Page 74 of Married to My Sis’s Bratva Fiancé

Isabella's words—"Give the baby a home"—kept slamming into my temples.

She had been pregnant with a kid that was probably mine. If I divorced Elena, everything looked like it could slide back into place. And yet when Isabella said, "Marry me," I still turned her down. Then I walked out without watching her fall apart.

I went back for Elena. Not to be gentle. Not to explain. I just needed to touch her, to prove the woman living in my head wasn't some one-night mistake—wasn't something I could just shut off.

I hadn't expected Elena to still be sitting in the living room, waiting. She looked pale, eyes red, but she stood anyway and said, "You're back."

When I kissed her, her breath burned against my mouth. She felt slimmer than I remembered, almost fragile. My hand slid along her waist, and every inch of her skin told me the truth—what I wanted from her had never been about marriage, duty, or habit.

My body's dead silence around Isabella finally made sense. It had only ever reacted to Elena. Even if she just looked at me, my blood ran so hot it felt like it could blister my skin.

And Isabella had been the past. The woman she'd been lately didn't even feel familiar.

Especially last night. The moment Elena's name came up, the hate in Isabella's eyes had shocked the hell out of me. Her soft, poised mask slipped for a second, and the person underneath was almost a stranger. And when she said she only wanted "a home for the baby," she'd sounded like she was announcing a win she'd lined up long ago.

The timing matched. Before she left New York, we'd still been together. Based on dates alone, I couldn't outright deny the kid. But her reaction had felt wrong in my gut, wrong enough that I couldn't stop questioning how real any of it was.

I hit the intercom. "Send Feodor in."

Less than a minute later, he stopped at my desk. He glanced at the untouched paperwork and lifted one brow.

"I need to know what happened after Isabella left New York," I said. "Every hotel she stayed at. Any private flights. Everyone she met. And her medical records before she went back."

"You suspect her?" He looked like he couldn't believe what he'd heard.

"It is standard procedure."

Feodor nodded. "Got it."

He had just turned when the glass exploded.

"Down!"

Instinct threw me to the floor, my right hand already yanking my gun free.

The metal lamp frame by the desk snapped as a round tore through it. Glass rained everywhere. Feodor dove behind a load-bearing wall, muzzle angled toward the window.

No second shot came.

The floor-to-ceiling window spiderwebbed out from the bullet hole—white cracks everywhere. The ballistic layer had been punched through. The round skimmed the spot where my head had been, took out the lamp, and buried itself in the wall. Somebody had aimed for my skull.

"Lock it down," Feodor barked into his comm. "Pull traffic cams from the nearby intersections. Look for anyone carrying a long case and any vehicle that just peeled out."

I tracked the trajectory and stared outside. Across the street, the black mesh on a construction building lifted in the wind, like someone had just stepped back from the roofline.

Feodor used a handkerchief to pick up the deformed slug. "Large caliber. Missed by inches."

I touched my cheekbone. A smear of blood came back on my fingertip—glass, probably. "He didn't miss. The glass kicked the round."

Otherwise it would've gone straight through my temple.

Elena at the manor flashed through my mind.

If the shooter switched targets to the manor... even with the best security money could buy, I wasn't gambling on a one-in-a-thousand chance.

I pulled out my phone. No messages.

Elena hadn't complained that I'd disappeared this morning. She hadn't asked when I was coming back. She rarely pushed, but today that silence felt like a needle buried in the back of my neck.