Page 21 of The Russian's Stalked Bride
Glancing up at the small frame in the corner again, something in me squeezes. “To Mila Grimaldi.”
Neither Sergey nor Kat says anything for a moment, then he asks, “The one you’ve been monitoring?”
“Yeah, that one.”
When he pauses again, I swear I can already hear the gears turning in his mind, then absolute certainty comes bleeding through. “You took her, didn’t you?”
And there it is.
“She ran in front of me, and I happened to step in just in time,” I say, but it sounds more like a lame excuse than the truth.
“And you kept her.”
I wait a few seconds, then I sigh. “Yes.”
“Ivan, are you out of your fucking mind? You were supposed towatchher. More importantly, her brothers.”
“Yeah, and you were supposed to ‘just watch’ Kat, too. Now look at you.”
This catches him, but Sergey scoffs. “That’s different.”
“It’s definitely not.”
Kat snorts on the other end. “He kind of has a point.”
“As much as I love you, sweetheart, you’re not helping,” Sergey mutters under his breath, only earning himself a laugh from her.
“Are you two done?” I ask, internally groaning at the sound of my brother being affectionate with his wife, even if I should be used to that by now. “Look, all I did was remove her from the equation before she could be handed to a Balakin. He was obviously going to use her.”
“You kidnapped Carlo and Cesare’s sister, and after their dad was killed by us, no less. That isn’t strategy, it’s provocation,” Sergey fires back, refocusing his attention.
“They were going to marry her off to form an alliance.”
“And that’s not your problem.”
“It should be,” I scoff. “And it is now.”
My brother pulls in a deep, annoyed breath. “Soon enough, Roman is going to find out, and when he does, he’ll want to know why you went rogue instead of checking in first.”
As tempting as it is to defend myself until I’m blue in the face, I don’t. It won’t get me anywhere right now.
After a quiet moment, Sergey presses, “Why her?”
Because I’ve been watching her for months, and during that time, I’ve become so fixated on her that I can’t go an hour without thinking about her. Because the thought of her being tied to a Balakin makes me want to kill Maksim with my bare hands, and I don’t even know the guy.
More importantly, because I have her here, in my possession, and the mere idea of letting her go turns my stomach.
“I’m handling it,” I say instead, refusing to be that vulnerable.
Sergey huffs out a breath, but it’s too humorless to be a laugh. “You already aren’t.”
“Then I’ll prove you wrong.”
“Christ…you’re already in deeper than I thought,” he replies, saying it like my fate has already been sealed. “Then don’t wait. Call Roman.”
My jaw clenches as I try to keep a solid grip on my irritation, and the lie slips from my tongue before I can think on it. “I will.”
A beat later, Sergey hangs up, and the line drops.
