Page 50 of The Bratva's Innocent Pregnant Bride
Bocharov finally became pissed off, his lips pressed together and white with rage. His hands were clenched at his sides, red climbing up his neck from the pristine collar of his crisp button down shirt.
“You spoke to family members,” he said.
“To ask if there was any news,” I told him for the seventh or eighth time.
“You spoke to Pierce,” he told me. It was only the harsh grip of fear that kept me from rolling my eyes.
“Yes, and you know everything I told him, which was nothing, because I don’t know anything. I don’t know what your list means, or why those people were on it.”
“She’s holding back,” Pierce interjected. I shot him a filthy glare. He only smirked in return. “There’s no way she’s not involved with the Fokins.”
After a deep sigh, Bocharov shook his head, turning away. “Get it out of her,” he said, storming out of the room. “However you need to do it, get me the answers I need.”
He left the door open behind him and the sound of his expensive shoes tapping across the concrete drifted back to me, getting quieter. The creaking hinges squealed and finally theheavy warehouse door thudded shut, a slight echo making its way back to the room.
Pierce had a sick smile on his face as he stepped away to shut the door with a resounding click. When he turned back, he carefully replaced his gun in its holster under his jacket and rubbed his hands together, moving slowly toward my chair. There was a gleam in his eyes that told me I was in for a very bad time.
Chapter 33 - Daniil
The short drive into town seemed to take forever. Leave it to my family to want a secluded place to stay, but it still hadn’t kept us safe from our enemies. The car Paisley took had a tracker on it, so I found it easily, left in the parking lot of one of the resorts. It cost me a hundred bucks to learn she wasn’t checked in there, but that she had called a taxi.
Memories of our first night together assailed me. Sweet and wild, but also leaving a bitter taste in my mouth now. Why did she leave? Why didn’t she trust me with the truth?
If the truth was something that made me hate her, I almost didn’t want to know it, but I headed to the hotel where I first laid eyes on her, dressed in a prim skirt and jacket in a sea of women who flaunted more skin than fabric. Her blonde hair seemed to glow under the dim overhead lights above the bar. The crowd around her faded into the background as she turned and our eyes met.
When I entered the bar now, still rollicking with people trying to squeeze out the last bit of fun before last call, I imagined I’d see her again, the exact same as that first day.
I wanted it so badly. To take her in my arms and assure her there was nothing she could say that would change my feelings. To make everything all right, no matter what she might have done. Even if it meant screwing over my family with someone who worked for the Collective?
If I saw her sitting at that bar, safe and sound and smiling at me, yes. Maybe. I swore under my breath, searching the crowd for any sight of Paisley, the woman who had me tied up in knots that might never come unraveled.
She wasn’t there. The realization hit me like a blow, like a punch I wasn’t ready for by someone who really had it out for me. She wasn’t there.
I was acting like a complete idiot. Like someone who wasn’t trained from birth to be coldhearted and distant. Another hundred bucks to the greedy woman behind the check-in desk and I was still out of luck, because Paisley hadn’t checked in there, either. She wasn’t waiting for me, wasn’t hoping I’d find her.
That should have made me give up this chase, but I still had the unshakeable feeling something was wrong. More wrong than a mere bomb set off in a house full of children, if that was possible. It was the same overwhelming feeling I got when I jumped over the bannister to shove her out of the way, half a second before the explosion. I just knew something was going to happen and I needed to protect her. I could have looked like a damn fool and would have never lived it down if nothing had happened. Paisley would have despised me for embarrassing her so badly.
But something did happen. Those packages did explode. All because I read the look of fear on my woman’s face. Yes, she was mine. Enemy or not, she was mine, and I had to be the one to find her.
So, even though I wasn’t convinced she was innocent, and was just as pissed off as anyone else in my family, that sense of urgency to protect her made me pull my phone out of my pocket and scroll to a name that made acid rise in my gut.
It would take much too long to go from hotel to hotel, bribing the workers to find out if she had checked in to any of them. This was the only way, even if it gave me indigestion.
Anatoli answered right away. “Where the hell are you?” he asked.
None of his damn business. I forced myself to answer in a civil tone. “Looking for Paisley, what do you think?”
“Our people will track her down. You’re causing a rift for no reason.”
Ourpeople, as if he was one of us. “I need to be the one to find her and deal with her,” I said. “And I need your help.” God, that was hard to say. Anyone but Paisley would have been twisting in the wind before I asked Anatoli for a favor.
“So you really did get involved with her,” he said, mocking disappointment oozing from his voice.
I forced myself to relax and unclench my fists. “That has nothing to do with it. I’m not convinced she’s guilty.”
“And I’m not convinced she’s innocent,” he answered. “Aleks is on a rampage, Katie’s blaming herself for trusting anyone outside the family. Mila and Nat woke up to feed the babies and now they’re furious and upset too. You know as well as anyone what Mila will do if your current fling is the one who set off that bomb.”
Mila was the youngest of the American Fokin siblings, and no one in their right mind would want to be on her bad side. She was the fiercest new mother I had ever met, followed closely by Nat, who inherited a righteous sense of vengeance from her father, Aleks. The message was clear. If I sided with Paisley, I was out. Suddenly I had a very good idea how Masha must have felt when she was fighting with us to accept Anatoli.
