Page 61 of Marked By the Devil

We’ll see about that.

The rest of the meeting covered how to break up the plans for the delivery. When all those law enforcement agencies had their men and women get into place for the sting, they’d be wasting their time and go home a failure.

That night, though, after Wren and I had dinner and headed up to my—our—room, I struggled again with the idea that my brothers or cousins could want to use her. They were more agreeable with seeing her as one of us. They had to. If Adrik didn’t trust her a little bit, he never would have let her work for us or investigate anything. I had a strong hunch he was letting Elena be something like a supervisor over Wren, and he trusted his wife completely.

That being said, I couldn’t believe that my brother would want to propose anything that would threaten the woman I had brought into my home. The woman I was addicted to and already so fiercely possessive and protective over.

I couldn’t imagine taking any chance of losing her. If she were to agree to be an agent for us—not at the computer and behind the screen like she was so skilled at, but in the field—I would worry the entire time and struggle with hoping she wouldn’t be hurt.

Or captured.

Or killed.

Her life was in my hands. It had been since the night that I kidnapped her off the street when she looked like an accomplice to the hit placed on Adrik.

That responsibility had morphed over the last month and a half, though. She wasn’t a captive to lock up tightly. She wasn’t a ward or obligation to provide for.

Wren was the intelligent woman I wanted to keep with me forever. As mine. Not for her to work for us. Not because I captured her at the scene of a hit being taken out on my brother.

Just as mine.

My woman to fuck and love.

To see her first thing every morning and to fall asleep with her in my arms.

To see her… as the mother of my children.

Fuck.

I scrubbed my hand over my face.

I couldn’t tell if it was because I was an uncle times two now, with Luka and then Isabel joining the family as the next generations of the Bratva, but it was having a damned profound impact on me.

It was too damn easy to see it happening.

Wren with her belly swollen as she carried our son or daughter.

Wren with that sexy fucking glow of being a happy mother, smiling down at our child.

Wren wearing my ring and correcting people that she wasn’t Miss Green but Mrs. Viktor Volkov, my wife.

As I walked behind her into our room, I wondered how I could initiate a conversation about that.

If she could look past how we had met and see me as someone to grow old with.

If she could see me as more than someone to fuck in the heat of the moment.

If she could… convince me that her loyalties would lie with me and my family instead of the liars and cheats she used to work for.

22

WREN

Viktor wasn’t happy about the idea of my having a more active role in this fight against Smithson and Gregori. I tried not to see it as his being controlling and too protective. Those were good things. Instead, I tweaked my perspective to realize that he saw me as one of them. As a Volkov member whose security and well-being had to be a part of any job or task. He wasn’t looking at me as an expendable captive, a thing to own and order around.

He hadn’t been looking at me like that for a while now.

As we lay in bed after a long, passionate fuck, he gazed at me with that look. The deep, pensive, probing one that made me wonder how far he could fall for me. The soulful, serious stare that reminded me that he was too good at reading me to not know me.