Page 32 of The Bratva's Forced Innocent Bride

“Okay, sorry for thinking you were going to murder me,” she said when we were halfway finished with our meal.

“I’m sorry I didn’t give you more notice about the move,” I said, causing the first glimmer of a smile I’d seen on her face all day. “Look,” I said, waving at the crowd of hungry people packed into the tables all around us. “Now’s your chance to run away. We’re surrounded by witnesses.”

For a moment, she looked hopeful, twisting a knife into my heart. Then her eyes narrowed at me. “You’d find me in less than ten minutes,” she said, taking a hearty last bite of her sandwich.

“Damn straight, I would,” I told her.

Was she coming around? She certainly wasn’t making a move to run. And there was a twinkle in her eyes. I was certain of it.

Chapter 20 - Brooke

A few weeks passed in our new abode, and I was mostly just relieved that Max still wasn’t so sick of me that he hadn’t tossed me into the ocean yet. He had laughed as if that had been the most outrageous thing he’d ever heard, but it had really crossed my mind at the time.

What was I supposed to think when he told me to get in the car, and all my things had been neatly boxed up? It took a bit of mental adjustment, because I was just getting used to my current prison and was waiting for that elusive, perfect time to somehow get away. It was a jolt to my system to give up what had become an odd sense of security, when, in reality, I was starting to grow complacent.

There was no possible way I’d ever get out of that massive estate in Los Angeles, because he never let up on security, and no one ever left a phone around for me to nab. But he seemed excited about the move, and maybe he’d grow lax at this new place.

The new place was amazing. On the way, Max described it as cozy, and maybe it was compared to the mansion in Beverly Hills. Supremely comfortable, yes, absolutely. But cozy always went hand in hand with small in my mind, and this place on a glorious expanse of private beach was anything but small. It sprawled across the golden sand like an ultra-modern shopping mall, all glass walls and windows on the side that faced the ocean. From the front, someone might have been fooled that it was more like a rustic cabin, with beautiful flowering shrubs and small palms shading the walkway, but once you were inside, the simple, beachy style made you feel right at home.

“How is it already furnished?” I asked.

We’d been married only a couple weeks, so even if he’d been planning this move since the first day, it still boggled my mind. Everything imaginable was already there, down to all the little kitchen tools that ended up being forgotten, like a can opener or a wire whisk. A library was fully stocked with books, fluffy towels hung in all the bathrooms, and even new toothbrushes were waiting for us in the master suite.

“Why wouldn’t it be?” he had asked, genuinely confused by my question.

Ah, rich people. It was easy to forget they didn’t have to do certain things like their own shopping. I wanted to dig my heels in out of stubbornness and find something lacking, but I couldn’t find a single thing I would have changed, all the way down to the coasters on top of the fully stocked marble bar. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him if he could see my innermost thoughts, because how could it be so perfect?

Well, it was only because I wasn’t used to such luxury and that I was easy to please, and thankfully, I was able to keep my dignity and not actually drool at the stunning view from our new bedroom.

A bedroom that was as quiet as the last two weeks here had been, because Max was busy from before I woke up in the morning and didn’t come home until late at night most of the time. As much as it gave me disconcertingly mixed feelings, I didn’t complain. That would seem too much like I was a real wife, missing her husband. And that certainly wasn’t the case.

It gave me more time to figure out what I should do next. Even with his near-constant absence, Max was being anything but lax on security. I was locked down in the house, with a guard hovering around even when I went for a swim, which I’dbeen doing every single day in the cold and thrashing ocean just outside our back door.

I swam until my muscles ached, and I could distract myself from the loneliness that was beginning to weigh down on me. It was bad enough that I really was starting to miss Max, just to have someone to joke around with because Pavel, my guard, wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs.

To keep from actually missing Max, and doing something stupid like make him aware I was only pretending to be asleep when he slipped into our room in the middle of the night, I concentrated on how I’d eventually make my escape. Then, make sure he saw justice for what he’d done to me. I might have been surrounded by beauty and the best of everything, but none of it was my choice.

Despite the heavy loneliness, I was grateful he had been so busy, because then he couldn’t be a temptation. Just last night, it had taken all my willpower to lie perfectly still, keep my breathing smooth and even, and keep my eyes loosely shut. The merest blink to check if he’d taken his shirt off, and he would have honed in on me with one of those smug smiles that made me want to do something rash to get it off his face. Something dumb like kiss him.

We did get little bits of time together, and in the moments when I had exhausted myself by fighting the ocean instead of Max, I found myself going over them, trying to figure him out.

Why was he doing this? It was one thing to gallantly sweep in and save me from a villain, but we hadn’t heard a peep out of Luca since his meltdown on a morning talk show a week before. No matter what Max said, I argued that he’d had these bouts of drama before, and it had nothing to do with me. Why keep me under wraps anymore? Why keep me under his control?

It's not that Max was all that controlling if I ignored the fact that he basically kept me a prisoner here. When I actually saw him, he was as charming as could be, cooking me a meal before racing off to yet another meeting he never had time to talk about. Or diving into the surf with me right before sundown for a quick swim. He laughed at how my hair was lightening up and my skin was turning bronze from all the sun I was getting, and it was on the tip of my tongue to say I’d stay indoors more if there was a reason to.

I was at the point I wished he’d give me a reason to shout at him again. Because shouting and rages always seemed to turn into…

I shook my head to stop that line of thinking. There was no use going down that road, and it wasn’t like I didn’t have other things to occupy my mind. The very real threat of time passing was going to be enough to have me screaming at him again soon. Every day brought me closer to the time I had to be back on campus to get ready for my classes. It was bad enough I’d already missed the start of the one I signed up for during summer semester. I’d end up getting an incomplete, which would look bad on my record, but so far, I was too proud to let Max know he’d already taken that from me.

Determination that I’d be able to get myself out of this mess by fall kept my head held high and strengthened my tenuous grip on my self-control.

Olivia showed up unexpectedly, peeking her head in the library where a book rested in my lap. I stared at the water lapping at the sand through the window but only saw Max in my mind’s eye. It was so damn annoying.

“Oh, good, you’re not all… beachy,” she said, holding up a dress bag. “A new present.”

“Goodie,” I said, ignoring the subtle jibe that I mostly walked around in a big t-shirt over my swimsuit, my hair in various stages of damp tangles from my daily swims.

“Oh, come on and try it on,” she said.

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