Page 60 of The Bratva's Knocked-Up Bride

He chuckled again. “Easy. I was given a false identity, everything was forged for me, and I outsourced some help with the tedious parts, like coming up with those bullshit articles. Everything about it was fake, and you and Gemma ate it right up.”

Even if it all made sense, I couldn’t wrap my head around it. How far he went just to get information.

“You went through all that trouble…just to get confidential secrets for your boss?”

Raf nodded simply. “I did…of course, not for cheap. I had to pause my entire life, after all. I even stopped responding to my real name in my downtime. But thankfully, the boss made it well worth my time.”

Glowering at him, I shook my head. To go as far as he did and to commit for so long seemed barbaric. Insane, even.

I knew the world of organized crime often took things to the extreme, but it still seemed like so much effort just to get the upper hand. To get back at a family who wronged yours so many years ago…

I didn’t think I’d ever understand how those families operated, but I didn’t have much time to dwell on it. I was still trapped, and I had no idea what was going to happen to me.

Forcing out a breath, I held his gaze. “Where did you take me?”

With a nonchalant air about him, Raf draped his arms across the back of the couch. “Just a Pesci club…one of my favorites, actually. We’re waiting here until the boss arrives, then we’ll have a nice little chat with him. How does that sound?”

I hated even the thought of knowing I’d be in the same room as the kingpin. As the person who set Raf up to trick us, and the one making all the plans to break the Levovs and Novikovs.

Being near him was the last thing I wanted to do.

Then, the curtains drawn across the doorway pulled back, and a man stepped inside the room. Immediately, his light brown eyes flickered between the two of us before they settled on me, and he ran a hand through his sandy-blonde hair.

“Well, well…you did deliver, didn’t you, Raf?” he said, grinning while he entered the space, stopping to stand just before the arrangement of couches.

Raf nodded simply, crossing his arms over his chest. “That I did…told you I had something worth paying more for.”

The kingpin’s gaze slipped back to Raf, narrowing only slightly as if contemplating putting him in his place for the comment. But he scoffed, then looked back at me. “We’ll see about that. First, I need to know that this one even matters.”

“She does,” he interjected, surely defending his actions and commitment to the job. “She’s carrying a Novikov heir, after all. That idiot Damien has been all over her since the moment he took up shop in the office.”

A brief flicker of anger moved through me at how he talked about Damien…the father of our child…but I bit my tongue and bided my time.

A satisfied smirk crawled across his lips at that, and he took a few steps closer to analyze me further. “Is that so? Then I suppose I can’t discredit her too soon…”

Despite how badly I wanted to slink away and hide from his gaze, hating how it made my skin crawl, I held his eye contact as bravely as I could. For Damien. For our baby.

I wasn’t going to let them think I was completely weak, even if I was out of my depth.

“What’s your name then, hm?” the kingpin asked with a smooth tone while his eyes seemed to map out every inch of my face.

Clenching my jaw, I mumbled, “Sky…”

“Sky…” he echoed quietly, tinged with amusement. “I see…I’m Esidor Pesci. My father, Enrico, had quite the problemwith some associates of your baby daddy, it seems. Because of it, my sister Aria and I suffered more than we ever should’ve.”

Furrowing my brows, I never pulled my gaze away from him. “What does that have to do with me?”

He chuckled. “Of course what happened between my family and the Levovs doesn’t have anything to do with you, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still be useful to me in some way.”

Hating the implications of his words, I swallowed back the worry it brought over me. “How?”

“If I must spell it out, then I guess I will,” Esidor sighed before sitting down on the couch beside mine, knee close enough to brush against mine, making me pull back slightly. “You’re carrying Damien Novikov’s baby, which in any crime family, children are an integral piece of the puzzle. Legacy, passing on the family business, having someone to fill your shoes when you’re gone…those things can only happen when you have heirs. So, it only makes sense that Damien would do anything in his power to get you back. It helps how close you and Gemma are, and her close associations with the Levovs. It’s the perfect equation for me to use you as a wager to get what I want.”

While it didn’t come as a surprise to hear the basis of his plan, it didn’t make it any easier to accept.

I was being used just because I mattered to Damien and the others, and that was exactly what he didn’t want to happen to me.

Yet, I somehow managed to get myself in that position, and it was agonizing to even consider.

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