Page 74 of Bratva's Vow
If I trusted myself, I would have dragged him over my lap and taught him what running cost. But I didn’t trust myself. Not right now. Not after this morning.
I’d woken to an empty bed and a cold hollow in the sheets where his body should have been. My hand had reached for him like it had the right. Like it expected softness. Warmth. Forgiveness.
Instead, I got absence.
And then the footage. Grainy, black and white, time-stamped at 2:14 a.m. Wren, slipping out the door like a ghost, like he meant to vanish.
No note. No explanation.
Just gone.
After everything—after last night—I thought I’d been forgiven. I thought his kiss had meant something. That the way he clung to me, opened to me, let me in… that it was real.
But I’d been wrong.
He’d used me. Used my affection for him against me. He’d slept with me to lower my guard. To give me enough comfort to dull the blade before driving it in.
And that, somehow, hurt more than I wanted to admit.
He left me.
I knew he was hurt. I knew he was angry, but although everyone else told me he would never forgive me, I never believed it. Because we had something worth fighting for, dammit.
But heleft.
Sergei drove in silence, reading the mood. No one said a word.
My hands rested on my knees, fingers curling and uncurling like they were trying to find something to hold that wasn’t breaking. I wanted to reach for him. To pull him into my arms, but his rejection stung more than anything else. What if he came willingly into my arms? What if I believed once more that he’d forgiven me? Only for him to run again?
My heart couldn’t take it. I’d trashed my office out of frustration. Archie had sent all the staff home and closed the office for the rest of the week. His fear that I might snap and shoot someone who offended me was real. But he was partly wrong. A gunshot wouldn’t be satisfying. I needed something solid in my hand that I could use to bash against a hard surface over and over until nothing was left of it. Violence boiled beneath my skin, waiting to bubble over. Waiting to flood the city in blood if I hadn’t found Wren.
The car pulled up to the driveway.
Clean gravel. Gated security. Everything that was mine, everything under my control.
Except him.
Archie stood waiting with Nik and Dezi flanking him. I climbed out of the vehicle first, holding the door for Wren. He slipped through the other passenger door. A muscle ticked in my jaw. I slammed the door shut and clenched my teeth.
Jess pulled in behind us, stepped out, and crossed her arms, eyes flicking to Wren, then to me. Her resentment radiated from her.
“Dezi,” I said, not looking at Wren, “take him inside.”
When Dezi gestured for him to follow, Wren didn’t move.
He lingered by the car, eyes finally on me now, narrowed, uncertain. “You’re not coming inside?”
“I have work to do.”
He blinked, inhaled sharply, and sucked his bottom lip between his teeth. For a second, I thought he would accept my words without questioning me. I should have known better.
“So that’s it?” he asked. “You get my best friend to betray me. You drag me back from the motel, then walk away? You don’t have anything to say to me?”
I didn’t answer.
Didn’t trust myself to.
Because I was terrified of saying the wrong thing and pushing him away again.
