Page 4 of The Bratva's Innocent Bride

My mouth waters.

“I resent the fact that you think you can buy me with—”

“Four bags of Twizzlers, those gummy Nerds that you like, that two cases of that craft soda shit.”

“What flavor?

“…root beer?”

“Fuck,” I mutter, thinking about two whole cases of my favorite drink—which normally runs at four dollars a can. Olive can afford to throw money like that around because she and her entire family are stinking rich. For me, a four-dollar drink is dinner. For her, it’s something to hold while she circles a room, only to be left, a single sip taken, warm and flat, on the counter for someone’s maid to dump down the drain the next morning.

“Thank you,” Olive squeals, taking tiny steps over to me in her high heels. “You’re literally the best friend in the entire fucking world.”

“Is that why you invited me to the rave with you?”

“I know you hate that shit,” she mutters, rolling her eyes. It’s true. I don’t like going with her to the clubs because it feels too open—too many people with access to me. It’s hard to stay vigilant when your ears are bombarded by electronica. “But are we on for the new season of Bridgerton this weekend?”

“Make it three cases. And you can Doordash me some food here now since I have to sit here all night without you.”

“I have to bribe you to watch TV with me now?” Olive asks, but she smiles as she taps on her phone. “Done. But you have to bring the popcorn.”

I put my hand over my heart like I’m hurt as she blows me kisses and turns, hobbling out of the room. When she’s gone, I feel like a little bug in a big cage. I can hear the individual buzz of every single fluorescent light in the room, and it sends a shiver down my back.

Every day, I have to remind myself that just because I was raised to assume every noise is a threat, that doesn’t mean it’s true.

Taking a deep breath, I grab my headphones. I pop my fingers, crack my neck, and settle in for a long night in front of this damn computer screen.

When I started interning for Olive’s dad, Mr. Allard, four months ago, I thought I was going to be gaining valuable skills that I could transfer to other workplaces, as the job listing claimed. Instead, I’m left doing the stupid organizational tasks that you can’t pay anyone else enough to do. They would literally poke their eyes out from boredom. But I’m chasing the carrot on the stick—the kind of security that Olive and her dad enjoy from their money, so I’m here, renaming 849—now 844—files in the company folder that may never even be opened again.

After a while, time starts to go by quickly. I play one of my favorite podcasts to pass the time—this chick who talks about makeup and crime—and I start glancing around the room, feeling like someone is watching me.

That’s what I get for listening to a crime podcast while sitting alone in the world’s creepiest office. I try to picture what it looks like when everyone is here, bustling around. I think about Tony, the other intern, who is constantly flirting with Olive, then defaulting to talking about me when Olive forgets that he exists.

I don’t use my Friday nights to do the things I want to do—not since this internship started. Instead, I do Olive’s work and my work while she plays with all the other gorgeous socialites at the parties downtown. If it weren’t for our more than six years of friendship at this point, I’d be worried that she doesn’t actually like me.

But the truth is that underneath all that makeup and her vapid little princess act, Olive is a nerd at heart, like me. Addicted to her romance books and stupid for Orlando Bloom in The Lord of the Rings. And I’m the only person in the world she feels comfortable showing that to.

In the dark, in the middle of the night, Olive and I talk about what it’s like to be a living thing, breathing air, with the knowledge that someday you’ll no longer exist. During the day, she pretends to forget, on repeat.

I don’t understand it, but I don’t need to. Our friendship works just fine for me.

When I hear something from the other side of the room, my heart drops into my stomach, and I pull the headphones off my head. I always get jumpy like this in the middle of the night and try to tell myself it’s probably nothing when the noise comes again.

I hear my father’s voice in the back of my head, the voice that I’ve tried to hard to leave behind. And he’s telling me that I can sit here like a doe in the headlights, or I can confront what’s scaring me.

“What the fuck?” I whisper, just to hear something in the silence. My hands start to shake, adrenaline coursing through my body. When the noise happens again, I remember that Olive ordered me some food and I let out a breathy laugh to myself, standing and trying to shake the jitters from my hands.

“Hey!” I shout, because the shouting makes me feel better. “Dude, she didn’t tell you the code?”

I walk over to the door, punching the code in so it doesn’t set off the alarm. It’s weird that Olive didn’t put the code in the app, tell them to punch it in, and leave it on the table in the lobby, but she could have already been pre-gaming by the time she left here.

“Hello?” I ask when I open the door, but I’m looking out at an empty slab of concrete where a delivery guy should be standing. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. There’s something wrong with this situation. I close the door quickly, turning around and pressing my back to it, looking up and down the hallway, my heart thumping quickly in my chest.

You’re being paranoid, I tell myself, willing myself to take a step forward, back toward my desk. Some people call it being paranoid. Some people call it being raised by a marine with plenty of PTSD and a survival complex.

Slowly, my eyes sweeping back and forth through the office, I walk back to my desk, but I don’t put my headphones back on. I reach down to the drawer of my desk, grabbing the mace and taser I keep there. I set the mace on the desk and keep the taser in my right hand, finger twitching over the button.

I stare at the screen, trying to look like I’m doing something.

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