his disbelief doesn’t sting, but my efforts to keep quiet don’t work.

“Who cares what you believe, asshole?” I retort. “It’s just sad that you’re not as smart as I thought.”

“The insults won’t get you far. Tell me who you’re working with, Audrey,” he presses, eyes hard like a glacier. “I’m not fucking playing with you. Give me their names.”

“Why don’t you go talk to Lola? See if I’m making things up?”

“I don’t doubt how you got the job. What I want to know is how the police knew where to find the tons of marijuana I stored in a room only four people knew about?”

“How on Earth should I know?”

Angrily, he grunts, circling me as he steps closer, until my back nearly brushes his desk.

And like he did at the back of the building on the night of the raid, his hand plants on my hip and he leans in, his voice dangerously low.

“Tell me, Audrey,” he whispers into my hair. “Who did you speak to that day?”

I hate that my body reacts to his touch, my breath hitching when his fingers briefly graze my waist as he shifts.

My pulse races violently despite my anger. The heat between us feels identical to the charged moment we shared on the night he threw me out of his life.

“You really want to know?” I whisper back, eyes twinkling with mischief. “It was some guy who was hitting on me. He asked for my number and I said I’d think about it.”

To my amazement, he laughs. It sounds dark and promises evil things he’d love to do to me. Maybe taping my mouth shut, for a start.

“You think this shit is funny, don’t you?”

“That’s what you get. Since you won’t let me go, I’ll gladly feed your paranoia.”

His jaw tightens, but I notice something subtle—hesitation flickers in his eyes, like doubt beneath the fury.

If he truly believes I betrayed him again, he wouldn’t waste time keeping me trapped in a room to interrogate me. I learned the hard way that Igor Nazarov is a ruthless beast whose name puts shadows to flight. He would have ended me without a second thought if he really believed I’d betrayed him again.

That realization unsettles me more than his anger, because it means he’s conflicted, and uncertainty makes powerful men unpredictable.