Page 18 of Ruthless Bratva's Forced Virgin
The cold of the revelation moved through me slowly, thorough and complete.
“My colleague,” I said. “The one who told me about the lender. Was she—”
“A go-between, most likely. Probably unaware of the full scope.” He said it without softening. “We’re looking into it.”
That damn‘we’again.
I pressed on. “Why am I here?”
“Volkov.” He said the name the way you said the names of problems you hadn’t finished solving. “Eliminating the mechanism doesn’t eliminate the objective. As long as you are identifiably connected to me without formal protection, you remain a pressure point he can use. The next approach will be more direct.”
“Then I leave Las Vegas,” I said. “I go somewhere else—different city, different name—”
“You’d be alone and vulnerable and he has the resources to find you. That is not a solution. That is a delay with a bad endpoint.”
I stared at him as I inquired, “So what is a solution?”
He was quiet for a moment. In the lamplight, his face was all shadow and sharp angles, unreadable in the way it always was. I had the distinct sensation that what was about to come out of his mouth was something he had decided before I walked through the door.
“Marriage,” he said.
The word landed in the room with the impact of something dropped from a height.
I would have laughed had my brain not paused to listen to the silence. To look for anything that indicated that this wasn’t real.
“As my wife,” he continued, “you would be protected under Bratva law. Any move against you becomes a move against me and against every structure I command. Volkov knows what that costs. He would not make that calculation.”
I said nothing.
“It is legal. Binding. Immediate.” He met my gaze. “It is also the only permanent solution I have.”
“No,” I said.
“Elena—”
“No.”
I stood. The chair scraped back.
“You cannot—that is not a solution, that is asentence. You’re telling me that the way to protect me from being used as a weapon is to become your property instead.” My voice was rising. I was aware of it and I couldn’t stop it. “You slept with me and left me alone in a hotel room with an envelope of money like I was something you’d settled a bill with, and now you’re sitting here in your… yourmanor…telling me that what I need is to marry you? Do you hear yourself?”
He was rigid in posture.
“You have no right,” I said. “You keep making decisions about my life like they’re yours to make. Like I’m a variable in your…your operational arithmetic—”
“You were targeted because of me.” His voice was quiet, but it stopped me. “The connection that made you useful to Volkov was your proximity to my world. That is not a hypothesis. That is a documented fact, sitting in the file in front of you.” There was a pause. “I did not choose that. But I am responsible for the consequence of it. And the consequence is that you are in a danger that will not resolve on its own.”
“Then help me leave. Give me money, resources, a new name—”
“I told you what happens with that option.”
“So your solution is to trap me here instead?”
“My solution,” he said carefully, “is to give you a name that functions as armor. In my world, what I claim cannot be touched. That is not sentiment; it is law, and it is enforced.” He stood then, and the desk between us was suddenly less of a barrier than it had been. “I am not asking you to trust me. I am asking you to survive.”
I looked at him. At the grey eyes and the compressed jaw and the absolute stillness of a man who had made his decision and was waiting with very controlled patience for me to arrive at the only conclusion available.
I hated that he wasn’t entirely wrong.
