Page 48 of The Bratva's Innocent Pregnant Bride
Paisley’s bed was empty. I reeled in shock, checking her bathroom. Empty. Downstairs, in the now quiet and sleeping lodge, her boots and coat were gone. The car she’d been assigned to drive was also gone.
Paisley was gone.
By now it was past midnight. I left her room around nine o’clock and she was sound asleep. Or was she? Did she sneak out just moments after I left? And why? My brain warred with my heart, which felt like it was twisted into a hard knot.
Deep down, I knew why, but I rejected it. I wanted to lash out at myself for even thinking it, but there was no other reason for her to run away so soon after an attack on my family. Paisley, my sweet, innocent Paisley, was a spy for the Collective. She tried to kill at least some of us with that bomb.
Damn it. I was on my way to having feelings for this woman. Had she completely managed to fool me? Was everything I believed about her a lie? Clenching my fists, I stood stock still for a moment, seeking clarity where there was none. If she had lied to me, then I was screwed, and in for a very bad time. Because I was the one lying to myself when I tried to convince myself that I could still back out. No, that wasn’t going to happen. Paisley had wriggled herself under my skin, into my heart, maybe even my soul.
Fuck. Why the hell was I thinking about the state of my damn soul when I needed to figure this out. Was Paisley an operative for the Collective or not?
The most obvious answer still didn’t make sense to me. I paced in the snow where her car should have been parked, not feeling the chill night air because I was burning up with anger.Was she supposed to get hired here somehow and then pose as a victim when the bomb went off? Why wouldn’t she make sure she was out of the way instead of heading straight toward it. I wasn’t mistaken about the look on her face as I saw her hurrying toward the gift table. It was one of sheer terror, not calculated at all.
Kicking a snow drift, I went back inside to grab some car keys and head into town. She couldn’t have gotten far. She was the only one who could give me the answers I needed.
I was met by Aleks and Anatoli, coming swiftly down the stairs. Aleks had a dark look on his face, brow furrowed and jaw set. His eyes practically shot firebolts as he pinned them on me, stopping me in my tracks. Anatoli looked worried and sheepish and I gave him a filthy glare.
So much for waiting to tell Aleks about his findings. He looked away from me, and I felt a stab of guilt in my gut. What if I was covering for the woman who put my cousins’ children in danger? Aleks was right to be furious.
“Come with me,” he grunted. I followed him to the kitchen, but didn’t sit down, too riddled with pent up energy. Anatoli kept his head down while Aleks glared at me. “Do you know where she went?”
So he had already gone looking for her, meaning to roust her from her bed and grill her on why she wasn’t actually employed with the nanny agency. I shook my head. “We don’t know if she was a new hire and not yet on the company website,” I argued.
Aleks snorted. Anatoli shook his head. “It takes weeks to do the kind of background checks they claim to put their employees through.”
“It didn’t take you weeks,” I countered.
He rolled his eyes and didn’t say another word. We all knew he had software that circumvented the normal and legal way of doing things. My argument didn’t hold water. Paisley was looking more and more guilty.
Katie burst in, her normally calm eyes flashing. “I’ve tried every number I have and there’s no answer from the nanny agency,” she said. “If we were in LA I’d be banging on the owner’s door right now.”
Aleks reached to take her hand. “We’ll try again in the morning. Right now, she’s gone, so the kids are safe.”
“She better be far, far away,” Katie fumed. She had loved Paisley, but now that she thought her daughter was in danger, she was out for blood.
“We don’t know if she had anything to do with it,” I said. “I saw how scared she looked right before it went off.”
“You’re not thinking straight,” she said, giving me an arch look. “You haven’t exactly been keeping your attraction to her a secret from anyone.”
I closed my eyes, not wanting to argue with a distraught mother. I didn’t even know if I had any right to argue for Paisley. It wasn’t just the look on Paisley’s face, but the fact that she had been rushing straight toward the source of the explosion. It had happened so fast and I had reacted on pure, protective instinct, but now I tried to recall if she was holding anything in her hands that might have detonated the explosive.
No, her hands were empty, not in her pocket, but reaching toward the table. There was no way she could have set it off herself, and if she knew it was about to blow, why wasn’t she running the other way?
I left them to argue amongst themselves about what course of action to take. Aleks was promising his wife that he’d organize a search team first thing in the morning, as certain as I was that Paisley couldn’t have gone too far. They had already ramped up the security detail around the lodge, so for the moment they were safe from another attack.
I had to find her before they did, because my cousins didn’t play around when it came to vengeance. My gut was screaming that she wasn’t responsible for putting that bomb in our house, and if that was true, then she was in danger from whoever did. If I found out beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was responsible, I’d deal with her on my own.
I didn’t play, either.
Chapter 32 - Paisley
This couldn’t be real. I tried to shake off Agent Pierce’s grip on my arms, but his fingers only dug in tighter. Gavril Bocharov took another step forward, looming over me from his great height. I had never been so close to him before, always grateful he never ventured onto the floor at Axon with all the junior accountants, all of us keeping our heads down so we wouldn’t be noticed by this fearsome, mysterious boss.
I remembered the first time he visited after I started working there. The red carpet had virtually been rolled out and gossip flew as everyone scampered to make sure nothing was out of place. Nobody could tell me exactly what he did or what his title was, but it was clear no one wanted to be singled out by him.
At my first glimpse of him, dressed as impeccably as he was now, I had thought he was movie star handsome, so tall and regal. It didn’t take me long to realize why everyone was afraid of him. He was carved of ice, never smiling, eyes dark and forbidding.
He looked downright mean now, and I had far more reason to be scared than I ever did back in the Axon building. It felt like I was frozen in his steely gaze, like I was a mouse being hypnotized by a snake. I tried to shake out of the so-called FBI agent’s hold, but he jerked me to a standstill.
