Page 18 of Watched and Bred By the Bratva
The thought makes me dizzy.
I pad barefoot through the hall, past antique rugs and tall windows spilling lake light. I find him in the library.
The library is cavernous. Cathedral-tall shelves swallow an entire wall, dustless and immaculate. Rich leather chairs wait around a polished table. A glass-fronted cabinet gleams with bottles and crystal. At the far end, enormous arched windows spill daylight across a lake so bright it looks painted into existence. He stands at the glass, hands clasped behind his back. Shoulders rigid. Watching the water like a king watching over spoils of war.
For a second, I don’t say anything. I just… look at him. The man who wrecked me. The man who made me come for the first time in my life. The man who then left me alone to bathe, and folded a wish into reality without even asking.
I bite my lip. Because, hell, what do you say to a man who kidnapped you, demanded your first orgasm, but then left you to luxuriate in bath salts and an exquisite, pool-sized tub?
“Thank you… for the shirt.”
His head lifts. Slowly, he glances over his shoulder, gaze flicking once over me. Not at my face. At the shirt. At the pink cotton stretched across my chest. For a heartbeat, he looks feral. Then his mouth curves—barely.
“You like it.”
It isn’t even a question, but I nod anyway, my fingers twisting in the hem. “Yes. I thought there weren’t any left.”
“I found one.” He doesn’t explain further. As if it were nothing. As if I don’t know how fucking impossible that must have been.
I stand there a moment too long. Wondering if I dare ask him what this means. Why he bothers with details so small when he could move mountains. He turns fully, hand extended.
“Walk with me.”
The gesture startles me. My instinct is to refuse. To retreat into the shelves towering behind me, into comfort and quiet. My mouth even opens—ready to say no.
Then I see his eyes. The look in them. Dark and unreadable, but his jaw tight like refusal might cost him more than bullets.
So I take his hand.
It feels like stepping onto a carousel, circling round and round at a slow, dizzying pace. I can’t keep up with the spin of him. Commands and silences. Violence and tenderness. Hunger and restraint. It leaves me reeling, breathless, unsure of where the ride will end.
He leads me through arched hallways, out a set of French doors, and onto a stone terrace. The air is cool, still holding the crispness of late spring. Sunlight pools across the lawn that stretches forever, manicured emerald down to the water’s edge. Beyond, the blue of the lake dazzles, dotted with the blurred wings of ducks skimming its surface.
It’s too much. The grandeur, the quiet, the expanse. I’ve never seen land like this. Never stood where the horizon belongs to one man.
“Why do you live here,” I ask, “in a house this big… alone?”
We’ve reached the curve of the path, brick crunching beneath our footsteps. He stops and turns his head toward me. His hazel eyes mirror the lake’s glint.
“I bought it for you.”
The words don’t make sense at first. They hang in the light air of spring, absurd as if he told me he purchased the sun. My steps falter. “What—”
He catches me by the elbow before I can stumble.
“Last week,” he says, expression iron. “After you admitted what you wanted. I watched the tape again. Heard you say you wanted me.” He takes half a step closer, his shadow folding over mine. “So I bought this. For you. For us.”
“You—? But you lived in the city. Didn’t you have a penthouse, you—”
“I still do. We can stay there whenever you wish,” he interrupts, voice steady but sharp. “But you wanted children. Children shouldn’t grow up in fancy apartments. Families need homes. Space.” His eyes drag across the vast green, the insane house rising regal behind us. “So I brought you one. A home. Ours.”
I never stumbled, but my breath sure does. What the actual? This isn’t flowers after a date. This isn’t a gift from duty. It’s a fortune, carved into marble and acres. A man uprooting his life, shifting his empire—not because he wanted to, but because I said once that I dreamed of something like it.
I have no words. He stares like it’s ordinary. Like it isn’t madness.
By the time we walk back to the house, my legs feel hollow. My chest too tight.
Inside, the wide staircase curves upward, iron spokes glinting in the light from tall windows. The foyer gleams with immaculate polished stone and carved doors.
