Page 53 of Captivated By the Bratva

I furrowed my brow, staring at her sleeping. He had to ask?

“It’s been, what, a few days?”

“You only knew Mila that long before you married her,” I shot back. Again, I hated the feeling that I was resorting to cheap arguments.

“Would she be your woman—andstayyour woman?” he asked. He wasn’t being nasty about it. His tone was neutral. “Could she be seducing you?—”

“No. No, I don’t think so.” She was a virgin, so clueless and inexperienced. “She hasn’t learned how to seduce a man, not like she would need to if she was trying to manipulate me.”

“You’ve considered that, though?”

“What?” I scowled. “That she’s sleeping with me just to get out of marrying Lev? No. That’s not what she’s doing. She swore to run from Lev before I found her, and she has been committed to avoiding Lev since I met her. That hasn’t ever changed.”

The truth was that I felt like I’d seduced the younger woman. She was naïve, but not stupid.

“Okay. Let’s say you go through with this. You make her yours. Would she stay for the long term? For a marriage?”

No one divorced in the Bratva. If she agreed to be mine, it would be for life.

Despite her tendency to run, I was certain that she would stay with me and choose me for good. Sure, she said that last night. She gave me flowery, poetic promises about wanting to choose me, even theoretically as her husband. But I believed her. I heard the commitment in her tone, I saw the sincerity in her eyes, and I felt the intensity of her need when we fucked.

“I am confident that she wants to be with me.”

He huffed. “Just because you’re the better option than Lev Avilov?”

“No. Because she wantsme.” I wasn’t being cocky. I believed it in my heart.

Alek accepted that. He didn’t goad me and question it all, and I wanted to think he relented because he’d once been in my shoes too. He’d taken his wife when she was promised to someone else. If anything, it was like he’d set the precedent for us.

“All right,” he said with another heavy exhale. “Let’s say you don’t bring Nadia to her father so Lev can get her. We need to consider and discuss the ramifications of how angry he’ll be. How he might retaliate.”

“I don’t want to do anything to set the Bratva up to suffer,” I hurried to say. I didn’t need to voice that. Alek knew. All of us were loyal to the Family, but in this case, I had to be loyal to whatIwanted too.

“And that’s the catch. We can’t go about this with any risk of the Valkov name suffering because we’d failed to back up this original agreement between Petrov and Avilov.”

I rubbed the back of my neck, tense to bring this up. “And I already muddied it up by attacking Erik Avilov in London, which made it look like I was already trying to keep Nadia from Lev.”

He grunted. “Yeah, that. But, and this will be good news for you, that incident prompted me to look into the Avilovs a little more since then.”

I perked up. He had mentioned being suspicious of the Avilov outfit in our other call.

“And I’ll continue to investigate it. I’ve got a few men on it. It’s too early to figure out whether it’s a rumor or a fact, but it seems like there is a chance that the Avilovs are the ones who are backing one of our rivals.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Who?”

“The fucking Kastavas,” he growled. “We’ve found evidence of Sergei Kastava seeking funding from the Avilovs.”

I gritted my teeth, instantly hating Lev even more. The Kastavas weren’t only an enemy. They were the ones Dmitri fought and had been captured by.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I said.

“No. I’m not. Not at all.”

“The Avilovs and Kastavas formed an alliance? Since when?”

Alek laughed dryly. “Since I stole his daughter from him and got him screwed over with his plans to ruin our Bratva. All this time, he’s been trying to build back up. It’s not surprising that he’d be seeking a bigger Family to give them some resources.”

I grunted. “Yeah, resources to attack us. And take Dmitri.”

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