Page 37 of Immaculate Deception (Romanoff Bratva)

She’s made it clear she doesn’t trust me, either, but I can understand that. I’m don of the Romanoff Bratva. She’s just a fucking veterinarian.

I should be able to trust her, but I can’t shake an unsettling feeling. She’s far too comfortable with everything that has happened in the last twenty-four hours. She’s handling it better than many of my own men would.

The delivery.

Being interrogated in the hospital room.

Getting shot at.

And now, her first full day as a mother is being spent in a shitty motel with a man she barely knows, and she’s… relaxed?

Not happy, obviously. But calm. Eerily calm.

If I wasn’t positive that our two meetings had been pure coincidences, I’d think she was some kind of operative or outside spy. Pretty damn sure she didn’t plan to have her baby on the one road in Brooklyn that I happened to be creeping down, though.

As it is, I only know she’s a potential vulnerability. One that I can’t let out of my sight.

Last night, I pushed the recliner in front of the motel room door. I’m still not sure if I was doing it to keep other people out—or to keep Arya in. Maybe both.

“What do you mean, you ‘have to go’?” Arya asks, bouncing Lukas on her knee as she tries to burp him. “Go where? Are you leaving me here?”

“Only for an hour. I have to speak with someone.”

“Someonehere? You know people in this podunk shitsville?”

We’re a few hours outside the city, stopped in some microscopic, drive-by town. It wouldn’t take much time here to know everyone by name, I’m sure. But I don’t know a soul. That’s why I chose this place.

“Someone I know is coming to me.”

Her green eyes flare wide. “Isn’t that a risk? I thought we didn’t want anyone to know where we are.”

“I can trust him.”

“What am I supposed to do while you’re gone? Twiddle my thumbs?”

I shrug. “If that’s what does it for you.”

“I want to come!”

“Absolutely not.” I shrug into a fleece jacket I picked up at the store last night and rip the tag from the sleeve. “Out of the question.”

Arya huffs. “Why?”

“Number one, because you can’t walk across the room without limping. Have you taken your pain meds yet?”

She checks the clock next to the bed. “Thirty more minutes before my next dose.”

I smirk. “How perfectly obedient you are.”

“You and I both know what this shit can do to people who abuse it.”

The look on her face is serious and steeped in sadness. Part of me wants to know this woman’s life story. I want to understand how she can feel so at ease talking to—and challenging—a man like me.

But there isn’t time for that.

“The answer is no. Stay here. Don’t leave.”

“Wait, I—”

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