Page 8 of The Bratva's Innocent Bride

Shame and anger wash into me in equal measure. How could this be happening? First, the arms deal with Nevio, and now the plan to get back at Allard for his meddling. I’ve been in charge of this branch of the Bratva for only a few months, and already I’ve managed to make a mess of things.

Roman, and Viktor are staring back at me, their eyes wide. Roman has his phone in his hand.

“That’s not Olive Allard,” he confirms. “That’s Fiona Elizabeth Chase.”

I ball my hand into a fist. My brothers can see how much this fuck up and this entire series of events are bothering me. I take this woman—Fiona, not Olive—by the arm and drag her with me down the steps and toward the door.

“Brother,” Roman says, following after. “Where are you going?”

“I’m taking Fiona back to my place until I can figure out what to do about this entire fucked situation,” I growl, barely able to see straight with the rage that’s consuming me. Thinking of my mother’s voice and what she would say to do, I try to take a deep breath, but the action just further irritates me. My lungs and throat are still burning from the pepper spray, and the woman I’m dragging along is laughing quietly under her breath.

My brothers stand outside the chapel, watching as I stuff Fiona Chase into my car and circle around to the driver’s seat.

“Figure out what happened at the arms deal,” I spit at them, making them jump, before I climb into the driver’s seat and throw the SUV into gear.

“Oh, boy,” Fiona says from the passenger seat as she leans back and puts her feet up on the dash. “I can’t wait to see where we’re going for our honeymoon.”

Chapter 4 - Fiona

My new husband—or Olive’s new husband, actually—has brought us to the countryside, far outside of the city, and when we crest the hill, I sit forward in my seat, eyes widening at the sight.

A huge house sits at the top of the hill, surrounded by nothing but land and land and more land. This is the kind of house I’d salivated over as a kid, watching them in TV shows and wishing I could grow up somewhere like that instead of the rundown trailer my father and I lived in.

I’d see these English kids on TV go to their summer homes in the country and wonder what it would be like—not only to have a huge, welcoming house with working toilets and flowers outside—but to have more than one of them. A place you could “escape” to during the summer when you wanted more room.

This is that kind of house, I think, as we round the curve and continue climbing up the hill and toward it. It’s the kind of house that gets its own name, the kind of house that is passed down through generations of a family, that siblings have fond memories of growing up.

When I glance at him, I think I may not actually be married to this man, but I kind of wish I was.

Everything—going to business school, taking on that stupid internship from Olive’s dad—was all with the purpose of getting to a place where I felt secure. Where I had the kind of money that I would never have to steal sauce packets from a cafeteria or mix up a glass of powdered milk ever again. This man—Boris—must have grown up in the kind of environment Olive did. Where everything is handed to you.

I stare at his side profile as we rumble onto the gravel driveway. He is handsome in a kind of brutish way—a little like Jason Statham, but even more rugged. I wiggle my feet on the dash, marveling that he didn’t tell me to put them down. He seems like the kind of man who would freak out over the tiny things in his car—like telling you not to eat your food until you get home.

But maybe his failed attempt to kidnap Olive has distracted him enough that he isn’t thinking about how my feet might affect the dash of this luxury SUV. He only looked at me once the entire drive, and that was to pull over and put the gag back in my mouth so he wouldn’t have to hear my snide remarks. I couldn’t help it—I’d laughed the whole time, which only seemed to annoy him more.

It’s not my fault that I’m primed to react to something like this differently than most. For one thing, there have been many, many instances in which I could have escaped easily. For another, Boris here doesn’t know about the knife I have strapped to my inner thigh or the pink Tasman Salt that’s pressed against my breast, hidden by the padding of my bra—a gift from my dad on my sixteenth birthday. I never leave home without it.

I’m also just too primed by action movies. It doesn’t escape me that this guy could just shoot me in the head and be done with the whole thing, but this is my chance to be the quippy main character who acts like nothing bothers her, and I’m taking it.

The truth is that, under the sarcastic exterior, there is a vein of fear coursing through my body. I can already tell from this guy—and his brothers—that there’s something shady going on here. With a last name like Milov and a luxury car like this, I guess it is something like the Russian mafia or a smaller crime family. How fucked I am probably depends on the exact number of guys this man has behind him and how precarious their situation is. The second they think I have too much information—which I already might—I’m not going to get out of here without a target on my back for the rest of my life.

I think of the box under my bed containing the fake I.D. and other fake documents I’ll need to leave the country. I get new ones every five years, a habit I didn’t shake after my dad passed away, and I’d always felt silly paying all that money for things I was sure I would never need. Normal people didn’t do things like preparing for the worst.

But I’m not normal.

The SUV pulls up outside the house, and Boris gets out, slamming the door and coming around the side to help me. This time, he leaves the gag on, and I can’t deny the way it makes me feel when he grabs me roughly—a jolt of desire pushes through my body.

I know it’s fucked up, but I follow him inside the house with the hope that something more is going to happen. Something befitting a girl’s wedding night. Instead, we stop in the front parlor, and two nondescript men in black suits meet us.

I can’t help it—I’m looking around at the lavish interior. The fresh flowers—lilacs, I think—on the mantle, how the floors sparkle and shine, the housekeeper I can see from the corner of my eye. The housekeeper is slight and pretty, wearing scrubs, white sneakers, and a face mask. She almost looks like a nurse, and I assume the face mask is to keep the dust and chemicals from bothering her as she cleans.

The entire house smells like there’s not a single speck of dirt inside despite the obvious history here. Looking around, I can almost see all the parties, celebrations, families coming together to shout and play, and kids racing around the stairs and sliding down the banister.

The two men in the suits take me by either arm and start to lead me up the steps.

“Just give me directions,” I mutter, but it comes out too garbled to understand through the gag. They lead me up the stairs and down a few long hallways before finally arriving at a room.

It’s beautiful, of course, just like the rest of the home, with a four-poster bed and large windows overlooking a flower garden. I’m reminded of the yellow wallpaper story when the guard behind me locks the door.

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