Page 10 of Brooklyn Bratva

“What if I like trouble?”

“You won’t.”

“You said you’d keep me safe.”

“And I will. But don’t go making work for me, huh? Think about all the Russian grandmas in their fur coats with their tiny dogs that I can’t help if I’m following you around all day beating up every guy who looks at you the wrong way.”

For a moment he looked at me, totally deadpan, and then his smile curled in.

“Very funny. You wouldn’t do that. Anyway, there wouldn’t be that many.”

“You’re kidding me, Becca. Every man on the street had his tongue hanging out watching you.”

I felt my face heat up again, uncomfortable that he’d noticed that and I hadn’t. I didn’t care about anyone else looking at me. I didn’t want them to, I never had. The only man whose attention I wanted was Ivan’s

And I couldn’t tell whether he was talking about himself too. My eyes met his again, risking the heady thud of my heartbeat rising all over again. My mouth was suddenly so dry I could barely swallow. “Not all of them.”

Ivan’s lips twitched and he huffed out a dry breath of a laugh. “Every single one.”

There was anger in his voice, thrumming low and serious, but I didn’t know who it was aimed at.

Together we strolled down the boardwalk, and I couldn’t help noticing the number of people who watched us. I guess we made a slightly strange pair. Ivan, as tall as ever, broad chested and evidently strong, looking every inch the cop he was, and me walking next to him, so much shorter and smaller in every way.

With him carrying my bag I could kid myself that we were really together. Maybe that’s what people saw when they looked at us. I hoped so.

Ivan

Joe’s phone call snapped me out of the spell Becca had put me under like a bucket of iced water. I couldn’t stay hard with my best friend’s voice in my ear, asking me how his baby girl was.

But she was doing a pretty good job of making me forget him.

His intrusion made me mad. Becca wasn’t the kid he kept painting her as. That much was already clear to me. She’d been looking at me like she wanted to take my clothes off since I met her. And he was holding her back, making me hold myself back too. He was always telling me I should find someone and settle down. Well, I’d found exactly who I wanted and he wasn’t going to like it one bit.

He’d be a hypocrite to get in the way. But I understood why he would. If Becca was my daughter, I’d want to protect her from every single man she ever came across. I’d give the guys her own age a hard time, but if she ever brought home someone as old as I was, I’d pitch him right out the door. There wouldn’t be anyone good enough for Becca, and there wouldn’t be for my daughters, when they came to exist. But I was different. I was made for her, and he had to see that.

More importantly, I had to make her see it, without scaring her away. No matter what I’d said about her needing to stand on her own two feet, it was clear to me that Becca was as innocent as they came. She smiled easily, without any of the guard that most people built up around them after a lifetime of things failing to pan out the way they’d hoped. Joe had cushioned her from any hardship, and I respected him for that.

It was the same thing I’d tried to do for my Mama. But I didn’t think I had the right to control the way she lived her life. If I knew my friend as well as I thought I did, Joe had every last detail of Becca’s next ten years planned out. And I was damn sure I didn’t factor.

The place I’d found for Mama to live gave her every luxury she could want. I was glad that Becca was able to take advantage too. I had so many savings I couldn’t declare without bringing suspicion down on myself. But the syndicate had ways of making sure it all appeared to add up if Mama was the beneficiary. On paper, it looked like her wealth, filtering through from her Russian bank account came from some inheritance fund, or divorce settlement. Never mind that no one had left her a single ruble, or that my father had died in prison before I was ten. It made a hell of a lot more sense than me taking a salary from overseas.

One day, when my duty was done, I’d have a nest egg to retire on and I could go wherever I wanted without the worry of looking over my shoulder every time I spent more than I should have been able to afford. But for now, I was living the life of an NYPD detective.

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