Page 69 of Captive Virgin of the Bratva

I grit my teeth. “That would be the woman in question.”

She arches a brow, clearly delighted. “You always were so protective of your toys.”

There it is. The button she’s always loved to push. I step in closer, low enough that no one but her can hear me. “Don’t test me tonight.”

She just hums. “You never did like being reminded of the past.”

“She’s not part of it,” I growl.

“Clearly,” she replies, tone soft but laced with poison. “Though I wonder if she knows who you really are. The things you’ve done. The way you used toneedme.”

I don’t need this. Not tonight. Not in front of Elise.

Especially not now—after the way she kissed me last night, after the way she gasped in my mouth, touched me like she hated it, like she needed it, like she wanted to forget everything but the weight of me pressing her against the wall.

The memory rises like heat under my collar.

I hear the click of heels against marble, and I know she’s coming down. Elise.

Darya turns toward her as she approaches. She takes her in—my girl in a dark blue dress, looking every inch the woman I claimed, the woman who still hasn’t realized how deep I’ve sunk into her.

“Pretty,” Darya says with a sweet smile. “Is that what you go for now?”

Elise’s voice is calm. Cold. “What he goes for is none of your business.”

A flicker of something dangerous flashes behind Darya’s eyes, but she doesn’t lash out. Instead, she steps closer to me again, lips just shy of touching my ear.

“I wonder what she’ll think when she finds out everything,” she whispers. “You can chain her to your side, Kolya, but you can’t keep your secrets forever.”

I don’t react. Not physically, but inside, something shifts.

Then she’s gone, her heels echoing as she crosses the marble, head high, hips swaying like she’s won.

She hasn’t. I watch her go, jaw locked, until the front doors swing shut behind her.

Then I feel it—the absence of Elise’s hand in mine. I look up and she’s already turning away, moving fast up the stairs, back straight, shoulders stiff.

She doesn’t look back.

I stand in the empty foyer and clench my fists, the hollow ache building low in my gut. She doesn’t realize what Darya is to me. What shewas. It shouldn’t matter. It doesn’tnow.

That flicker of emotion in Elise’s eyes—jealousy or something worse—sticks with me.

She looked like she wanted me to deny everything. Like she needed to hear it, right there in the hall.

I didn’t give it to her, and now I don’t know who I’m more angry at—Darya, Elise, or myself.

Elise turns on me. Her spine is rigid, her hands balled at her sides, and that fire I’ve come to recognize—come tocrave—burns bright in her eyes. There’s no hesitation, no caution. Just fury.

“Who was she?” she demands, each word flung like a blade.

I don’t answer. Not because I can’t—but because I want to see what she does next. I want to feel the heat rise.

“Why did you look different around her?” she presses, voice tightening. “What was she to you?”

I take my time turning toward her, slowly, letting her frustration build. Then I smirk—because I see it now, clear as blood in snow.

Jealousy.

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