Page 3 of Secret Baby for the Bratva Boss

And never spoke to again.

I shouldn’t give a damn, anyway.I drum my fingers on the steering wheel as the first big drops of rain plop and splatter across the broad windshield of the rental. Lightning illuminates long crooked lines of fences along the fields, of the telephone poles and lines that accompany them.She’s just a girl I fucked once and shouldn’t have.

But more importantly, I suppose, is that she’s James’ sister. And I could never let anything happen to her, if only for that.

Thunder bangs hard, right above the truck, so loud and near it rattles the windows and sets my teeth on edge. There’s a sense of chaos tonight, in this little backwoods town. There’s a wind I don’t like the scent of, a wild recklessness in the air.All of it seems to promise something: danger, a violent edge. A happening.

That’s Mother speaking,I think, scolding myself, hearing her voice in Russian.Mother, with her signs and omens, with her proverbs and warnings.Mother, long dead. And I don’t need her ghost hanging over me tonight.Do I?

Bang!The percussion of thunder is so jarring, and I grip the wheel tightly, the rain falling so hard that I nearly miss it. No,her—her, like an apparition, like a ghost, hovering there at the edge of the road.Am I imagining it? What the fuck is that?

But no—it’s real.She’sreal. Caught in the glance of my high-beams, rain falling in white blazing raindrops around her.Her. My her.

Katerina.

I yank the wheel so hard that my tires squeal. She’s walking on the gravel shoulder of the road, shoulders hunched and head down, gripping the strap of the black bag she’s carrying. When she hears the squeal of my tires, Kat whips around, her face white and drawn with terror. I suppose I could have approached the situation more gracefully.

Doesn’t matter. There’s no time for grace.

I throw the truck into park and open my door, watching as Kat staggers back, thrusting her hand into her bag. I half-expect her to pull a gun on me—I’m not sure why, but I wouldn’t put it past her. She might come across as a little sheepish, but Kat May is anything but that. She’s a girl full of secret fire. And on late nights, a few drinks in, a million miles between us and the years grown in our garden like nettles and weeds—that’s what I always remember.

Fire.

“Kat!”

“Stay back!” She screams the words, tears them out of herself. She’s backed up against a fence post now, and whips out a can ofwhat must be mace, her finger on the top like a trigger. “I swear to God, I’ll—” But she stops as suddenly as if she’s been slapped, the words caught in her throat.

It’s as I step into the glare of my headlights that it happens. She goes completely stiff, her soft brown hair soaked and wetted to her face, her brown eyes huge and luminous with fear. A tremor rocks through her, her hand on the mace can, unsteady.

“You,” she whispers, those sweet, pouting lips expelling a soft vapor. As if summoned by the word, a clap of thunder sounds above us. It seems to rock the very ground.

She doesn’t even flinch. It takes everything in me not to look at her, not toreallylook at her. To drink in those dark eyes, and that soft mouth; her round face, the slope of her nose and chin. I remember touching those lips. Tasting her. I remember sliding my tongue into that warm, yielding mouth. I remember how pliant that body of hers can be.

All of this—it’s the last thing I should be thinking of. But near her, in her presence, just as I did that night—I lose control.

“Kat,” I say. She flinches like I’ve hit her.I deserve that. I deserve her fear. Her hatred. Her contempt.Instead of feeling the sting of that realization, I compose my face, making it as cool a mask as I can manage. “I need you to get in the truck. Now.”

To my bewilderment, she laughs.

“No,” she says, shaking her head. Her smile is wild, and much colder than I remember. What has happened to the soft girl I thought, however briefly, that I knew? “No, I’m not doing this again. I’m not getting into this again. You’re…”

A gangster?I nearly say aloud.A dangerous man?And more dangerous now than I ever was. Does she sense it? Smell it like blood on the wind? “None of that matters now,” I tell her coldly. “What matters is that you get in the truck. The rest I’ll explain later.”

“No,” she says again. Her voice wobbles and she takes a step toward me, pointing at me with the mace like she’s still considering using it on me. I don’t know—would I put it past her? “No. This is over. You and me? We’reover, and you’re not part of my life anymore, Aleks, if you ever even were, and you don’t get to justshowuplike this with your freaky friends following me around town like I’m some kind of—”

“What did you say?” Cold seeps down my spine, and for a moment, the world stands still. Even the storm, with its rearing wind and driving torrents of rain, seems to pause to listen. “What friends, Kat? Who was following you around town?”

She rolls her eyes. “Yourfriend. You think just because he doesn’t have some obvious Hollywood accent that I don’t know he’s Russian? That I don’t know he’s one ofyourguys? God, Aleks. What the hell are you evendoinghere?”

I can barely hear her now, though. Because fear has me rooted to the spot, and my heart is drumming hard. When I speak, my voice is steel. A knife. “Get in the truck.”

Her eyes narrow. “No,” she practically spits.There’s that will of fire.“I’m not—”

“Get in the fucking truck.”

Kat freezes, a little tremble coursing through her. Slowly, she lowers the mace. “Don’t talk to me like that,” she says, soft but firm. “You can’t talk to me like that.”

I stare at her. Urgency is beating through the air like an electrical current. Doesn’t she feel it? The danger? The tension? “I don’t have time to apologize for hurting your fragile little feelings, Katerina,” I say, harsher than is maybe necessary. “Get in the truck, before I make you get in the truck.”

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