Page 2 of The Bratva's Forced Kidnapped Bride
There was no one at Taurus Ingenuity who wasn’t the best of the best, and I’d learned from other sources of gossip that Marcus came from an uber-wealthy family and probably didn’t need to be running himself into the ground.
He shrugged. “Excelling here will gain me the kind of reputation I want,” he said. “Once I have that, I’ll move on and start my own thing.”
I could respect that. After all, I could have stayed in Russia, where I had a nice, cushy bit of territory that I could run in my sleep. I decided to follow my cousins to California and basically start at the bottom all over again, to prove I could swim in a bigger and more dangerous pond.
“I’m sure you’ll be a mogul one day,” I said.
He almost swooned at the encouragement, then frowned. “If I live long enough. Oh, speaking of moguls… You remember Terrence Hendricks?”
I froze, very carefully arranging my face into mild confusion as I shrugged, almost like I didn’t care at all about what he was going to say next.
“He was about to be the next big thing? Everyone was trying to hire him or find out what he was working on. And then he just disappeared?”
Oh, I remembered all right, since I was the one who made him disappear. Just not permanently, like I was supposed to. “Yeah,” I said slowly. “I think so. What about him?”
I was good at deception, and there was no way Marcus could know I was about to boil over, waiting for him to spill whathe clearly thought was big news. My hands wanted to clench into fists, but I kept them loose. My scalp prickled, the bun I kept my hair up in suddenly too tight, the baggy uniform sweltering even in the blasting air conditioning.
“He’s back,” Marcus said.
“Here?”
He finally dared to show himself after disappearing over the Mexican border three months ago? And had the audacity to go by the same alias. Terrence Hendricks, in reality, Anatoli Ovinko. The one who got away.
And no, not like that. He was my greatest mistake, my biggest screw up. After taunting Mat as he tried to set up a new territory here in Silicon Valley, we finally caught him when he very stupidly kidnapped CJ. Yeah, you don’t mess with a Fokin, especially one who’s wildly in love with his wife. I was supposed to take care of him, wipe him off the face of the planet, and I failed.
“No,” Marcus answered. “He’s in LA, just showed up at a presentation of some new, experimental batteries in Century City last night.”
How the fuck was I just now hearing about this from Marcus? I barely refrained from kicking the computer I had my spyware installed on. Marcus went on and on, pleased he had a big scoop and just about killing me with unnecessary details about the freaking batteries. Apparently, there was no press, and he’d only heard about Anatoli being there from a friend who’d been at the event.
I believed Marcus, because he idolized who he thought Terrence Hendricks was, as did most of the people who slaved away in the pit, hoping to one day reach such lofty heights as he did before his mysterious and abrupt disappearance.
There were still four hours left on my shift, but I had to act fast. Had to find Anatoli before anyone else in my family realized he was back and right under their noses. While none of them admitted they blamed me for his escape, they still very much wanted him dead. If they got to him first, there was no way they’d put me back in charge of his interrogation again. In fact, there might not even be any interrogating, just a quick bullet to the head.
That wasn’t enough when I knew that bastard was probably planning to try another takedown of my family. As wily as he was, managing to stay off the radar for three months, he might already have the wheels in motion to cause utter mayhem and destruction.
No, not this time.
Leaving Marcus midsentence, I hurried out of the building without clocking out. It was time to lay a trap for that arrogant bastard Anatoli, one he wouldn’t be slipping out of. Ever.
Chapter 2 - Anatoli
I loved Mexico. My villa was luxurious, with a view of the ocean and just a stone’s throw from a welcoming cantina with live music. Nobody asked questions, nobody interfered. Why should they? I was just another rich foreigner who was happy to spend his cash in the area.
It was a great spot for a vacation, and I actually made a lot of headway on my most recent computer program, which was on the verge of being ready to release and make millions if I could ever stop tweaking it. That was what three months of unlimited free time did, though, and I was sick of biding my time in the blazing sun. Even the sound of the waves crashing on the beach and the gentle breezes rustling through the palm trees was beginning to get on my nerves.
My men had been scattered long enough, left to their own devices for too long. I couldn’t even find some of them anymore and had to accept they might be gone for good.
It was going to be hell finding new people I could trust, and there was a lot of work ahead of me, not just regaining what I’d lost in California, but with everything that was going on back home in Volgograd. Running my own business in the motherland was a matter of a few phone calls and video conferences, lucrative but low-maintenance. Unlike the people I’d gathered around me in Silicon Valley when I was slowly starting a new empire up there, my crew in Russia was like machines.
Also, unlike the people who ran the family business, the one I kept out of since my brother took over and I went my own way. The one that was currently in turmoil and on the brink of imploding since Konstantin finally met his demise at the handsof one of his many enemies. I hadn’t spoken to my older brother in at least ten years when the news got to me a few weeks ago. I couldn’t remember our final conversation, but I was sure we disagreed, as we’d been doing our entire lives. Like almost everyone else who knew him, I didn’t mourn his passing.
Our uncles had been passive in the running of the territory that their eldest brother, our venerated father, had built. Watching Konstantin do everything he could to run it into the ground, all while getting no backup from my uncles, who for some reason couldn’t see what was happening, was too much for me. I set up shop on my own with some of our guys who also didn’t agree with Konstantin’s heavy hand. After only a few years, that was running like clockwork, and since Volgorgrad wasn’t a huge metropolis, I decided to try my hand in America.
Things were going great, until they weren’t. A little war with the reigning family in California sent me on this unwanted vacation, and three months later, I was growing antsy in my little paradise.
A call from my Uncle Leonid didn’t help my already sour mood, and I scowled at the cloudless blue sky before stalking inside to take it.
This wasn’t the first call I’d received from him since Konstantin’s funeral, but between him and the other relatives, I was spending more time on the phone with them than I was doing anything else the last few days. Things were going to hell fast in Russia, and they were laying on the guilt.
