Page 6 of The Bratva's Innocent Forbidden Bride
Was he following me instead of the other way around?
My father wouldn’t have been proud of me at all; he would have been yelling his head off at how foolish I had been to run off all by myself. But that was the thing, wasn’t it? I was by myself for the first time in my life.
My father was gone, really gone, not just off on a business trip. My only family, the one who was always there for me. A phone call or a text away. He always worked so hard to give me everything I wanted and needed. Working for the very man who had me tied up and left to get jostled around on the floor as he ignored speed bumps and took corners without braking.
Papa did everything Kon ever asked. Things he’d never let me in on, and now Kon had left him to rot.
I would have started yelling every obscenity I ever learned in both English and Russian if the asshole hadn’t put that tape over my mouth. Instead, I just scowled at all that thick, wavy hair. On top of everything, the asshole was as handsome as a film star. The same age as my father, but he looked ten years younger, and they couldn’t be more different.
According to Papa, Konstantin should have been dead multiple times with the way he rushed into new ventures, or defied enemy boundaries, or just plain took whatever he wanted. And yet, my father had always followed. The good soldier.
What would he think of Kon taking me?
I hoped his luck was at its end and I’d see his downfall at last after this was over. Whatever this was. I couldn’t even ask what this was all about with the tape over my mouth, but I could curl up enough to kick the back of his seat.
“Come on now,” he said mildly, as if I were no more than a gnat buzzing in his ear.
He pulled into an underground parking garage, and all I saw was the top of a high-rise building before we turned in. We could have been anywhere. Once he was parked, he got out and hauled me out and over his shoulder like a bag of grain, the weight of his hand burning through my skirt as he kept it clamped over my backside.
There was no chance of rescue from some kind and curious stranger, because we went in through a private entrance and into a small elevator that whisked us straight to the top floor. The elevator opened into a richly paneled entryway, and Kon keyed in a code that opened the only other door.
The moment we were inside the luxurious apartment, he set me down on my feet and took the tape off my mouth with a little too much gusto, making me wince with pain. He pursed his lips at me, as if silently asking me what I expected. I resisted the urge to kick him, mostly because he didn’t cut the zip ties, and I didn’t want to give him the idea to tie my legs as well.
“You’re more dangerous than I ever thought possible,” he said, rubbing the small red bump on his forehead.
I scowled as the pain in my own head flared in sympathy. My heroic attempt to defend myself had only knocked me out, and I was positive the bump on my head was much bigger than his. The same way I refrained from kicking him, I kept myself from making a crack about how hardheaded he was.
He loomed over me, close to a foot taller than me, and much, much broader. His mocking smile flattened, and his eyes turned hard. “Tell me where your father is.”
All my restraint flew out the window. I went ballistic, all the pent-up fear turning to anger at this man who was at the core of it all.
“That’s exactly what I want to know,” I spat. “You of all people should know since you’re the one responsible for his disappearance.”
He snorted, back to mocking me and my pathetic attempts to stand up for myself. “You’ve changed, Tati.”
The bluster I was clinging to drained out of me, leaving me as deflated as a three-day-old birthday balloon. “Everything’s changed,” I said, my voice cracking.
Tears burned, but I jerked my head away, blinking rapidly to keep them at bay. There was no way he’d see me cry. Breathing out hard, I sucked in more air, letting it all out with shouted accusations.
“You betrayed him. You were the one they wanted dead. And now—”
His big hand flattened across my mouth, pressing the strip of tape back into place. He held his palm there for a moment, glaring at me until I stopped snorting like a bull about to charge.
“Let’s talk about betrayal, shall we?” he asked, infuriatingly calm. Ice cold. His gray eyes were as opaque as a stone wall, the only thing that alerted me to his deeply controlled anger. “Your father ran off with some money of mine. More than a million dollars.”
He nodded when my eyes flew wide and continued, so smug and sure of himself, I wanted to headbutt him all over again. “On top of draining the business account, he’s probablynow working with the very people you were foolishly trying to get in to see.”
My mind went blank with rage at hearing that, and I rushed at him, grunting behind the tape and making such a fuss that he wrapped his arms around me and clamped me to his chest so I had to stop flailing at him with my bound hands.
“If you calm down, I’ll let you speak,” he said, his voice rumbling up from his chest against my ear, which was plastered to the smooth cotton of his shirt.
His arms were like steel bars, caging me in place. I had no choice but to go still. His hands slowly moved across my back and then up my arms. Placed firmly on my shoulders, he moved me back a step and finally peeled the tape off my mouth again.
“There’s no way Papa stole from you or was working against you,” I said, struggling to catch my breath after being clamped against Kon’s rock-hard chest. He was like a furnace, and I was just as hot in my anger at his accusations. “And if whoever was in that building truly had something to do with his disappearance, then you ruined my plan to find out what happened to him.”
That was the worst of it, finding out I was on the right path, only to be dragged off. His big hands landed on my shoulders again, and he leaned in close.
“You have no clue what’s going on,” he said, voice full of menace.
