Page 8 of Stolen By the Bratva

I rubbed my jaw. Unease and doubt prickled up my spine, and I knew my hunch, that bad feeling I couldn’t shake, was a real and sincere concern.

“Does Pavel know?” Nik asked.

Our uncle wasn’t a fan of being told bad news, and I wondered this same thing, whether Maxim, or another bookkeeper, had already shared these facts and it was dismissed.

Maxim cringed and nodded.

“I bet the Kastavas know too.” If Pavel were capable of duplicity, maybe they wouldn’t, but Pavel wasn’t that bright. “They likely know and intend to use it as leverage.”

“What are you saying?” Maxim asked.

“I suspect they’re planning a coup. This alliance smells rotten.”

“But as soon as this wedding takes place… it won’t matter. They’ll be family whether we want them to be or not.”

I was already suspicious about the shipping plans, but if it’s as bad as my brother warned, this could be the fuck-up that brought the entire Valkov operation down.

“Unless the wedding doesn’t take place…” I glanced at them both as the idea took root. “If we’re not united with them yet, I could try to look into this arrangement.”

“You mean to stop the wedding?” Ivan asked.

I shrugged. It’s not a bad idea. All I needed was more time to figure out how to avoid the potential downfall of our family.

4

MILA

This would be the last day of my freedom, and I struggled to accept that I was spending it at home.

Freedom? I’d never had any true sense of that fantasy. I lived with my father ever since my mother passed away while giving birth to me. He controlled me at home and here at one of his excuses for a business.

Friends were denied to me. I was educated by private tutors. Pastimes and hobbies weren’t allowed.

My existence was nothing but serving the family, and now that my allegiance would need to shift, to cater to my husband, I felt untethered and unsure of everything.

I’d never have to come here again and suffer through the tedious task of forwarding certain emails to specific addresses. It was mindless, ridiculous busywork, but it gave me a tangible sense of purpose. I was active. I was doing something. I didn’t want to entertain what expectations would hang over my head after my wedding.

How can it be tomorrow? It was too soon for me to possibly adjust. My father told me just this morning, almost like an afterthought, before he left for meetings with Lev and Geoff.

How can my life be changed this drastically on such a short notice? I’d grown comfortable in this pathetic desk job, and now that the security and familiarity of it would be yanked away, I felt lost and apprehensive.

“The ‘Doc’?” I whispered aloud, furrowing my brow at the screen. Some of these coded references made no sense at all, but I gave up trying to understand who or what “ The Doc” was, why an “understanding needed to be proven,” or how “unwarranted hardware ratio shifts” mattered. I didn’t follow this jargon, and I didn’t want to. I wasn’t trusted with too many things, but my father had been adamant that I specifically handle this looping correspondence. I assumed someone else, maybe my father, was watching what was said where, as he had my passwords, but it wasn’t my business. I’d learned long ago not to ask questions. Since my father singled me out to handle these emails, I assumed that he didn’t want many to know, even within the family.

Whatever.

I couldn’t even care anymore. I never had, but mere curiosity just didn’t matter. All I could obsess about was whether my life would change for the worse tomorrow.

Two men approached outside, and their appearance snagged my attention. This was a front business, with mock shipping for general items. Visitors seldom came by, but these two tall men did not look like lost solicitors.

On the left, a muscled brute strode toward the door. He’d spotted the surveillance camera that allowed me this preview of their arrival, and his lips almost kicked up in a smile. Or was that a smirk?

His companion, a blond, didn’t hide his eyes behind sunglasses. He scoped his surroundings, those blue eyes not stopping on anything long enough.

It hardly mattered why they were here. This was protected land. They were strangers letting themselves onto Kastava territory. I minimized the window on my computer and locked it as I shot to my feet.

I couldn’t understand how the guards or patrolmen wouldn’t have stopped them from coming to the S.T.L. Shipping office, but I supposed it was up to me to deter them from snooping around here any further.

They opened the door and entered. At once, I realized who they were. I didn’t know their names. I’d never seen them in person before, but I recognized the tattoo on the taller one’s neck. Sloping along the taut muscles, the ink linked lines and swirls in what had to be the Valkovs’ crest.