Page 3 of Captivated By the Bratva

Guilt hit me. Here I was, making him stressed about how I might have felt left out.

Enough of that.I wanted a job, and he gave me one. Now, I’d damn well do it.

“I’ll retrieve this missing bride,” I confirmed. “You can count on me.”

He yawned once more as I headed for the door. “I always knew I could, and always will.”

I hesitated. “But once I’m done with this assignment, if Dmitri is still missing…”

“I doubt he will be by then.”

I wanted to share in his confidence. But it sounded like doing so would jinx it all.

As I left his office, I held my head up higher, determined to see through this job as quickly as possible to make sure I’d remain available if Dmitri would need to be rescued.

After all, how hard could it be to drag a stubborn bride to her father and groom?

Nadia Petrov, I’m coming for you.

2

NADIA

The cursor blinked on the screen, taunting me as I zoned out at the application form. Graduate school was my next best option, even if I wasn’t entirely interested in it. My heart just wasn’t into it. I liked school well enough to work toward a degree in Literature, but entering another program for up to four more years sounded like an obligation, not an adventure.

Who am I kidding?

Three years ago, I accepted a scholarship to come study here in London. I’d done it partly because I was a bookish nerd who enjoyed learning. But I mostly used it as an excuse to run away. To hide.

And now that I was a month from graduating, I faced too many questions of how to pull off the next phase of my life.

I can’t run forever, right?

I was committed to creating my own future, no matter what. So, would I do that by entering grad school? Or…

“Mail alert,” Zoe, my roommate, announced as she plopped into the chair next to me. This section of the library was less strictly supervised, but she kept her voice low anyway.

A short pile of envelopes slapped down to the table as she sat. After minimizing the window on my laptop—because I didn’t need to explain my indecisiveness to her, too—I reached for the stack. “What’s all this?”

“Old mail.” She raised her brows, curious and judging at the same time. “For the hundredth time, Nadia, are yousureyou don’t have a stalker?”

Oh, fuck.I rolled my eyes, hurrying to mask any hint of alarm that might’ve leaked into my expression. “No. Just my dad.”

Zoe huffed, checking her cuticles as I peered at the envelopes. “I mean, letters?”

I shrugged. Dad didn’t stop with letters. He used the old-fashioned method of correspondence because I ghosted him elsewhere. I deleted his emails. I ignored his texts. I never answered his calls. I supposed he'd resorted to handwritten letters just to exhaust all possible means of getting ahold of me.

“And he’s still mailing them to our old apartment?” She shook her head. “Didn’t you tell him that we moved?”

Obviously, no.

I didn’t expect Zoe to begin to understand the rift between me and my only parent. She seemed to read between the lines well enough and understood that my dad and I didn’t get along. We didn’t see eye to eye. That was what I told her. I wasn’t the only person in the world who didn’t get along with their parents, and that was nothing new. However, the particular reason I wouldsever any communication with my father was not a standard story. One my roommate didn’t know. And I didn’t want her to.

“I just happened to stop by the old building earlier to hang out with Mary, and she said those weren’t getting forwarded.”

I nodded. I suspected as much. Zoe and I roomed together in that older apartment complex until they had a water leak and we were forced to relocate. Even then, it hadn’t entered my mind to tell my dad that I’d moved.

Not all the envelopes were from him, though, and I hated that Zoe had snooped enough to poke through my old mail to see who else was contacting me. Even though the name on the sender label was a corporation, I knew what it meant. I was well aware of who was trying to reach me from Dunvinov LLC. It was a blank name. A shell corp. Lots of people busy within the world of organized crime used covers and front businesses to hide behind.

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