Page 25 of The Bratva's Innocent Sold Bride
He raised an eyebrow. “Masha’s worse than you. If I hadn’t promised a hefty donation and some of my men to make sure this fighting ring is completely squashed, the other wing would be full of those dogs.”
“Liar,” I said easily. “You don’t care about the money, and Masha’s too busy to turn this place into a dog sanctuary.”
He tossed the tennis ball again, and when Artem caught it this time, he settled down to gnaw on it. Mat was sitting cross-legged next to me and leaned closer. “Maybe I did it to see you smile.”
I couldn’t help doing just that, and not only because of Artem. “I never had a dog before,” I said.
“What?” Mat yelped. “Sacrilege. A cat, then? A bird? One of those fluffy rats?”
“No, nothing. Before my parents got divorced, I traveled with my mom a lot, and my dad didn’t think it was fair to leave the care to the staff, so I never had a pet at all.”
He told me about his parents’ place in Russia, outside the city, where they had retired full-time. They had horses, dogs, cats, and even chickens, and that was where Mat had spent manyof his summers before he started working in the family business. When I asked what his mother did, he looked at me blankly and said she was his mother.
“No job?” I asked.
“Do you think she did nothing with three sons and a busy husband?”
“I don’t mean that,” I said, feeling like I’d stuck my foot in my mouth. I believed stay-at-home moms had hard jobs, but I only meant to ask if she had a career.
“She was Bratva, she did what needed to be done,” was all he said in answer to that.
Did he take me along with him tonight because he considered me part of the Bratva now, and he wanted to see if I could do what needed to be done? He was starting to look stormy, but I couldn’t help but ask. He huffed out a breath before he answered.
“No. I only took you out tonight because you were asking so many questions at dinner, and it just so happened that there was no danger. You won’t be involved in what I do.”
I looked over at the dog, who was drifting off to sleep, curled up on the blanket mound with his ball under his paw and the knotted dishtowel beside him. For some odd reason I couldn’t figure out, Mat’s answer stung my feelings. Did he not consider me capable of helping him? Not even worthy of being trained? Or did he not trust me with something that mattered?
Why the hell did any of it matter to me? I sighed. Just when he was getting friendly and warm and leaning in close, everything went to hell. I could still turn it back to the way it was, get off this track, but my intractable nature overruled my desire for peace.
“So, I just do nothing?” I asked. “No job, no helping you?”
Mat stood up with a long, low rumble, as if he was rejecting multiple answers before speaking. Looking down at me, he shook his head. “There is plenty for you to do. You have this dog now, and you have the house.”
He left, quietly shutting the door so he wouldn’t alarm Artem. That was the end of the conversation, because Mat was gone, stomping down the hall. I scooted over and curled up next to my dog, who tossed his paw across my neck.
Nothing had really changed. Everything was the same, but at least I was no longer alone.
Chapter 16 - Mat
The next few days, I was hardly at home. I had a lead on Anatoli’s family in Russia, and even a picture of a man who was supposedly his brother. It wasn’t much, but it was something after so long with nothing but dead ends. Even though he seemed to be invisible, he’d been wreaking havoc, with three raids in a row, two of my men killed, and more merchandise lost.
I had shut down my storage units since they’d been compromised and moved everything to a warehouse that shouldn’t have been able to be tracked back to me, but within days of moving my imported goods into it, it was set on fire.
The man wasn’t just trying to steal from me anymore; he was trying to destroy what was mine. Thankfully, the damage wasn’t too great, and no one was hurt, but the arsonists got clean away, so there was no one to take my frustration out on.
Being out in my new territory, getting to know the locals, and sussing out places that might be lucrative to buy were also keeping me from home, which would have only fed the building frustration that had no outlet. All reports showed that CJ was getting along blithely with her new pet, taking him to the vet, buying out a pet store, and going on multiple walks a day around the property with him. If she was still upset about her latest attempt to try to cajole me into letting her take a job, she wasn’t showing it to the staff.
That was the most frustrating thing of all, having to deny her something she so dearly wanted. But the timing was awful. Someone was out there trying to take me down, and everything that was mine with me. It wasn’t just common knowledge that she was my wife; our union was still being celebrated on the localsociety gossip sites, wondering what event we’d turn up at once we were done hiding out together on our honeymoon.
If only they knew what kind of nonexistent honeymoon we were having, their sites would blow up. Just like I was about to blow up when I got home, my damn laptop wouldn’t start up. The thing was only a couple of years old, but I never did what it told me, constantly annoying me with reminders to update it. Now it was punishing me.
I had it held over my head, ready to slam it onto the desk when CJ trotted past with the dog at her heels. She stopped, leaning into my office with a look of horror on her face.
“Am I about to witness a murder?”
“Not if you leave in a hurry,” I said, putting the computer down without smashing it. “This one’s already dead anyway.” I had caught a glimpse of her that morning, still in her bathrobe as she drank her coffee in the kitchen. Her beauty never ceased to make me momentarily speechless. I waved her in.
She took a tentative step through the door. “Want me to look at it? I’m sure it’s not dead.”
