Page 43 of Tarnished Queen

“Well, what did you hear? We can start there.”

Elise looks over at me. There are dark circles pressed under her eyes. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her with those before. It breaks my heart just a little bit more.

“Nikolai is some kind of… Bratva boss?” She shakes her head. “I don’t even know what that means. After he—When he killed those men who were trying to get us to go in their car, he told me he had enemies. He said he was protecting us. Was that all a lie? Is Nikolai actually the bad guy? Are we being held here against—”

Now that she’s talking, the words are pouring out of her. I have to reach over and grip her shoulder to keep her calm.

“It wasn’t a lie,” I tell her. “The men Nikolai killed were going to hurt us. He saved our lives.”

I leave out the part where I was intending to willingly get in the car with those men that night. Nikolai saved me and my sister when I didn’t even realize we needed it.

“So what is a Bratva boss?” she asks.

I chew my lower lip. “Elise…”

“Come on, Belle. Tell me the truth.”

“You’re right.” I nod. “You deserve the truth. I just… I want to protect you, E. I never meant for us to get tangled up in this.”

“Tangled up inwhat?” she presses.

Deep down, I know Elise has seen more messed-up things than most fourteen-year-olds should ever have to see. Still, I feel like I’m stealing her innocence away. What’s left of it, at least.

“A crime… syndicate, for lack of a better word. It’s like the Russian mafia. Essentially. I think.”

“Nikolai is in the mob?”

“Well, don’t say that to him,” I warn her. “But yeah, basically. He’s the… the leader. The one in charge.”

Elise presses her fingers to her forehead and gazes into the middle distance. I can practically see her reliving the last couple months, seeing everything with new eyes.

“So… he isn’t the CEO of a company?”

“No. I mean, well, yes. He is. It’s just not his only job. It’s kind of a cover for what the Bratva is really doing.”

She releases a breath and shakes her head. “This is all so weird.”

“Tell me about it.”

There’s another few seconds of silence before Elise gasps and turns to me. She clutches my arm tightly. “You’re pregnant!”

“You already knew that.”

“I know,” she says. “But…you’re pregnant.Nikolai is a criminal, and you’re having his baby. And aren’t those crime synag—”

“Syndicates.”

“Yeah, aren’t those really into family lines and heirs and stuff?”

I shrug. “We haven’t really talked about it much.”

There hasn’t been time. But more honestly, I haven’t wanted to talk about it. Nikolai made it clear the day he was locking me up that my child would be part of his Bratva. I still don’t know if he was saying that just to scare me or not.

“You need to talk about this kind of stuff,” Elise reprimands. “The two of you are getting married.”

I curse under my breath. “You really heard everything, didn’t you?”

“You guys were being loud, and I wasn’t asleep yet.”

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