Page 55 of Kept By the Bratva
AMY
For the next three days, I was pampered. I was still imprisoned but treated like a princess.
Dr. Francis instructed me to rest. I did. I wasn’t given any other option. But I wasn’t sure she intended for me to go through this bliss, too.
Nik didn’t leave me for a long stretch of time. He remained present in his personal wing with me, seeing to my every need.
Well, not myeveryneed. I didn’t know if it was a pregnancy hormone thing or if I was reacting from the aftermath of all this stress, but I wanted him on a feral level of lust I’d never experienced to this degree. Maybe this suggestion of a truce, of peace between us, had me wishing for something more.
I wanted Nik, but he gave me zero sign of reciprocating this desire. It felt like a one-way-street of torture. He was here, within reach, but he gave no signal that he was affected by me.
When he caught me staring at him and checking him out, he looked away. If our hands accidentally brushed when he brought me breakfast,lunch, and dinner in bed, he didn’t flinch or gasp like I caught myself from doing.
I refused to be so jaded as to think I had no effect on him. How could that be possible when he was so doting, responsible, and determined to see to my rest period?
On the first day after we learned that we were expecting twins, he left to deal with the ever-so-vague explanation of “business”. I didn’t pry for answers. It wasn’t my business to know, and given his position in the Bratva, it wasn’t hard for me to assume his duties were of a violent or illegal nature.
The less I knew, the better. Even if I was to be in his life and within the Bratva for good, I didn’t want to think I was complicit in anything. Ignorance, I determined, would be my bliss.
“I’ll be right back,” he’d say when he had to step out. Each time, he had Margie or another kindly housekeeper-slash-maid stay with me.
By the second day, I convinced him that I could be alone and nap without a babysitter for whatever he had to deal with outside this room.
He didn’t seem happy about my protest to his decision, but he must have realized that I wasn’t in any danger by staying with my own company, and I was granted peace to nap and not feel awkward with someone watching over me like a hawk.
I doubted Dr. Francis expected me to be confined to the bed, either. I knew from working at the vet clinic that rest was an important instruction to give or follow, but within reason. Over the three days, I walked through Nik’s rooms at a comfortable, gentle pace—at least to avoid blood clots or any other issues from lying down for so long.
“Is this what it will be like?” I wondered aloud in a quiet mumble as I finished my “laps” around his suite. Staying in here, having no job, going nowhere?
I smiled, rubbing my tummy. Soon, I would have a job, undoubtedly the most important one of my life. I would be a mother in several months, and I would be busier than ever, doing the best I could with the introduction to parenthood.
And I won’t be alone.
Nik would be here. Mila, too.
Cousins!I smiled wider, realizing that my babies would have a cousin the same age. They’d never have to go through life alone like I had, and that was the greatest blessing to count on.
Ignoring the violent and brutal way I’d come to be here, I had it good. I wasn’t so jaded as to deny that fact.
Men were armed and prepared to protect me. This luxurious suite was so unlike the crappy, rundown apartments I usually lived in that it could have been a whole different universe that I’d stumbled upon.
Food was delivered to me. I had quality medical care, and I doubted I’d have to worry about a co-pay or hospital bill. Even my clothes, they were nicer than any hand-me-downs or thrift shop finds, and Margie was almost like a fairy godmother, giving me advice about what to choose or what else I might want to order. I almost felt like she enjoyed having me here, and I wondered if she’d been eager for female companionship.
“Oh, Pavel was terrible,” she said, shaking her head as she took out the laundry later in the afternoon. “He and his son nearly brought the Bratva to ruins!”
I’d only asked how long Nik had lived here, curious if this was where I’d raise the twins. She didn’t know how to answer me with anything other than an information dump of the more recent Bratva history. It included Alek overthrowing a villain of an uncle when he married Mila. It sounded like a love story I might try to ask Mila about at another time.
Nik and the other three brothers had been instrumental in overthrowing this Pavel leader, aPakhan, as Margie explained of the title. The crime boss. The leader.
I didn’t need any more fodder to believe that Nik was a hero. He was mine. I loathed the thought that I was his damsel in distress to save. I wasn’t. We’d happened to cross paths again in the weirdest circumstances.
Little by little, as Nik spent his time comforting me and seeing to my every need while I rested, I knew that my guards were lowering so quickly for him. I no longer viewed him asonlya cutthroat man capable of killing. He was more. So much more.
But he was determined to avoid being my lover.
He’d helped me shower and clean up from that initial scare of blood while the sheets were changed and the floor was treated. Yet, he didn’t initiate any intimacy.
He smiled at me as we talked about what we thought it would be like to have twins, if they’d be the same gender or one of each. Yet, he didn’t roll over on the bed and snuggle or kiss me.