Page 11 of Secret Baby for the Bratva Boss

He does, kicking mud off the heels of his combat boots on the rough rug outside. He gives me a fleeting once-over, then looks into the house, his eyes narrowed. “You should be armed.”

I touch my waistband, which is where I’d keep my Glock if I had it on me at the moment. “Right,” I say, but it spooks me. Just how likely do they think it is that this Konstantin or his men will be able to get in here? “I’ll go get it now.”

“No. Wait until I’ve done a sweep. Right here. Not a move.” He reaches past me to close the door, then disappears down the hall.

OK. I don’t like that one,I think, a little annoyed.But whatever. He’s here to protect me, that’s all that really matters.I wait impatiently, my skin crawling. I don’t like the idea of this strange man in my house. Or if I do, it’s about as much as I like the idea of Konstantin in it, too. I lean my back against the front door, eyeing the living room window, the back slider. It’s a big house, even though it’s one in disrepair. A big house. With a lot of doors. A lot of windows. A lot of old, dusty, dark crawl spaces.

Places for monsters to hide.

“Good,” says Yuri, appearing again in the hall with a silence that startles me.What the hell are these guys, ninjas or something?“Lock the door behind me, then go ahead and getyour gun. And keep it with you. You can never be too careful with this one.”

I step out of his way as he shoulders past me, pushing out the front door. I follow him, catching his arm. When he turns, his expression is one of cold alarm, his eyes snapping to where my hand rests lightly on his elbow. I draw back as if stung.

“Sorry,” I say, reflexively. “Just—this Konstantin…just how dangerous is he?”

Yuri narrows his eyes to slits. “How dangerous do you think he is? Aleks has come back from overseas to ensure his old rival doesn’t wear your guts for garters.”

It’s almost a funny expression. Or—it would be, if I didn’t get the sinking sense that Yuri is being quite literal.These people are worse than I thought, even just to talk like that.It sends a spill of fear down my spine, and I can only hope it doesn’t show in my face.

“Like I said,” Yuri repeats, more coldly, giving me a once-over with brooding eyes that I know even Aleks wouldn’t like the look of. “Keep the doors locked, and your gun handy.” He reaches over and slams the door—myowndoor—in my face.

I lock it.

Chapter Six

Aleks

The drive is black, slick, and wet with rain by the time I return. As cool as I try to remain, my blood is boiling, and my nerves are shot. I wasn’t expecting a call from my uncle today, who is posted back in Russia, in the heart of Moscow—it isn’t where our family is from, just a few generations back we were farmers, goatherds—but it’s been our base since my father got involved in the mafia. Of course, even he never climbed as high as I did. He did get close, though, before he died.

But that was a long time ago. My father was a good man, salt of the earth and humble, even when he had accumulated enough wealth and power to flex. He wasn’t the kind to interfere. My mother, on the other hand? And my uncle, her brother? Interference is all they’ve ever known.

I should have guessed it would rear its ugly head. Now, of course. At perhaps the worst time it could.

My hands are still shaking, though the phone call ended twenty minutes ago, just as I was getting in the truck to leave town. I’d spotted a few of Konstantin’s men, cool and undercover; they didn’t see me. I was careful. But there was no sight of the man himself, and reports from my own men say the same thing. Odd. I’d have thought he’d be in and out, here to kill her or her family and then gone; or else, I thought he’d be making himself and his presence very known, just as he did that first night when he cornered Kat in that bar.

This, laying low—it’s an unexpected strategy. And I don’t like it. It means he’s comfortable here. It may even mean he’s here for the long haul. To torture and terrorize my ex-lover with fear; to loom over her and her young son like the blade of a guillotine.

I told her three days; I told her this would be over. That I would end it. That I would clean up this mess—mymess.I wasn’t lying. But perhaps I was being unrealistic. I should have known Konstantin wasn’t here to play. I killed his brother. Arguably, the one person in the world who meant a damn thing to the ice-hearted Russian gangster. And now he’s going to do the same to me.

And wouldn’t my mother and uncle love that?I drum my fingers on the wheel as I pull down the long, set-back drive. Rain pelts the windshield, heavy, an excess caught on the leaves and boughs of the wind-stirred trees. Yes, my family back in Russia would like to see Kat dead—if only to have her removed from the picture. They must think she is a temptation to me. Some kind of placeholder, or distraction to what they really want me to acquire.

A wife.

A fucking wife.I hear my own voice in my head, aghast, almost laughing, as my uncle delivered the news. Or, rather—the demand.

Your rivalry,he bit out over the phone, just minutes ago:Your hotheadedness, your rash thinking—have thrown us into hell back here, boy.‘Boy’—as if he is my father. As if he is half the man my father was, or a quarter. Not so.We’ve got men deserting, we’ve got contacts going dark, deliveries that never arrive and wire transfers that lead to empty accounts. You killed that boy and you put us in the way of chaos, Aleksander. And so, you will fix it.

I kill my headlights, doing what I try to never do and lighting a cigarette. Bad habit, and it does fuck-all to clear my head; but right now, I’m not sure if there’s anything else in the world that could take the edge off.

A wife.“Fix it how?” I’d asked, cool and imperious.

Come back to Moscow. It is time to cement your legacy. It is time to make a political marriage, to put up a shield around this family, around this chapter of the bratva you have so callously, so carelessly endangered with your petty, personal squabbles. Come home. There are women to choose from and time is short. We are losing money as we speak.

Every word was a splinter underneath my skin. Petty, personal squabbles? No, this was gang related. Necessary. This was kill or be killed, not some fight in a bar over a girl. But my uncle does little more than drink my father’s whiskey and smoke his fine cigars; he does nothing but walk the halls of the house my father bought for my mother, getting fat on food cooked by our maids. He knows nothing of money but how to spend it. Nothing of war but how to swerve to dodge its call.

I laughed at the demand, until my mother’s voice drawled coolly over the line.He is right, Aleksander. Things have not been the same since you killed that boy, since you left the country. It has long been your due, your responsibility, to marry. You are not getting any younger, and our position is no more secured than it was—come home. Come select a wife and begin a family, make an alliance that will strengthen the Lukin name; make a legacy.

And I heard the thin hunger in her voice then, the same I knew when I was a boy. But my mother knows no more about this life than what was afforded to her through my father. Hers was a marriage for position and money, too. I told myself one day, to pay my father back for his toil, I’d do the same.

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