Page 44 of The Bratva's Innocent Sold Bride
I never thought I’d be okay with spying, let alone being hired by my forced husband to do it for him, but I just considered it industrial espionage to ease my conscience. Big business was rife with it, and it was highly likely I would have been doing similar if I ever made it high enough up at Taurus.
That would never happen now, not just because of Mat’s deal with my father. Taurus Ingenuity was wheezing its last dying breaths, and it made me sad thinking about my dad’s pride and joy going bust because of his bad deals. I had a love-hate relationship with that company, like it was the treasured older sibling I never had, always taking all the attention and hogging all the glory.
So, secretly hacking and tracking a tech startup guy wasn’t on my goal list when I first graduated from Stanford, but that’s where I was, and so far, it had been damn fun. The rushwas the same as when I first learned how to cheat passwords, all the way back in seventh grade. If I’d been more into that sort of thing, I could have learned all my school friends’ dirty little secrets they kept hidden in their DMs and pretty much ruled my middle school. At the time, I was just happy that I had figured out something new.
Now I was raring to get in there and get every last bit of information that Mat wanted. Was I warming up to being a Bratva bride after my two brief encounters with his life? Or was I warming up to Mat? The beaming smile he gave me when I showed him what I found sure didn’t hurt. Having him think I was a genius and promising me every last bit of equipment I ever wanted was pretty awesome, too.
The next day, I woke up early, thinking I’d get one of the many empty rooms ready for my workspace. All the other rooms were going to have to take a backseat as the furniture I’d ordered trickled in from all over the world. I had a job to do now.
Mat was already up, sipping his coffee in the kitchen while the housekeeper pulled a tray of blueberry muffins from the fridge. Once they were out of the pan, she slipped away, and I immediately thought something was up. It was uncanny how live-in employees always seemed to sense danger and make themselves scarce.
“What?” Mat said, seeing my suspicious face.
“Did something change? You don’t need me to track Hendricks anymore?”
The pain of losing this was worse than finding out I wasn’t going to get to keep my job at Taurus. He must have found someone else, someone he thought was more experienced—or someone he trusted more. That hurt, too, more than it should have.
Mat pushed one of the seats out for me and poured me a cup of coffee from the carafe.
“If you think I asked for too much, I can justify everything on my list,” I said, prepared to fight.
“I don’t understand why you’re on the verge of panic,” he said with a small laugh. “I’m not concerned with the three-page-long list of things you’re demanding. The cost for this doesn’t matter.”
“Then, what’s wrong?”
Shaking his head, still chuckling, he pushed his tablet over to me. “Nothing’s wrong as far as I know. You came down here looking like the house was on fire.”
I forced a laugh and looked at the image on the screen. It was a small office park, one of the many newer ones that were popping up. The trees were small and spindly in the courtyard that was dotted with picnic tables and benches, and the three squat buildings that surrounded it were shiny with glass and gleaming steel.
“Is the house on fire?” he asked as I looked at the image in confusion.
“Not that I know of.” I couldn’t exactly tell him I was panicking because I thought he was firing me before I got the chance to prove myself, because I wasn’t going to let him fire me. “What’s this?”
I pushed the tablet back to him, and he swiped, revealing an office space, small but decked out with everything I asked for, plus extras I didn’t think about but would thrill anyone who leaned over a computer all day. A top-of-the-line espresso machine sat next to a regular old coffee maker on a counter alongside a full-sized fridge with a microwave on the other side.
The desks were huge, with all the giant monitors I asked for, the chair was a space-age ergonomic masterpiece, and soothing, calming art lined the walls. I could almost hear my favorite music playing, and possibly the best part was the lavish dog bed with a pile of toys on top of it in the corner.
“What is this?” I asked, thinking it looked very much like my version of heaven.
“Your office.”
My office? I was getting an office that wasn’t one of the many empty guest rooms in this house. I got to leave the house? Tears almost rose to my eyes. This wasn’t bad news at all, but the best news I’d been given in a long time. I zoomed in on the picture. If it was a computer-generated mockup, it was the best I’d ever seen.
“When will it be ready?”
“It’s ready now,” he said. When I looked up at him in awe, his grin was smug. I’d give it to him this time.
“How?” I had only given him my list yesterday evening.
“You should know more than anyone how throwing a bunch of money at a problem can solve it very fast. And I have a lot of people who are eager to make me happy.”
I could picture his burly guards hauling in all that furniture and equipment through the night. Trained assassins are overseeing the hired tech people who set up the computers. Maybe even Masha had pitched in. It all had to mean something, right?
I cooled the warmth spreading in my chest. It probably meant he wanted this information in a hurry, nothing more. But it was my dream workspace, and it was all mine.
“Well, do you approve?”
I pushed back my chair and hugged him around the neck, unable to hide how much I approved. He pulled me down onto his lap and we smiled at each other. The feeling that was seeping past the warmth in my chest was something new. Something I instinctively thought I should fight.
