Page 31 of The Bratva King's Kidnapped Bride

“It doesn’t?” she asked incredulously.

“It will be fine. Nataliye will come around to accept us being together.”

“And what if she doesn’t?” Her eyes welled with fresh tears. “What if our relationship drives her away from both of us?”

I wanted to assure her that wouldn’t happen, but I remained silent too long to make it sound as if I believed it. As I struggled to make a promise I wasn’t sure I could keep, my phone buzzed insistently in my pocket. I took it out to silence it, but it was Lev.

He wouldn’t call unless it was important, so with a scowl, I apologized and left the room to take it. Of course, our rivals didn’t know it was my wedding day, or that I was in the middle of something important. There had been another attack. I told Lev I’d meet him and the others at the scene to help take care of it.

“I’m sorry,” I said, leaning into the room. “But this is urgent.”

“What’s going on?” she asked, concerned. “Is everyone okay?”

“It’s business,” I told her. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

She wilted but didn’t ask any more questions and reached for another box to unpack.

I stormed out of the house, pissed that I couldn’t promise her the one thing she really wanted. To know for sure that she wouldn’t hurt her best friend or destroy my family. Our family now.

I couldn’t even tell her what I did for a living.

Chapter 17 - Katie

I had been Mrs. Fokin for two weeks, and everything was going great. Aleks doted on me, at least when he was around, which wasn’t nearly as much as I would have liked. But I admired how hard he worked, and understood he was running an empire, even if I didn’t have a clear understanding of what that empire entailed.

My lunch business was booming. Because of all of the amazing appliances and gadgets in Olga’s kitchen, I was able to come up with some new recipes that had gotten rave reviews. The word spread, and Aleks even hired a new delivery guy to branch out to more buildings. My mornings were full of preparing all the extra meals.

Olga came in three days a week to cook for us, and to drop off all the ingredients I used in the boxes. I’d made friends with her once she warmed up to me and started speaking English, and she even offered to help when it was clear I was getting in the weeds with all the new business. The dinners she cooked for us were heavenly, but I wouldn’t have minded taking over all the cooking just to have something to do once I was finished with the lunch boxes.

I brought it up to Aleks, but he balked. His elderly Russian chef had been cooking for him since he was a kid, and she could stay with him until she decided to retire. When I casually brought it up to Olga under the guise of asking if she missed her grandkids back in the old country, she only laughed and said she’d retire in a few years and go back to Moscow then.

So, while my mornings were packed full of hustle and bustle, my afternoons dragged when Aleks wasn’t around. And he wasn’t around a lot. Sometimes, he didn’t come home until very late; other times, he had to rush out in the middle of the night. No matter how much I asked what was going on, he was always cagey about what he was doing or where he was going.

“Finance is global, it never sleeps,” he said once when he raced out past eleven at night.

After that, I stopped worrying, until curiosity got the best of me after a phone call at two in the morning had him scrambling out of bed, swearing under his breath as he yanked on his clothes.

He’d been just as tight-lipped that night, and I’d been a bit of a brat about it, making him look so distraught that I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I snuck downstairs to surprise him with a kiss and to let him know I wasn’t upset. I waited silently for him to notice me and smile, but he was fully focused on unlocking a cabinet in his downstairs office that I’d never given a second thought. But I slipped out of the doorway and into the shadows when I saw it was chock full of guns. He strapped a smaller one to each hip and then slung a long one over his shoulder before locking it back up again.

I snuck back upstairs without him noticing me and tossed and turned that night. What kind of overseas financial crisis required him to be armed to the teeth like that? I convinced myself that maybe he was going to open a safe deposit box or something like that and needed extra security.

Yeah, just going to the bank. In the middle of the night.

The next morning, I couldn’t find the nerve to ask about it since I didn’t want him to think I was snooping because I didn’t trust him.

I did trust him. Completely. He’d fulfilled every promise he made to me. Jenna was thrilled with her new apartment, and Aunt Marjorie had started her first round of treatments. I hated lying to them about where the sudden influx of funds had come from. I’d told them that my catering company had gone viral after an especially popular party had made the local entertainment news, and now everyone was clamoring to hire me.

There was no way I could tell them about Aleks or my rushed marriage to him. No matter how much he tried to reassure me, it was a pipe dream that Nat would accept us being together. My best friend’s nature was too fiery and she was too possessive about her beloved father for that to happen. A quickie divorce sometime in the much too near future was the only answer.

I dreaded it, and swatted all thoughts of it out of my mind like they were annoying gnats. I wanted to savor our time together, not worry about the day it all had to end.

Except now, I really didn’t want it to end. Not in a quickie divorce or any kind of divorce. My childhood crush on Aleks was turning into love. That was something else I had to fight against if I didn’t want to die of heartache when this inevitably ended.

Aleks just made it so difficult. Impossible.

Who was I kidding? Heartache was on the horizon because I adored that man.

I was lolling out by the pool, musing about my new, temporary life and taking in the afternoon sun, when a woman about my age stormed out the glass doors and traipsed through the garden, waving at me.

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