Page 45 of Bratva King's Secret Twins

He looks at me, his eyes searching mine, but I can see the doubt still growing as he sighs, pulling away. “What aren’t you telling me, Gwen? Because something is wrong, and you just need to tell me.”

I hesitate, the urge to spill everything warring with my need to protect my children. “I can’t… Not yet,” I say finally, feeling a pang of guilt. “It doesn’t matter what you do; the answer will be the same, Nik.”

He shakes his head, a bitter smile on his lips. “Then how can I trust you when you can’t even be honest with yourself?” He takes a step forward, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes before they open on me, cold as ice. “You don’t feel anything between us? You want to lie? Fine. But when I have you on your knees screaming for me, know you could have had this the easy way.”

The silence between us is heavy, the air thick and I almost feel like I can’t breathe, as if I am equal parts excited and scared for my fucking life. I feel my heart breaking, or racing itself to exhaustion.

“Nik, I don’t mean to-” I say quietly, but he stops me with a slow shake of his head.

"Gwen, you made your bed," he says, his breath feathering over my face, “now lie in it.”

My breath catches in my throat, and before anything else can be said, Nik walks out the of room, leaving me alone, half-naked in his button up, just like I left him the first night we spent together.

22

NIKOLAI

“You’re late,” Nadia hisses the minute I walk into my own office back at the Petrov buildings. She is sitting with her combat boots crossed on my desk, and she is filing her sharp claws down to an even finer point with a knife.

For the past two weeks, I have been late to everything and spacing out in meetings.

My mind is constantly consumed with thoughts of Gwen - wanting to pull her close and carry her back to my bed. I yearn for one of us to apologize and for her to acknowledge that she belongs to me and that she also feels this intense connection between us.

I know she feels it too. I see it every time her body quivers when my fingers trace down her spine or our eyes meet, showing me that she feels the same irresistible attraction towards me. But something is holding her back, and the side of me that craves pain wants to understand hers. I want to kill whatever is making her run away from me. That is the thoughtI’m most consumed with. How do I stop her from running away again?

The squeak of Nadia shifting her boots on my desk brings me out of my thoughts and I roll my eyes, making my way over to her, tapping her calf. “What about custom do you not understand?”

Nadia slides her boots off of my desk, leaving a small trail of dirt along my desk. “I’ll understand custom when you tell me what our father meant by bastard.” She takes the knife she had been filing her nails with and plunges it into the wood of the desk.

I pause,taking a deep breath through my nose, not looking Nadia in the eye, because despite our meeting with Boris being three weeks ago and I have told Nadia Boris meant nothing by the term bastard, she is like a dog with a bone. Nadia asks me every chance we get. Last time, I told her there is bliss in ignorance and she tried to fucking stab me.

A partof me doesn’t want to be the one to pop the bubble of our “Angelic Mother.” Nadia and Aleksandr still don’t know the venom our mother had for Boris. They don’t know the only way she could get back at him was by cheating and making him a cuckold. They don’t know that there is a possibility we are all someone else’s. And if they find out that I am a bastard and then we find out that they’re not, Nadia with a bloodbath the size of Manhattan, or Alek if they were to play into the politics, should be the rightful head of the Russian Mafia. I should be nothing. I should be a glorified bodyguard for my siblings, or a punching back, or a weakness. If I have it my way, they will never know and this will be a thing I take tomy grave along with so many other secrets Boris has left me to carry.

“Nadia, do you trust me?”I look at her from the corner of my eye, and she shifts in her seat, eyeing me suspiciously. She pauses and I narrow my eyes at her, rolling my jaw. “It’s a simple question.”

“It used to be,Nik. I could easily say I trusted you with my life.” Nadia leans forward, her fingers wrapping around the handle of the knife lodged in my desk. “But you are hiding something.”

“HaveI ever put your or Aleksandr’s life in danger?” I growl, turning so that I am hovering above Nadia with my fingertips sprawled against the desk. “Have I truly given you a reason not to trust me? When I asked you to be my right hand, you pledged your life to mine. What did I tell you?”

She swallows sharply.“That if any of us go down, we all go down together.”

I give her a wide, creepy smile. “Just like the string orchestra that played as the Titanic went down. You, me, and Aleksandr go down with the fucking ship, Nadia. It’s that simple. Now I am keeping my promise, but baby, if you want to jump ship.” I tap the desk and her crystal eyes gloss over. “Then allow me to help you.”

“Was that a threat, Nik?”she snarls, the knuckles around her knife handle turning stark white.

“Wasthat knife in my desk a threat?” I give her the smile that only showcases my top layer of teeth, and I lower my eyes at her. She laughs, biting her lip and contemplating her next moves. If I was an enemy, she’d pop that knife out of the desk and slice my neck open, faster than I can get my gun out. Lucky for me, I am her brother, even if it is truly just by a half.

Her voice comesout in a sadistic whisper, “We can’t fight right now, bro, there is a war outside those doors.”

“I agree.”My head shoots up to see Aleksandr leaning against the doorframe of my office. “It would be stupid of us to kill each other with the Yakuza and Italian breathing down our necks.”

Nadia doesn’t keepher eyes off me as she speaks. “So we just let him lie to us?” I don’t take my eyes off of her as Aleksandr shifts against the frame of the door, staring at me from across the room.

“No.”Alek crosses his arms over his chest and kicks off, walking closer to us. “All secrets come to the light, Nadia. It’s only a matter of time, but until then, the Irish are coming to discuss how we keep the Yakuza at bay.”

I scoff,dropping into my desk chair as Nadia pulls the knife out of my desk and closes it before tucking it in her bra. “You think it’s smart for us to get in bed with the Irish?”

“The Yakuza destroyedone of our warehouses by the Hudson, left a calling card and everything. They want us to go to war, and they are sure they are going to win,” Nadia says, tucking the arm of the chair underneath her knees.

---