Page 24 of The Bratva's Innocent Forbidden Bride
The attempt to turn the children against me had failed, so she decided the money, properties, and businesses should all be under her control. A simple divorce wouldn’t have gained her nearly what she thought she was owed, so she went to my enemies and got too deep into a murder plot. It backfired on her, and it wasn’t until after I found what was left of her that I discovered how hard she’d been working against me, and for how long.
Years of perfidy and betrayal. Love—what I thought was love—had blinded me completely. No, Yeli would have never sat by my side, worrying and checking for a rising temperature. That should have been a tip-off, among so many other things. But I could blame my youth for my foolishness.
What was happening now?
Nothing, because I wasn’t about to get foolish over Tati. Not when the evidence was stacking up against her father. This wasn’t about past trust issues.
As she dabbed at my cheeks with the damp cloth, I tried not to flinch and give away the fact that I was awake. Both because I liked having her there, and because I wasn’t sure what I’d do if she discovered I wasn’t so helpless at that moment after all.
There were still too many unanswered questions. How in the hell did anyone know I was in LA at all, let alone staying at this apartment? Both those things were a locked-down secret that no one would dare spill. The ownership of the building was hidden behind so many shell corporations that it should have been impossible to trace me here, or to any of the Fokins.
Did Tati get in touch with someone in the Yakuza before I picked her up? Or the worst option that wouldn’t stop nagging at me. Was this a setup? Perhaps not to completely infiltrate, but to make contact and lure me to the Yakuza by pretending to be on my side?
I groaned again, and Tati’s hand reached out to smooth the hair off my brow. Was this all an act? If so, it was a good one. And if she had meant to make contact with me while she was here, she got a lot more than she bargained for, stuck, with no means to get in touch with anyone.
So why didn’t she take advantage of the chaos after the shooting and try to run instead of helping me?
At the moment, I was sick of thinking and even more sick of playing the invalid. I opened my eyes to find Tati leaning over me with a look of concern that was so real it gave me a twinge in my chest. Her eyes flew wide to see me awake, but she leaned in close as if to hear what I had to say.
I didn’t have anything to say. Not a single word. Instead, I reached behind her head with my uninjured arm, sliding my fingers into her silky hair and pulling her closer. Her lips parted on a gasp as mine touched hers. Gripping her hair, I kissed her deeply, my tongue nudging against hers. For a split second, not even the time it would take to blink, she relaxed against me. The hand that had fallen from my forehead when I pulled her in brushed against my cheek.
Another soft sigh. I liked that sound, liked it even more when her breath mingled with mine.
It was over as fast as it started, and she finally jerked away. Not so fast that I didn’t fully feel the warmth of her lips. Enough to make me crave more of her. All of her.
This had to be blood loss. The damn infusion wasn’t working properly. That was the only reason for doing something like that. There was no way I wanted her. Not so much that it stole my ability to breathe as well as think.
As she staggered back to the safety of her chair, I let my hand fall to my side and closed my eyes, as if the kiss had never happened. Let her believe I was out of my mind on painkillers. Let her think whatever she wanted. It was of no concern to me.
I fell asleep for real, and when I awoke, the sun came into the room at a different angle, letting me know I had slept through the night and it was an entirely new day. Tati was gone,and instead of being relieved, I was strangely bereft. Until the incessant buzzing of my phone on the bedside table made me realize it was what had brought me out of my pleasant slumber, where I’d been dreaming of an extension of that kiss.
Seeing CJ’s ID pop up on the screen jerked me back to reality, and I answered it, ignoring the vague sense of dread that I was about to find out something I really didn’t want to know.
“I’ve got the deleted messages from the phone you left with Mat,” she said after my greeting.
“So there were deleted messages,” I said.
“Not too many, but they tell a story. A short one with no ending, that definitely wouldn’t make a blockbuster,” she said, laughing humorlessly. “Oh, and there was a tracker on it.”
I held the phone away while I swore, entirely at myself. That should have been the first thing I checked for when Tati was still screaming her lungs out in the trunk of my car. Long before I ever brought her here. I had trackers on all my kids’ phones and most of my employees. Stupid oversight. The woman had me turned inside out, and I wasn’t thinking straight.
However, the only way anyone in the Yakuza would know about Tati having a tracker in her phone was if someone told them, and it would only be useful if they were certain she was in LA. Certain she’d end up with me.
Fucking hell.
It was already done, there was nothing I could do about it now, and I turned my attention to the messages. “I’m assuming they’re to and from Grigor.”
“Only one that might have something to do with his disappearance, based on the timeline. ‘Don’t talk to anyone. Stay put. Don’t worry.’Then there were a couple that told hersome dates of meetings he had, explaining he wouldn’t be able to call her on those days. I’ll send them to you in case they mean anything. Then there were two from someone named Klara that were also deleted.”
“Klara is Grigor’s assistant. She’s been working for him for years. And I can’t find her, either.”
CJ made a sound like she was warming up to the best part, and I held back my impatience as she explained the process she used, trying to be modest but also having to admit that the attempt to hide the messages was amateur at best.
That only meant that Tati hadn’t been in the game for long, not that she wasn’t in it at all.
Finally, CJ read off the message from Grigor’s long-trusted assistant. “The first one said,‘Listen to your father and stay put.’And then, she was going into hiding. That’s odd to admit something like that, right?”
I grunted. It could be part of the show, it could have been an honest admission, so Tati didn’t waste time looking for her. Either way, Klara was definitely part of Grigor’s scheme. That wasn’t shocking at all, since the woman would have walked off a pier into an ocean full of sharks for Grigor.
