The Bratva King's Kidnapped Bride - Page 66

He wiped away the tears that flowed down my cheeks and told me he’d be home the entire day. Call if I needed anything, and he’d wait for me to return.

I was still a bit shy around him, but his encouraging smile and his pep talk gave me the strength to go out front and wait for my new guard to roll around with the car and pick me up. The sight of his stern face and brisk nod, so similar to Sergei, gave me pause, but I held onto Aleks’s words and greeted him warmly.

“What should I call you?” I asked, when he only grunted and started the engine.

He looked perplexed. “My name is Anatoly.”

“Oh, that’s a cool name. Can I call you Ani?”

“You probably should not,” he said.

Yes, ever professional. “Okay,” I agreed. “And don’t worry, I know the drill. If you say duck, I duck.”

He pulled out toward the gatehouse, his eyes trained on the road, but the tiniest edge of his lip quirked up. We’d end up getting along just fine.

Arriving at the spa, I found out that Aleks had called ahead and booked every treatment for me, and they greeted me as if I were a celebrity. I had an invigorating scalp massage while my toenails were painted bright purple, a color that made me feel strong and invincible. After that, I had a full-body rubdown and then lazed in the sauna with an ice-cold lemonade when I got a message on my phone.

Groaning, I pushed it under a nearby towel, not wanting to exert the slightest effort to pick it up and check who it was from. I should have left it in the changing room, but I wasn’t that confident yet. It hadn’t been as hard as I thought it would be to get back out where I could be grabbed again at any second, but my senses were still on alert. They might always be now that I had decided to live the life of a mafia wife.

Another message pinged, and then a call rang through. Ugh, if they were being that tenacious it might be important. Sitting up, I grabbed it, my newly massaged muscles going tense.

It was Nataliye.

Thankfully, she had been busy and barely messaged me during the past two weeks, so I didn’t have to work too hard to dodge her like I had my sister. As much as I wanted to keep putting her off, the text messages she had sent me said it was urgent, with lots of exclamation points, something Nat didn’t usually abuse.

When I answered, she cut into my greeting. “Where are you?” she asked, sounding furious and shaken.

I was instantly concerned and blurted out the name of the spa. Then froze, waiting for her to ask me why I was somewhere that was miles away from where I supposedly still lived, and yet suspiciously close to her father’s mansion.

Of course, she was so distracted by whatever was wrong in her own life that she glossed right over it. “Good,” she said. “I’m close. And I need a massage after what I’ve been through. I’ll see you in a few minutes,” she said, ending the call.

Was she back in the US?

I stood up in a panic, looking around for a place to hide. She was in LA and obviously upset. I scrolled back through her older messages that I hadn’t been paying much attention to, trying to see if she’d given me any clue she was coming back. The last few were just updates about her classes, with one complaining about a particularly obnoxious teacher.

Okay, so maybe she needed a break from life in Italy.

Not okay, because that meant she’d want to go home. Her home, which was now my home. I hurried to get dressed and found her just as she checked in. She hugged me tight and pulled me to the spa’s café, ordering the high tea for both of us. Her hands shook as she placed her phone on the pink table cloth and when I gave her a good look, she was clearly upset.

“You’re not going to believe this,” she said, voice clipped. Her eyes flashed, and her chest heaved as she struggled to calm down.

She wasn’t just upset, she was livid about something. I poured her a glass of ice water from the pitcher in the middle of the table and told her to have a sip. “Start at the beginning,” I said. “What happened? When did you get back?”

She chugged the water, then forced a smile to the server who brought us our pot of herbal tea. Her hands were still shaking so I poured us each a cup, my stomach beginning to churn with every second that passed. Would I have to sleep in the apartment for the next few days? Even though I’d decided to stick it out with Aleks, I had completely pushed the problem of his daughter, and my oldest and best friend, to the dark recesses of my mind.

“I just got back two hours ago,” she said. “I went straight home from the airport.”

“You went home?” I yelped.

She nodded, color flooding her cheeks. “You won’t believe what I found.”

“What?”

I nearly screamed when the server came back with a triple-layered tray loaded with tiny sandwiches and cakes. Any other time, I would have descended on it like a vulture, but at the moment, it didn’t seem like I’d ever feel hunger again. Nat picked up a cucumber sandwich but just as quickly dropped it back on the tray.

“I’m so pissed off I’d probably choke on it,” she said, leaning close. “My dad’s living with some woman. God knows how long. He’s been keeping her a secret. Probably because she’s some money-hungry bimbo he’s keeping, or so I thought.”

Furious tears filled her eyes, and she blinked them away. I arranged my face in a look of shock, but couldn’t say a word.