Page 58 of Innocent Bratva Twins

This afternoon, I let it slide when he tried to brush away his reason for snapping at me when I told him about the discrepancies.

I know he wasn’t just taking out his anger on me accidentally; there was more to the story than he let on. I dismissed the fact that he wanted to keep it private and figured that he would speak to me when he was ready, but now, he’s acting so weird, and if he tries to give me some lame excuse about this, too, I am going to go straight home and not speak to him for a week.

Okay. Fine. I won’t do that.

I can’t be away from him for a week.

But he has to be honest with me. Secrets are only going to create a wall between us, and they will tear us apart.

“Nico, where are we going?” I demand.

But as I ask, I see him turning down a familiar street. We’re going to his penthouse.

“You’re taking me home? I don’t understand,” I say.

“I’ll explain everything when we get there, okay. Just let me focus for now,” he says. There is no sass in his tone, no anger or attitude. He speaks gently and reaches out to touch my leg, but his eyes stay glued to the road ahead. He’s hyper-focused, more alert than I’ve ever seen him before.

My eyes trace over him, examining his face, his clothes, his hand on my leg.

That’s when I notice the bulge of his handgun, tucked under his jacket.

My stomach churns.

I really hope he doesn’t try and tell me some made-up story to cover up whatever is going on.

I take a deep breath and hold it in for a moment, letting the air push against my lungs while I prepare for the fact that I’m probably going to have to fight with him to get the truth.

But I’ll wait until we’re at his place.

For now, I’ll be alert, too, looking for whatever it is that has him so tense.

Nico doesn’t let his guard down until the front door of his penthouse apartment closes behind him and the lock snaps into place.

I watch as he takes a deep breath, pushing the air out as though he’s trying to push his worry away.

I sit on the sofa in the living room and wait. When he opens his eyes and they lock with mine, I tilt my head to the side and say, “I think you need to tell me what’s going on. And I want the truth.”

He nods, walking towards me. He drops his car keys on the coffee table and sits down too.

“Serafina, my angel, I wanted to protect you from this, but after today, I realized that not knowing will put you in more danger than knowing.”

He rubs his hands over his face. He looks exhausted and worried.

“Danger?” I ask, frowning as I watch him.

“It’s about the issues you discovered in the statements this morning.”

“Okay,” I say carefully. My hands are twisting in my lap, fidgeting and tense.

“The real reason I got so defensive and angry when you pointed them out to me was because I thought they were related to a side of the business I was keeping hidden from you. And they were—just not in the way I expected.”

He moves so that he’s facing me fully.

“I am in the Bratva.” The words hang in the air between us. For a moment, they just ring in my ears, as though they aren’t real sounds, but the longer the silence that follows, the clearer they become.

I am a part of the Russian Mafia.

I haven’t said anything because the shock has closed my throat up. I don’t believe him. It can’t be true.