Page 31 of Kept By the Bratva

He went still, stepping back and letting me drop to the bed.

No!

“Harrow’s is on fire!” The man shouted it but didn’t linger. Footsteps pounded away out in the hallway. They must have trusted Nik to heed that alarm without further explanation.

So close to coming, I struggled to make sense of how and why he’d stopped. It was cruel to be left hanging like this, but I tried to shove the disappointment and frustration aside as I curled to lie on my side and face him.

Harrow’s?The strip club he’d noticed me at?On fire? What’s that got to do with?—

I licked my lips, catching my breath. “What… Where…”

He shook his head, wiping his mouth as he backed up to the door. “You’re staying in here. Understand?”

I didn’t have a chance to reply. He ran out, and I heard the click of the lock.

Left alone—and confused—once again.

13

NIKOLAI

Iran out of my wing and locked the doors, hurrying to catch up with Ivan, who’d pounded on my door and told me that the strip club was on fire.

“Hey!” I called out to one of the housekeepers passing down the hall. This place was huge, and we employed a significant staff. “Keep these doors locked. No one goes in and no one comes out.”

She nodded, not even alarmed with my shouted orders before I took off.

“Of all fucking times,” I muttered to myself as I ran. Wiping the back of my hand over my mouth, I regretted being pulled from Amy. Her sweet taste lingered on my tongue and I wished for more. I wanted to suck and lick until I was drowning in her cream, making her pant and beg to come.

“Fuck!”

My dick had been so hard, but with duty calling, with the threat of danger being near, it had gone soft again. Violence turned me on, but this news wasn’t going to makeanyof us happy.

“What the fuck happened?” I didn’t catch up with Ivan outside, but I ran into Dmitri, about to drive away.

“Get in.” He opened the driver’s door, clearly informed of this need to rush, and I listened, getting in the passenger side.

“Harrow’s is on fire?” I wiped my face again, making sure it wasn’t too obvious what I’d been pulled from.

“Yes.” He gripped the steering wheel tightly as he sped through the city. “The Cartel did it.”

I pounded my fist on the door and gritted my teeth. “Those fuckers.”

“Alek was anticipating retaliation, but not like this.”

I ground my molars, glaring out the window. This was the nature of our lives. Hit and get hit back. It never ended, and I wasn’t upset about that. What angered me was how it’d pulled me from Amy. Again. My duty would always be there, and it reiterated the fact that I had no right, no business, to want a woman who wouldn’t fit.

I’d moved her to the mansion so she could be closer. I didn’t care if it meant I was caving. I wanted her close. I’d yearned for her all those weeks, and if she was going to be under the Bratva’s protection and possession for the temporary length of time until we relocated her, I may as well get my fix.

Alek was still trying to make arrangements that wouldn’t release the captured women and have them back in the Cartel’s clutches. Maxim had also raised a good point that if we let the women go, the Cartel might hunt them down and kill them so they couldn’t tell the cops or anyone else about anything they’d seen.

I didn’t know what would happen to Amy. She couldn’t stay. She didn’t fit in with the Bratva lifestyle no matter how perfectly she meshed withme.

I saw how she’d shrunken into herself when I told her that she couldn’t go home. It sounded like shehadno home, and that made her a perfectwoman to snatch off the streets. She was orphaned and had no family who’d come looking for her. I didn’t know if the Cartel had looked into or stalked the women they’d taken, but Amy, unfortunately, wouldn’t have been missed by anyone other than the few she knew at work.

She was saddened, even dismayed, about the news that she couldn’t rewind and return to her life as she’d once known it. I bet she would grieve her normalcy of getting up and going into work at a place where she didn’t feel valued. And the freedom to hang out with that friend who’d been at the club with her.

It wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t taken her off the streets. I didn’t put her in the position of being in the Cartel’s warehouse to be sold elsewhere. I’d saved her, but I couldn’t be her savior forever. She couldn’t look to me or my life and home as her permanent refuge.