Page 56 of The Bratva’s Stalked Pregnant Bride

I understood his anger. I felt it too. Kicking through the debris, I found one of the bottles only half broken, the makeshift wick that was stuck into the neck unburnt. The dud bomb reeked of kerosene instead of the white wine the label advertised.

As soon as I saw the familiar logo, I dropped it again, swearing viciously.

Canyon Vines.

That guy really thought he was being cute, and I was fed up. “I’ll take care of it,” I promised, giving Chase a dark, meaningful look. “Better than the cops, don’t worry.”

He nodded once, satisfied, and hurried back inside as if concerned another truck full of makeshift incendiary devices might roll up. It might. There was no telling what lengths Rand would go to. Laurel had been right to be afraid, and I was right to put the grand opening on hold.

I informed everyone they were on paid vacation until further notice, and after the morning they had, nobody said a peep. The place cleared out in record time, and I locked it up, sending the security footage to CJ before locking everything up and assigning a team to keep it under twenty-four-hour surveillance. It wasn’t as important as Laurel, but it was still mine, and I was sick of people fucking with what was mine.

I would have loved to stay locked up tight with her, but things were escalating all over town, with the rogue faction seeming to cycle through all my cousins’ businesses one by one. Not just keeping us on our toes, but on edge, and for the next few nights I was barely at home at all, forced to leave Laurel under the watchful eyes of my newly beefed-up security staff.

She didn’t like being stuck in the house, let alone being stuck in the house alone. In fact, I didn’t think she liked me very much at the moment.

Just one more thing that pissed me off about this situation: I couldn’t share anything with her, but my own feelings weren’t my priority. Neither were Laurel’s. My first and only objective was to keep her safe.

Chapter 33 - Laurel

Ouch. I had been running my brush so furiously through my hair I clunked myself hard, my head throbbing. Tossing the brush down, I scowled in the mirror at the frizzy halo I had created and rubbed the sore spot on my scalp.

Was this how those fairy tale maidens felt, trapped in their towers? Except I wasn’t waiting for the prince to come rescue me. He was the one who put me here. Gathering my hair into a ponytail, I left the luxurious bathroom and paced around in my equally sumptuous guest room for a while.

Oh, I could go out to the pool, or walk around the neatly manicured lawn, or even go shopping if I was willing to let a driver follow me around, all the while knowing he was secretly holstering a gun somewhere under his jacket.

The one place I couldn’t go was to the restaurant, because it was completely shut down, and that was where my fury stemmed from. Not at Mik, who was doing what he thought was best for everyone. We’d all been victims, after all, not just me. That didn’t help the anger that was only directed at myself, either.

This was all my fault. I was the target here, not the restaurant or Mik’s family, or the other employees. I imagined myself back at Canyon Vines, constantly waiting for the next insult, the next blank-eyed rage that inevitably had me nursing tender ribs or having to wear long sleeves even when the weather called for tank tops. Should I have stayed to prevent this?

Should I go back and admit defeat?

No, that wasn’t something that was ever going to happen. What I should have done was not blithely think I could so easily live out the rest of my days once I was a few hundred miles away from Rand. I should have changed my name, gone further, gone into a completely different line of work.

I should have given up everything. Instead, everyone around me had to give something up. How long was Mik going to delay the opening? How long would Andre hang around before realizing he didn’t need to put up with this shit? How much money was Mik losing?

This was all on me. I left my room, stifled by the same path I was wearing in the thick carpet, and sat outside with my feet in the pool and the sun dappling my skin as the decorative palm trees waved over my head.

It was so beautiful out here. And I was safe. But at what cost?

“Can I get you a drink, ma’am?” The cook, who came several times a week, hovered over me, looking anxious. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you look a little tense.”

Understatement. My fingernails were digging into the edge of the pool, and I wasn’t so much dangling my feet in the pool as kicking up a maelstrom.

I tried to smile and look more relaxed, and declined her kind offer, my stomach empty but not in any mood for anything. After only a few days without the constant bustle of work, I had grown sick of the leisure life, and nothing really interested me. I tried reading, and Mila called me once to ask me out to lunch, but now all I heard was the motivation behind her offer.

Pity. Surely Mik put her up to it.

Why? That was the question that nagged at me the most. I didn’t understand why he was putting his life on hold for me, when it turned out his father wasn’t threatening to marry him off after all. While the offer of safety was a big factor in helping me agree, the main reason I was able to accept was that I thought I was also helping him out.

Now it felt awful, worse than the twisting in my empty stomach, to know he was only doing it out of pity. And responsibility. I couldn’t forget that. I might have thought he was a tyrant when he first came on the scene, but he was a generous one, taking excellent care of his employees.

Once we were living together, and I overheard a few of his breakfast phone conversations with his accountant, I learned that the reason none of the construction workers ever complained was that they got a bonus every time Mik made changes. Andre’s salary rose every time his menu was desecrated. He gave ten grand to one of his drivers who had to take a leave of absence and return to Russia for a family emergency, and Mik refused to call it a loan. That was a mighty big gift.

At the time, I told him how nice it was that he did that, and he looked at me like he didn’t understand the concept of nice. “It’s the right thing to do,” he said. “The man works for me. I have to take care of him.”

So Mik had a heart of gold under that gruff exterior, but how long could I swallow being a charity case? No one ever helped me out. While I truly believed I could work my way up to the position I wanted in life, a big reason I didn’t go to college was because my parents didn’t think it was worth paying for.

They didn’t give me so much as a going-away present when I finally saved enough to strike out on my own in California. Not a single congratulation when I got what I thought was my dream job. Well, the job was a dream. The man who gave it to me, not so much.