Page 86 of Arranged Marriage to the Brutal Bratva King
Coffee this week? I miss your face.
Simple. Normal. It’s the kind of message that belongs to a life I used to have.
I type back:Thursday at our usual place?
Her response is immediate:Perfect. Catch me up on married life.
Married life. The phrase sits wrong. This isn’t marriage; it’s something else. Something I don’t have words for.
Misha’s breathing evens out, deeper now. Healing. She’ll survive this—the abandonment, the injury, the fear. She’ll adapt to this place, to Dimitri’s hands and my care, and eventually she’ll forget what it was like before.
Maybe I will too.
The thought should comfort me. Instead, it feels like losing.
I carry Misha to the bedroom, settling her in a nest of blankets Dimitri left on the bed. She doesn’t wake when I ease away, just curls tighter into warmth.
The closet looms across the room.
I cross to it before I can stop myself, push past expensive clothes I didn’t choose, find the phone where I buried it. The screen lights up when I touch it.
Three messages. All from last night, all variations on the same question.
Did you get it?
We’re waiting.
Time is running out.
I stare at the words until they blur. They don’t know I was caught. Don’t know Dimitri interrupted before I could take the drive. Don’t know I’m standing here now with his cat sleeping in his bed, wearing his ring, feeling his gentleness like a brand.
I type:Couldn’t access it. Security was tighter than expected.
The lie comes easy. Too easy.
The response arrives within seconds.
Try again. Friday night. He’s meeting with the Volkov family—we have intel he’ll be gone for hours. This is your window.
My hands shake. Friday night. Another chance, another choice.
I delete the message and power off the phone.
Misha makes a small sound from the bed, paw twitching in dreams that might be kinder than her waking reality. I watch her sleep, this tiny thing Dimitri saved, and wonder if I’m already too far gone to save myself.
The phone goes back in the closet.
Until Friday night, when I’ll have to decide who I am.
Chapter Twenty-Two - Dimitri
I start bringing her everywhere.
Not a conscious decision, more like gravity—she’s in the car when I leave for meetings, present in rooms where her safety requires ignorance, watching transactions that could get her killed if she understood their implications. Felix notices first, raises an eyebrow when Janice slides into the backseat beside me for what should be a routine collection run.
“Is this wise?” he asks in Russian.
“Probably not.” I don’t look at him, watching Janice instead as she stares out the window. She’s wearing the coat I bought her, cream wool that makes her look softer than she is. “Drive.”
