Page 14 of The Bratva's Knocked-Up Bride

I couldn’t understand why.

My brows furrowed by a fraction as I looked at Damien pointedly. “Yes, I’m sure. We’re fine.”

While he didn’t press the matter further, the way his eyes tracked over my face told me he wasn’t fully over it yet. Heseemed to be searching for any hidden deception in me…almost like I was trying to lie and purposely hide some deep-seated fear of Raf or something.

Regardless, I wasn’t going to back down. He was being strange, and it made me want to know why.

As attractive as he was, I could feel myself slowly getting more and more irritated by his constant hovering, as if waiting for the perfect moment to pop in and disrupt the steady flow of things.

I couldn’t pin down his behavior, or the reasons for it, and it was confusing me beyond belief.

Eventually, Raf forced out an uneasy breath and pushed his chair back before he stood, glancing between us. “I think I’m going to grab some coffee…do either of you want some—”

“—no,” Damien said without hesitation, tone flat as he spared him an uninterested glance.

Raf blinked back at him, but unwilling to get into it, he nodded and left the cubicle.

The moment he was gone, I looked at Damien again with slight disbelief.

He cocked a brow at me. “What?”

I scoffed and shook my head, wearing my irritation. I didn’t bother trying to be polite. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Either he was genuinely clueless, or he had an excellent poker face, but either way, Damien gave me an innocent expression in return. “I’m just doing my job.”

“Your job…is scaring my coworkers now?”

He forced out a vaguely annoyed breath at that, arms crossed over his chest. “You know that’s not what I was doing…not intentionally, at least.”

It took incredible self-restraint to not outright roll my eyes at him. “It’s not your job to insert yourself whenever you please.”

Damien’s next look was somewhat of a challenge. “You seem to know quite a bit about my job.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Gemma said you’d be here to keep an eye on the place…and we wouldn’t even know you were here. But I’m more than aware, and you need to tone it down.”

His brow lifted again at that as he looked me over, and the faintest grin settled on his lips. “Oh, so I’m taking orders from you now, hm?”

Biting my tongue, I casted him a disapproving glare. “Look…just don’t get in the way, alright? Everyone’s uneasy enough with you here. There’s no need to make it worse.”

As if my words finally got to him, looking like his pride was somewhat wounded, Damien pulled back slightly and seemed like he had something else to say, but he reined it in. His brows pinched together slightly as he absently shook his head.

Without anything else to say to him, I sighed, then pulled away from him and the cubicle and kept walking.

My shoulders tensed as I walked back to my office, I pulled in a breath and reminded myself to relax. I didn’t need to let him get the better of me. He was aggravating, but that didn’t mean I had to give him that power over me.

Finally alone, I took the chance to recenter myself. Despite trying to get my mind away from the Novikov posted in the office, I just couldn’t.

Before, I told myself that he had been doing sweeps of all the floors throughout the day, and it wasn’t out of the ordinary for him to do that. But the more I considered it, the more obvious it seemed.

There was no way he was spending the same amount of time on each floor.

It hadn’t crossed my mind before, but upon mulling it over, there was no denying just how often I caught glimpses of him nearby. Even if I wasn’t paying all that much attention, he seemed to be there constantly.

I felt paranoid for even assuming it, but without a shadow of a doubt, he was around my floor a lot more than necessary.

The thought only made me feel more irritated for some reason, even if I didn’t entirely mind the idea. It was just his audacity. The way he kept acting so strangely, and how those instances were stacking up against him.

Damien was a living, breathing dream, and I should’ve been only ecstatic at the thought of seeing him more often, but the weirdness surrounding everything was more than I was willing to take on.

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