Page 36 of Captured By the Bratva

“It wasn’t anything bad. Romeo was on the phone with Maxim when the women were found drugged in their rooms. But I was surprised when you showed up.”

I patted his back. “I know you’d have it under control.”

Still, Maxim seemed concerned. He wasn’t often out in the field as much as Alek, Nik, Dmitri, and I were, so maybe he needed to hone his judgment about what was an emergency or not.

People got roofied, too. It happened no matter where people went to drink and party. It was a stark but true fact of life.

“Sorry to ruin your evening,” Kenneth said respectfully.

I grunted. Ruin it? It wasn’t his fault. All I’d been doing was staring at Becca when I thought she wasn’t looking. And helpingEmily not be so fussy. It seemed like I couldn’t avoid bonding with that sweet baby, but I was relieved when Margie showed up to take over so I could leave.

Emily hadn’t hesitated to reach for Margie to be held. Margie just had that quality of calm about her.

Driving into the city gave me a chance to try to get my head on straight where Becca was concerned. Distance helped, but I wondered if I was too far past the point of simply setting a buffer between us. I’d tried that for the first three weeks we’d stayed at the vacation villa upstate.

No matter how long it was between the times I saw Becca, I missed her. And regardless of whether I was in the city or just the next room in the house, I yearned to be near her again.

My body and heart were in sync with wanting her to a possessive depth of urgency, but my mind lagged behind. I knew I had no business trying to envision her as a permanent fixture in my life, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her and wishing for another chance to enjoy her sweet surrender.

Seeing her as a mother of a baby changed my view of her. It didn’t soften her, but it showed me that she was far more than just another pussy to fuck, just another woman to fill with my cum.

She mattered. She had the role of raising an innocent baby. And she did so with strength and determination that were damned sexy.

With every minute I spent at the club, walking around with Kenneth and dealing with other minor matters of supervision here, I registered the passage of time as another minute away from Becca. I worried all the while, stuck on the slightly paranoid thought that coming here—being away from her—was the goal.

Was it a diversion, trying to separate me from Becca?

Was this not-so-serious concern of drugs a way to distract me from something else?

But from what? For what?

Being away from Becca and Emily bothered me, and I wanted to assume my anxiousness to return to them was nothing to be concerned about. That I felt off and alert because I wasn’t there to see them and know they were safe and under my watch and control.

And why isn’t the fucker trying to get her back?The Bratva men had left plenty of pointed messages of Becca being held hostage by now. And still, the man hadn’t bitten once.

Becca had scoffed that Steven Murphy, her father, didn’t care about her, and I had to seriously consider whether that could be true.

But I wasn’t ready to give up on keeping her as a hostage yet.

Whatever Murphy was plotting seemed to be a complicated and delicate scheme if he was determined to be this unreachable and stay hidden for so long. I had to wonder, again, who he was hiding from. What had he done to need to stay on the down low for his own safety? The fucker was as corrupted as they came. He could’ve gotten mixed up with any number of bad things and bad players.

Not knowing bothered me. If I knew what he was doing—with the Rossinis or anyone else—I’d be able to track him and finish him off once and for all. Or I could manipulate his foes to get him to react. The enemy of my enemy was my friend, but in this violent world, we were all fucking enemies at the end of the day.

“Trust me,” Kenneth said in conclusion after we’d checked on all of the club. “This drugging incident tonight isnothinglike what happened at Harrow’s.”

I nodded, thinking back to how the Cartel had attacked people at one of the Bratva’s strip clubs. First, the Ortezes snuckin and shot a few guests. Then they escalated in an attempt to wound the Bratva by burning the whole place down.

The Valkov Bratva wouldn’t fall because one of our many establishments had been scorched. Murphy had been tied to that incident, too. It was just one of a long list of infractions that cop had with us.

Being asked to come in and check on a report of two women being drugged was nothing like the loss of Harrow’s and the reputation of the Bratva business being a target of the Cartel. What I faced here tonight—and what Kenneth had under control appropriately—was a hiccup compared to the strip club fire.

Still, I was on edge, wondering what I was missing.

Without any other way to describe it, this felt like the calm before the storm. A deceiving spell of peace that wouldn’t last.

I didn’t know if wanting and missing Becca had me off like this or if the delay and wait for Murphy to reveal himself was bugging me.

I couldn’t shake this sensation of waiting for something bad to hit. And this report of drugged women wasn’t that bad.

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