Page 120 of Silenced

“I don’t understand.”

“What’s to understand? Either the Bratva owns it or I do. I’ve diversified over the years.”

She graces me with a single blink then mutters, “I want to sit on a chair.”

“No, you don’t,” I counter calmly. “What’s wrong?”

She bites her lip, her focus on my hands. “Nothing.”

The server shows up again before I can get her to answer. As she lays out the drinks for us, I study Cassiopeia.

She’s been quieter since that unfortunate scene with Pavlivshev, but I haven’t pushed her to discuss it.

She needed to learn what I’ll do for her, whether she likes it or not.

All I know is that seeing her hunch in on herself, detecting her fear, witnessing her revert into the prey that was hunted by Rundel lit me with a rage so deep it was a wonder the foundations ofNavdidn’t crack beneath my fucking feet.

She will never be prey again.

And Vladimir and Oleg will never return to the privileged ranks they held before either. They’re lucky they’re not dead and that they have ties to the Krestniy Otets or not even Dmitri’s reasoning would have stopped me from putting them down.

“Have you heard…” She fidgets. “Is my mom safe?”

Her question draws me from my grim thoughts. “Yes,solnyshko,” I soothe, tugging gently on the end of her braid. “I would have told you otherwise.”

She flushes a little. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me.” Not for protecting my future mother-in-law. “She is well. The guards report on her twice daily.”

“That’s too much.”

“That’s for me to decide,” I say softly, watching as relief makes her eyelashes flutter closed for a second.

She’s a strange creature—her relief is tangible, so why she argued in the first place is beyond me.

That’s her, though. Difficult.

Take earlier…

Another woman might not want to sit on my lap so that she could try to run. Mysolnyshkois happy on my knee, happy with me—she just fights her natural inclinations.

But I will protect her, even from her own contrariness.

Unaware of my musings and, in a concerted effort to change the subject, she asks, “Do you always have a waiter who can sign?”

“At my establishments, of course.”

She studies me, her gaze drifting to my mouth. She keeps doing that since I managed to grate out a couple words. Still, she hasn’t asked mewhyI choose to sign over speak.

Nor does she know.

“Do they always want to fuck you?”

Both brows surge high at that—her mind definitely wasn’t where I thought it was. “What makes you ask that?”

“The way she was eating you up with her eyes maybe?”

Jealousy.

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