Page 37 of Pack Baby for the Bratva
“No.” The word came out before I could make it more graceful.
All three of them looked at me.
“No,” I said again, because apparently I had committed. “You cannot just announce you’re leaving for Moscow in the middle of some succession war, casually mention political marriage, tell Gregor to pack me up like a parcel, and expect me to smile politely.”
Ivan opened his mouth.
I pointed at him. “Don’t. I’m on the edge of crying and if you make a joke I’ll never forgive you.”
He shut his mouth.
Artem crossed the room in three strides and cupped my face in both hands. His palms were warm. His thumbs brushed my cheekbones once, carefully, like I was already something he had to handle with care.
“Maeve.” I hated the way he said my name. Like it meant more than it should. Because the softness in his voice was enough to have my body almost crumble against him.
“I have to go,” he said. “If I don’t secure the seat, and Yuri learns about you and the baby before I control the council, he will use you. Whatever way hurts me most.”
My pulse was everywhere. In my throat. In my wrists. In the base of my spine.
“Once I am Pakhan,” he said, “no one will ever touch you.”
It should have comforted me more cleanly than it did.
Instead it wrapped around me like a promise and a threat at the same time.
“That is an extremely mafia sentence,” I whispered.
His mouth softened just a little. “I am an extremely mafia man. But I’m not a bad man. Never to you, anyway.”
“You are making jokes now. This is my area.”
“It’s no joke, please trust us.” He lowered his forehead to mine. “Don’t run, Maeve. We’ll come back for you.”
His words hit something deep and I wanted to believe him. I wanted to fall against him and tell him I was his…theirs. But—
“You’re scared.” He pressed his lips against mine. “Me too. Please trust me. Trust Gregor. We’re never going to hurt you.” He said it like he knew running had kept me alive. Like staying would cost me more.
And God help me, I knew he was right.
I could feel it in my bones. In the way my body relaxed into them even while my mind still threw up every alarm it had.
“Be careful,” I said. The thought of Artem and Ivan flying into a room full of men who might want them dead made me feel physically ill.
“London is secure,” Gregor said, already on his phone. “Surrey is better. We can move now.”
“Surrey?” I repeated.
“Family estate,” Ivan said. “Big house. Too many guns. Portraits of dead Petrovs glaring at you for existing.”
“I hate that the guns are the reassuring part. And the portraits sound scary as hell.”
“You’re adapting very fast,” Gregor said.
Ivan stepped closer to me.
He wasn’t smiling now. Not even a little.
The nonsense was gone. The coffee apron. The flirting. The chaos.
