Page 53 of Gilded Cage (Kovalyov Bratva 1)

Can’t blame her.

Everything she once knew is now on fire.

I’m sitting two seats down from where Esme lies, her chest rising and falling subtly, lost in dreamless, drug-induced sleep.

Esme.

I haven’t yet gotten used to saying the name out loud, but it dances on my tongue, waiting to be spoken.

When my father had first mentioned the name during our final briefing in his office a week ago, it held no meaning beyond the facts of who she was.

“Esme Moreno.”

“The daughter of Joaquin Moreno?” I asked.

“The same,” Stanislav replied. “She is your next mission.”

Something in his tone stuck out to me. Extra gravity in my father’s voice. Extra importance attached to this mission.

I frowned. “You want me to kill some innocent girl?”

“Kill her? No, Artem, I don’t want you to kill her.”

He’d paused just then and looked at me over the tops of the glasses he’d refused to wear for the longest time.

Whatever somberness was in his voice was in his eyes, too. They flashed—dark like mine, and just as cold.

Then he’d finished: “I want you to marry her.”

Even now, those words echo in my head.

I want you to marry her.

The old man had lost his fucking mind.

Marrythis girl? This poor wretch, born in the wrong place at the wrong time to the wrong man?

That’s all the proof I needed to confirm that Stanislav’s brain was well and truly gone.

But he showed no signs of that. His gaze was level. His voice was calm.

He looked the way he’d always looked—like the don of the most powerful Bratva in America.

I look over at her now.

One petite little girl seems hardly worth the trouble.

We left dozens of dead cartel soldiers behind us in Mexico. As our helicopter lifted out from the garden, I saw the first flames beginning to engulf her father’s compound.

By morning, it would all be ash.

And here she is, snoozing soundly. Sleeping fucking Beauty.

I frown. Cillian had pointed out earlier that she was shivering in the cold and not wearing much. It didn’t bother me then—I was more focused on getting the fuck out of that godforsaken place.

Now, it does bother me.

I get up and walk towards her. I stand over her and stare down at her body, admiring her beauty begrudgingly.

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