Page 2 of The Bratva Betrayal

It’s more distracting than it should be.

My jaw tightens as I pull my focus back to her face.

It doesn’t matter what she looks like.

It doesn’t matter how my brother looks at her.

But what does matter is that she walked through my house tonight like she already knew where everything was.

She’s still Cady Gallagher.

And right now, she’s in a place she shouldn’t be, doing something she shouldn’t be doing.

“Get lost, Lisichka?”

Her gaze flicks briefly to the screen, then back to me. It’s quick and controlled, but I catch it anyway.

“No,” she says.

Too calm.

Like this isn’t a problem.

Like I’m not the problem she’s about to have.

There’s a hint of something in her tone—dry, maybe a little sarcastic—but not careless.

She’s comfortable.

Too fucking comfortable.

She’s been here a few days now. Long enough to leave traces of herself in the house—her voice in the mornings, her perfume in the hallway, and the way my brother sticks around longer than he used to.

He calls her his girlfriend like it means something.

It means shit all when he’s a notorious playboy who has a new woman every night, but that stopped about two months ago.

Suddenly, she appeared.

“You’re in my office.”

She straightens, but she doesn’t shut the laptop. “That seems obvious,” she says. “I thought this was Misha’s office.”

“Let me rephrase then—” I sit on the coffee table and fold my hands together. “—this is my house. That is my brother’s laptop. My brother is part of the bratva. You shouldn’t be on it.”

She lifts a brow and tilts her head, studying me like she’s deciding how far she can push this.

If she’s smart, she’ll let it go. She won’t use her perfect lips to profess a bunch of lies that I’ll pick up in a heartbeat.

“Was that a rule?” she mutters so softly and femininely that it licks up my skin in a way that makes me slightly uncomfortable and highly annoyed. “No use of laptops after midnight?”

“Not my brother’s.”

“I was shopping.”

That’s a lie.

“Lisichka, don’t fuck with me.”