Page 87 of Arranged Marriage to the Brutal Bratva King
Felix drives.
The collection goes smoothly—a restaurant owner in Brighton Beach who’s behind on payments, nothing violent, just a conversation about priorities and consequences. Janice stays in the car, but she watches through tinted windows. Sees the fear in the man’s eyes when I lean close, sees money change hands with practiced efficiency.
When I return, she’s exactly where I left her.
“Questions?” I ask.
“No.”
“Judgments?”
She turns from the window. “Would it matter if I had them?”
“Probably not.”
Her mouth curves slightly. “Then no. No judgments.”
The pattern continues. Business dinners where deals are brokered in euphemisms she’s learning to decode. Late-night drives through territories I control, past buildings I own, through streets that belong to me in ways the city doesn’t acknowledge on paper. She absorbs it all with the same quiet focus she brings to everything, asking occasional questions that prove she’s paying attention.
“That property in Red Hook,” she says one night as we wind through Brooklyn. “The warehouse. You bought it three months after the fire.”
“Yes.”
“The fire that killed two people. That was in the police report I—” She stops.
“That you read while researching me,” I finish. “Go on.”
“It wasn’t an accident.”
“No.”
“Did you start it?”
“No, but I benefited from it.” I glance at her. “Does that make me complicit?”
“I don’t know.” She’s quiet for a block. “Who did start it?”
“The previous owner. Insurance fraud. He got sloppy, and people died.” We turn onto the bridge, Manhattan’s lights reflecting off water below. “I bought the property from the bank, cleaned up his mess, and turned it into something useful.”
“That’s not the full story.”
“It never is.”
She doesn’t press. Just returns her attention to the window, processing information I’m giving her for reasons I don’t fully understand. Maybe I want her to see the whole picture—not just the monster or the man, but the complicatedmachinery underneath. Maybe I’m testing whether knowing the truth will send her running.
Maybe I’m just tired of hiding.
Misha helps. The kitten becomes a constant presence, small and demanding, curling into spaces between us that used to feel like battlegrounds. Janice tends to her with the same fierce care she brings to everything she commits to—medication schedules tracked precisely, food measured exactly, the injured paw checked for signs of infection.
“She’s healing well,” the vet says during a follow-up visit. “The limp will be permanent, but she won’t be in pain.”
Janice’s relief is visible, shoulders dropping tension I hadn’t noticed she was carrying. “Thank you.”
After the vet leaves, I find her on the couch with Misha asleep in her lap. She’s reading something on her tablet, one hand absently stroking the kitten’s back.
“You care about her,” I observe.
“She’s helpless. Someone has to.”
