Page 42 of Kept By the Bratva

“He thinks he owns her.” Nik faced Alek, grim and pissed.

Terror lanced through me, and I didn’t care if I looked weak, leaning toward Nik’s hard body. He wrapped his arm around me, too loosely for my liking, but I relished his slight support as he focused on the business.

Owns me? I’m not a thing!I didn’t have to wonderwhatDiego would want to buy me for. I wasn’t stupid. And the idea of such a fate, of being a sold slave to a monster like him, was too harsh to accept.

“I’ll pay him,” Nik said. “I’ll buy her from him.”

“I’m…” Everyone looked at me with my outburst, and I lost some courage to speak up, but not for long. “I’m not something to be bought or sold!”

“In their world, you are.” Alek lowered his face and shook his head. “But Nikolai, it’s not likely to work. He’s already given the Cartel three million for her.”

“It has to!” Nik pounded his fist on the table. “I’ll pay double.”

Six million dollars!I gaped at Nik, realizing he meant every word of it.

“It’s not about the money. It’s something else.” Alek glanced at me before focusing on Nik once more. “He’s deranged. Reports are coming in about that sadist, and it’s not good news.”

“They said that he doesn’t like to be told no,” the other beaten man said.

Alek nodded. “But I will help.” He lowered his gaze to Nik’s arm around me. “If that is what you want, if this woman?—”

“Amy,” I spat. “I have a name.”

He glared at me, but I didn’t give a damn that I might’ve broken some protocol of cutting him off.

“If this woman can’t be transferred elsewhere with the rest of the women we took out of that warehouse, then I will do what I can.”

“That’s not good enough,” Nik argued.

I leaned on him more. Hewasmy hero, my savior, to fight for me like this, but still, the shocking idea of being bought by anyone hurt me deep in my heart and soul. I’d never thought this could be my life, that I could be caught in the middle of such black-market, nefarious operations.

But I was. And I was damned glad to have Nik here championing for me. If I had to pick anyone to be sold to, I’d choose Nik. I hated to lower my guard for him, but I wasn’t so blind not to understand that he might not be the gruesome, horrible killer I had been assuming he was. Yes, he was a criminal, but he’d let that girl go, he’d stopped that man from slapping me, and he was offering to spare me a life as Diego’s slave to pay six millions dollars to override the first transaction.

“What about the baby?” Alek crossed his arms and looked at me directly.

My heart hammered. I held my breath, fraught with alarm that he’d dropped that bomb like that.

Mila lowered her gaze and sighed, like she hated to have told him. I understood. At least she was upfront, giving me that disclaimer that she wouldn’t lie to her husband.

And why wouldn’t she side with her man? I was a stranger. Athingto be bought and sold. I wasn’t an insider or member of their precious family.

“Baby?” Nik dropped his arm from me and narrowed his eyes at me. “What baby?”

“The Cartel’s baby,” Alek said, relaying the lie I’d told Mila in my moment of panic.

Nik’s lips pressed together in a grim line. Fury radiated from him as he took another step back.

Oh, fuck.There was just no way out of this hellish mess.

17

NIKOLAI

Ababy?

I stared at Amy, rooted in place and so shocked I couldn’t breathe right. She’d punched the air right out of me when she didn’t deny what Alek said.

She waspregnant.

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