Page 78 of Arranged Bratva Virgin

“Right about what?”

“Your family—I shouldn’t have hidden my problems from them. I should talk to your brothers and ask for help with things like this. I am the one who is treating them like outsiders, not the other way around.”

“Really?” I stammer, shocked by the way he is being so vulnerable in saying these things to me. This isn’t how I am used to Stefano being, and it is definitely not the call I was expecting from him today.

“Yes, really, especially since I have fallen in love with you.”

His words slap into me like a bolt of lightning. Love? Did he say love?

I take a shaking breath and try to pull my thoughts together. Love?

“Darya? Are you there?”

“I love you too, Stef,” I blurt out as I wipe my hand across my cheek to try and brush away the tears that are falling again. I am so overwhelmed with emotion I can’t hold them back.

“You love me too?” he asks, with obvious relief in his voice and just as much surprise as I feel right now.

“I do.” I laugh and cry at the same time.

“Darya, I’ve been in love with you for ages, I just didn’t know how to tell you. I never thought—I never thought that someone like you could even love someone like me.”

“What do you mean—someone like me?” I ask, confused.

“It doesn’t matter. Darya, please come home. I want to talk to you in person, not over the phone like this. I should have told you all of this to your face. But I couldn’t wait. Can you come home? How long will you be?”

“I’ll leave here now, and I think it will take me around thirty minutes to get home.”

“Good. I want to show you what you mean to me, baby girl.”

My heart flutters wildly. “I won’t be long,” I grin.

“I’m waiting.”

We say goodbye, both feeling a little overly happy and maybe shy after our confessions, and then hang up.

I push my phone back into my handbag and stand up.

“Did you hear all that?” I say to the two gravestones and laugh again. “He says he loves me.”

I am grinning from ear to ear when I walk through the park back towards the car. I can’t believe this is happening. I thought this was impossible. I thought I was living in some delusional fantasy land by hoping for this.

When I glance up, I can see the parking lot in the distance, but that isn’t what causes my stomach to knot so tightly.

Four figures, dressed head to toe in black, step out from the trees near me and start running straight towards me.

I spin on my heels and drop my bag as I start fleeing for my life.

I can’t run towards the car, because they are blocking that path, so I just run, anywhere—I just have to get away. My heart is screaming in my chest and fear is flooding me, pushing me harder, making me run faster.

But it isn’t fast enough.

Two of the men catch up with me easily just as a car spins across the sidewalk in front of me.

Someone grabs my arms and yanks me so hard I am pulled right off my feet to the ground, slamming into it so hard that all of the air is punched right out of my lungs.

I gasp for breath as I try to stand up again, but a man kicks me in the stomach with his heavy boot.

I gag in pain, fighting for breath again.

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