Page 11 of Sold to the Russian
And maybe that’s what did it for Fedya.
Maybe that was the instant she becamehis, the moment he realized?no, knew?he was going to have her no matter what. Even if she hated him for it.
Now, he was stuck. Once again.
Because the thought of letting her go was now out of the discussion, so, he had no other choice but to marry her as planned.
Fedya’s thoughts shifted from Cormac’s daughter to Luca in the emergency room.
An eternity passed before the doctor finally emerged?a short, old man who had patched up more than a few of his men before. He sighed as he removed his gloves, tossing them into a nearby trash can.
“He’ll live,” Doctor Fen said, addressing Fedya with a curt nod.
Fedya sighed as he looked up at the man, clenching and unclenching his fists as if he was trying to shake off the tension that had accumulated in his muscles.
“But he’s weak. He suffered too many broken bones and ligaments,” Fen added with a concerned frown. “He lost a lot of blood, Fedya. If you’d been a second too late, he’d already be dead. He’s much stronger than he looks, but he’ll need a lot of time to recover.”
Fedya barely nodded as he ran a hand down his face, smearing Luca’s half-dried blood against his jaw. The most important thing was that he was going to live. That was all Fedya wanted to hear.
Then, he stood up and approached Fen.
“No one hears about this,” he said evenly, holding the doctor’s stare. “This will stay between you and me, Fen. It’smy mess.”
Fen hesitated for a moment, but Fedya wasn’t surprised. As much as his loyalties were tied to the Nikolai Bratva, he answered mainly to the Pakhan.
Fedya took another step forward, tilting his head as his voice dropped lower. “I mean it. Not a single call to any of my brothers. No whispers to my cousins either. This is mine, and I’ll tell them when I’m ready. You’d be doing more harm than good if this got out. Am I understood?”
Doctor Fen frowned a little before sighing.
“You have my word, Fedya.”
“Good.” He leaned back and cast a fleeting glance at the glass doors of the ER. “I’ll be back to see him as soon as I can. Put him in a private ward. No one sees him except me.”
“I understand.”
***
Fedya rarely made reckless decisions. He might have been the youngest of his brothers, but he was the most tactical of them all. Every move he made was calculated and premeditated. Everything he did was necessary.
But as he drove closer to the border where Cormac had informed him the exchange would officially take place, he was starting to think otherwise. Nothing about this was tactical or innately necessary.
If he’d sat down with himself like he had originally planned when Cormac laid out his idiotic offer, he would have come up with a suitable plan to get himself out of this marriage mess.
But Fedya didn’t.
All he needed was one glance at his daughter to go ahead with it.
It was the most reckless, dangerous, and impulsive thing Fedya had ever done.
His family could never know. Not yet. His brothers would slaughter him. His cousins would slaughter him after his brothers were done with him.
So, he certainly couldn’t take her to his family estate as his bride. His only probable solution was to take her somewhere far, somewhere safe. A house on the outskirts of the city?one of the many safe houses the Nikolais owned but rarely used. Itwould buy him time to figure out how the hell he was supposed to go about the situation.
Fedya’s hands tightened around the steering wheel as he thought back to the incident at the bar three days ago. Theeasewith which Cormac had handed her over. He did it like an afterthought, like it made sense to him even if it still didn’t make full sense to Fedya.
Fedya had done business with men similar to Cormac before. Cold, ruthless assholes who saw their daughters as nothing more than bargaining chips. But with Cormac, there was no hesitation, no indication that it was a difficult choice for him, not even for show.
It was like he’d been looking forward to the day he’d be free of her.
