Page 58 of The Bratva’s Stalked Pregnant Bride

Pregnant.

If I wasn’t a responsibility to Mik before, I certainly was now.

Chapter 34 - Mikhail

At the exact moment that Laurel’s smile was starting to return, I got a call from my brother. My cousin got a tip-off that something big was about to pop off at one of Ivan’s businesses downtown, so I had to cut and run. So much for a relaxing evening at home to cheer up my wife. Now I was heading for a fight.

At least this time we had a heads-up, or so we thought. I sat in the car about a half a block away, and Luk showed up a few minutes after and slipped into the passenger seat. He hung up the phone and shook his head at me.

“Nothing yet,” he said, clearly raring to get started. “I’m so sick of these assholes. This was supposed to be a fun vacation for me.”

“You can always go back to Moscow,” I said, as grumpy as Laurel accused me of being. I, too, wanted to be elsewhere.

“Hell, no,” Luk said. “I think I’m going to figure out something of my own to do out here. Maybe split my time, though. I miss a good shashlik. How come Americans don’t appreciate lamb?”

“They don’t seem to like to eat anything that’s cute,” I answered, keeping my eyes on the building down the street where our enemies were supposed to show up.

“You really think you won’t go back any time soon?” he asked. “Don’t you get homesick?”

Laurel was my home now. I shook my head at the same time both our phones buzzed.

“Shit,” Luk said, jumping out of my car and racing toward his own.

It was a good analysis of the situation, and I uttered the same word as I tore in the direction of the actual attack. We’d been set up, which meant there was a mole in our operation. I had no doubt Aleks would flush that person out and mete out proper punishment, but what a pain in the ass.

By the time I arrived at the actual place that was under attack, a fight was in full swing. I wasn’t ten steps out of my car, racking my gun, when a board swung out of some shrubs, smashing me in the face and sending me flat on my back. I hated ambushes and raised my gun as the man wielding the two-by-four hauled it back to bring it down on me again.

The top of his head disappeared, and he flew backward, the board clattering onto the pavement next to him. Someone screamed, and there were the sounds of sirens in the distance. These fuckers were getting brazen, attacking a place so close to a residential area.

Smoke rose up from the roof of the freestanding pawn shop one of my cousins owned. It wasn’t just a good old-fashioned way to make easy money, but a way to keep an eye on what was going on in the area and gather information from the low-level thugs who brought in their stolen goods.

Now it was ablaze, and Ivan ran past me, cursing. So part of the information was correct. It was Ivan’s business, just not the one we’d been sent to originally. I followed him and helped to put out the small blazes, managing to knock someone out as he was trying to flee out the back door.

He was basically unhurt, so I fixed that by punching him hard in the face, still pissed off that my own had taken the full brunt of a board. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he slumped to the ground. Luk tossed me a handful of zip ties, and I trussed him up, ready for transportation to one of the sheds at the back of Aleks’s property.

It was close to midnight by the time everything was over, but even if Laurel was most likely going to be asleep, I didn’t dare go home until I got myself cleaned up. A glance at my reflection in the plate-glass shop window that hadn’t been busted out showed dried blood caked down half my face like a macabre goatee.

The last few days, Laurel had been withdrawn and anxious, and I suspected she still blamed herself for me putting the grand opening on indefinite hold. The few times I was able to see her, she tried to pretend that nothing was wrong, but her facade had finally broken down, and before I gave her the assignment that was supposed to distract her, she looked like she was living with a ghost.

I wasn’t about to add to that by showing up at home looking like this, because if I knew Laurel at all, she might still be up, eagerly researching new vineyard locations.

As much as I would have loved to wave a magic wand and put a stop to this particular family problem, there was no power on earth that would keep us from having a new one eventually. Everyone wanted to fuck with the Fokins.

Instead of going home, I followed Aleks to his place to get a shower and change into blood-free clothes, and fix my face as best I could when it felt like my nose would be the size of a cantaloupe in a few hours. When I arrived, Katie was waiting with ice packs and pain relievers for both of us, not at all ruffled.

Would Laurel ever be able to live this way, accepting busted noses and broken bones and so much damn blood for my sake? She sure hadn’t looked too happy with me when I left without any explanation once again.

As soon as Aleks was alerted that his new prisoner had come around and was pleading for his life, he turned to me.

“You want to help out? You caught him.”

“Yeah, why not,” I said. It looked like I’d be spending the night, and possibly most of tomorrow, away from home, in order to look less like I’d been hit by a board the next time I faced Laurel.

“Don’t have too much fun,” Katie joked, waving as we headed out as if we were going to the farmer’s market to get her some fresh tomatoes and not to her husband’s torture shed.

How could I ask Laurel to live a life like this?

Aleks’s property was huge, tucked far back into the hills, and we walked in silence most of the way, until I finally broke it with a question I hoped wouldn’t get me smashed in the face again.