Page 33 of Captured By the Bratva

Margie was a godsend. When I woke from my nap, I was a bit startled to hear the portly woman humming and dusting. She’didentified herself as the Valkovs’ favorite housekeeper and soon-to-be godmother, and I wondered if she was a figment of my imagination.

“He asked me to help you out, you poor girl. How long have you been sniffling like that?” That was how she’d explained her presence, and I knew better than to protest.

With her company, bustling around, cleaning the kitchen and generally being helpful, she showed me what I’d been missing all my life.

Support. Companionship. Something a lot like motherly love that I’d gone without for almost my whole life.

“The soup?” I asked, holding my necklace pendant back so it didn’t hang low as it slipped out from under my shirt and knocked against the bowl I hunched over. “It’sperfect, Miss Romanov, just perfect.”

She tsked. “Nonsense. I’m not a Romanov,” she playfully scolded. “The second Ivan’s grandfather saved me from the abusive man I’d been arranged to marry, I considered myself a Valkov.”

The pride in her protest was strong.

“Just call me Margie. I insist.”

I grinned, breathing in another deep inhale of the scented steam from the most decadent chicken noodle soup I’ve ever had. She’d whipped it up in seemingly no time at all, chatting with me in the kitchen all the while.

She didn’t interrogate me. Her questions were casual and calm, for no other reason than making me feel comfortable with her sudden presence here at this huge, expensive house.

“I can’t believe you’ve been trying to clean this all yourself,” she commented. “Those boys don’t vacation out here often. This place has been sitting here collecting dust for months and you’re putting your all into it.”

“Well, between naps…” I shrugged. “I’ve never liked being idle. There’s money to be made. Things to clean and fix.”

She laughed once, cooing at Emily as she gnawed on an iced piece of celery. The woman was right. My daughter wasn’t great at tearing off chunks to choke on, just mushing it and keeping it attached with the strings to soothe her gums.

I’d only gotten a catnap earlier, but with this comfort and peace Margie instilled in me, with her magical touch of calming Emily and not letting me be frazzled with her fussiness, I felt tired again—in a good way. I could recognize the difference now. Instead of feeling exhausted and at my wit’s end, I was content.

Since I learned I was expecting Emily, I’d worked. And worked. And worked some more. As a single mother handling sixty-hour workweeks, piecing in teeny slips of time for my art, and being a solo parent, I was overdue for a break.

Under Margie’s urging, I lay back on the couch and watched Emily play and babble to herself within the collapsible playpen Ivan had purchased just for her.

She never had this much space to crawl and play at our apartment. She could practice pulling herself up and falling without worrying about landing on our hard floor but on plush carpet instead.

Seeing her happy and calm eased my mind, and I slipped into another nap, wondering if I had to wake up from what felt like a dream.

Before long, I was woken. Beeps pulled me from the nap, and I blinked my eyes as I felt for my phone. I’d kept it nearby, anxious in case Ivan would want to contact me when he left for “business” matters. He was a Mafia man. I didn’t want to know what “business” meant to him. The less I knew, the better. Yet, I couldn’t give up on this hope that he’dwantto contact me. That he’d miss hearing my voice.

“Oh, stop dreaming already.” He’d captured me and held me as a hostage, but he wasn’t a heartless brute. He’d made me come. He brought my daughter to me. He provided baby things without question, replenishing clothes and necessities for me. Arranged for a housekeeper to assist me.

If a man ever wanted the quickest way to impress a single mother and find the easiest way into her heart, it was in the action of providing a capable woman like a grandmotherly fairy as backup.

No one could fault me for forgetting that I was a hostage here.

Still, the anxiety of wondering if and when Murphy would reveal himself ate away at me. Because if and when he did come out of hiding… I would have to leave. Ivan hadn’t lied. He’d told me that I was sticking with him for only one reason.

Which doesn’t explain why he’d fucked me…

I grabbed my phone, blinking at the screen. The number that read out snapped me awake, and I sat up, alert.

Dmitri had called this number “interesting” that first night. He’d led me to believe the call came from a Rossini address, but I had yet to be convinced that the caller was someone affiliated with Dom.

The beeps signaled a blank text. “Huh?”

I lacked the time to set the phone down. It rang again, the same number, but this time as an actual call.

“Hello?”

“Becca.”

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