Page 83 of Pack Baby for the Bratva
Three weeks after the wedding
The house had survivedinvasions before.
My grandfather hosted the first round of negotiations after the Soviet routes collapsed, back when half the men drinking his vodka were planning to kill him before dessert and the other half were waiting to see who won. My father used this same room for politicians who denounced him in public and begged for his money in private, smiling beside him in photographs they'd later pretend were doctored.
The staff knew how to get blood out of expensive rugs. The guards knew which doors to lock when the laughter turned too loud and someone's hand drifted toward a holster.
None of that prepared the house for twelve Bratva heads and their entourages descending on a quiet Tuesday afternoon.
They arrived in black cars. Nothing new there. They always arrived in black cars. At a certain level of criminal wealth, individuality became a liability, and so every family head pulled through the gates in an identical Range Rover, flanked by identical men in identical dark suits, as though they'd all been issued the same starter pack for organized crime.
The grand room filled with cigar smoke and expensive cologne and the pissing competition growl of alphas calibrating their dominance against each other. It was a sound I'd grown up hearing. But it was better than the low hum of men deciding who to kneel to and who to kill, which I'd always found tedious.
Today it was like watching dogs circle a park, if the dogs had Swiss bank accounts, too much blood on their hands and opinions about wine.
But because my omega was close, I felt a fear I’d never felt before.
Every shouted greeting in Russian carried too far now. Every glass set down too hard snapped my attention toward the staircase. Every push of alpha dominance scraped against the part of me that had stopped measuring safety by money and started measuring it by whether my omega could breathe without her scent going sour.
Gregor had doubled the guards near the nursery without being asked. He'd also repositioned two snipers to the upper gallery, which nobody noticed because Gregor was very good at his job and the snipers were very good at looking like decorative statues in alcoves.
Ivan had removed three men from the east corridor. When I asked why, he said they'd looked bored near Mac's door, which wasn't technically a crime. Then he'd paused and added, "I was very polite about it."
"Were you."
"I didn't break any bones that can't heal."
"Ivan."
"Fine. One man might have a limp. But he was Russian. He'll survive."
Maeve, when I told her the council had arrived, looked down at Mac sleeping in his bassinet and said, "Lovely. The emotionally constipated uncle convention."
Then she'd put on the emerald dress.
I still had not recovered.
It was the wrong color. That was my first thought, which was stupid and unhelpful and entirely beside the point, because she was about to walk into a room full of men who treated women like currency and she needed to look untouchable, not beautiful. But the dress was both. It clung to her hips and fell to her ankles in a column of dark green that made her skin look like it had been lit from underneath. No jewelry. No pretense. Just Maeve with her chin up and her bravery on show.
"You're staring," she said.
"Strategizing."
"Is that what we're calling it now?"
"I'm allowed. I'm the Pakhan."
"Not yet, you're not. Currently you're a man who's about to be late to his own coup because he can't stop looking at his wife."
"Wife. I love it."
She raised one eyebrow.
“Are you sure about this? Mary is prepared to keep up the pretense.”
“No. I’ll do this for you.”
I smiled. “For us.”
