Page 20 of The Bratva King's Kidnapped Bride

As far as I was concerned, she belonged here and in my other homes. She belonged with me, no matter what she was wearing.

“Stay here for the night. Think over the reasons you won’t marry me and compare it with what I’ve promised. Anything you want, Katie. I can make it happen. Just think about it.”

I backed out of the room, never taking my eyes off of her face. She was at war with herself more than me. I was willing to give her all the time she needed, but a negative answer wasn’t acceptable.

She was already mine; she just had to realize it.

I closed the door gently and waited a few moments to hear if she was going to break any of the priceless antiques. Just as I was going to retreat back to the living room, she tore the door open again.

“I can’t marry you. I truly, honestly can’t.”

Confused by her desperation, I asked, “Why? Why not? One good reason.”

“You really don’t remember me?”

I shook my head. “Why does it matter if I’ve met you before?”

She looked on the brink of tears, and I reached for her. She jerked away, eyes wide, almost fearful. But what was she so afraid of?

“Tell me why,” I demanded, no longer patient.

“Because I know your daughter,” she said, leaning against the doorway. “I’m Nat’s best friend.”

My heart slowed in my chest as the words sank in. She knew Nataliye? She was friends with my daughter?

Oh shit. What the hell?

Chapter 11 - Katie

I leaned against the doorframe, as winded as if I’d run a mile at full speed, as if someone was chasing me. And someone kind of was. But I was pleased to see I’d finally wiped the smug arrogance off of Aleks’s much too handsome face with my announcement. This was the end now. Any second, he would ask me to leave. And not a moment too soon.

In this luxurious apartment, about to be locked in the prettiest bedroom I’d ever seen, all pale blue and cream, with the highly polished antique princess bed and fine art in gilded frames, and being relentlessly wooed by the man I had pined for since I was fourteen, I almost wavered.

I was exhausted. Not just from being up since five in the morning and working my ass off all day, but from the constant, endless worry about money, my sister’s future, which I was determined was going to be far brighter than mine, and now, Aunt Marjorie’s health. I already lied about the treatment cost being no problem, but it would be a huge problem. An insurmountable one when the bills started rolling in.

As tired as I was, it didn’t matter because I had to get up again tomorrow and the day after and the day after that and do it all over again. All the days of my life, in hopes I could keep up, maybe one day, I could eke ahead a tiny little bit.

The man of my dreams laid out something so much better, with him included in the bargain, and I couldn’t pounce at the offer. He was always busy with work, but it seemed like he really never took a good look at me all the times I was underfoot at his house. Never clicked that he’d met me before countless times. I finally had to spell it out for him.

He continued to stare at me in open-mouthed horror for a long moment, then finally shook his head.

“Impossible,” he said. “You graduated from a public school, not the academy my daughter went to.”

So he’d been looking into me and still didn’t snap to the truth? And he’d also just accused me of lying, but that was hardly the issue just then. “Yes, St. Ambrose,” I said, watching him falter in what he thought he knew to be true about me. “And before that, we both went to Rhodes Children’s School. I lived only a few miles from your place in the hills. My parents died in a private plane crash when I was sixteen.”

Before he could ask the same infuriating questions about why we still didn’t live the way we used to, I told him the rest. Every last humiliating bit. “My father had been embezzling from the investment firm at which he was one of the founders. Everyone trusted him, but he was nothing more than a thief under all his charm. He’d also scammed dozens of families out of millions. My sister and I were lucky we had the clothes on our backs by the time everything was repossessed or taken in the settlements. Because of his deceit and corruption, we lost everything. So, yes, I had to leave St. Ambrose and enroll in public school. I had to get a job that year, too. The first of many.”

My hands were clenched at my sides, and I burned with anger at having to rehash everything. And it still didn’t look like he fully believed me underneath the dreaded pity in his eyes. I would have rather seen anything else there than that.

With a sigh, I held out my hand for my phone. He’d plucked it out of my pocket after he bundled me into his car. After he handed it to me, I scrolled back through my messages with Nat to the most recent selfie she sent me in front of a fountain in Milan, then held it up to his face.

He frowned at it. “My daughter posts pictures like that all over the internet.”

I bit back a swear word and dug through for an old picture of us together in our St. Ambrose uniforms. Another of us grinning by the pool at his mansion in the hills. Then I looked him in the eyes to see he believed me fully now. He was pale under his tan.

“Can your driver take me home now?” I asked, completely defeated by his silence.

Did I wish he didn’t care that Nat and I were still close? Did I want him to keep fighting for me? It was silly, but I had been impressed with the levels he’d go to in order to keep me in his life. I felt special, cared for, and wanted, feelings that were so far out of my recent experience that they may have been beaming in from outer space. The fact it was Aleks, the subject of so many daydreams, was making it harder.

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