Page 77 of Bratva Prisoner

She turns to walk away, but I grab her arm before she can leave. “We’re not finished talking about this.”

“Yes, we are.” She jerks free from my grip and glares at me with more fire than I’ve ever seen from her. “I won’t be interrogated like a suspect in my own home.”

“This isn’t your home. It’s mine, and while you’re here—”

“While I’m here, what? I’m your prisoner? Your property? Your little kitten who needs permission to breathe?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“It’s exactly what you meant. You just can’t admit it because that would make you the kind of man you claim to be protecting me from.”

She storms into the house, leaving me standing alone in the garden with the taste of my own stupidity coating my tongue. Everything she said is right, and the worst part is that I know it.

I grab a bottle of whiskey from my office and drink until the edges of my anger blur into something more manageable. By the time I work up the courage to apologize, it’s past midnight, and the house is quiet.

Her bedroom door is closed, but I can see light underneath it. I knock softly, hoping she’s still awake.

“Alyssa? Can we talk?”

Silence.

“I know you’re upset, and you have every right to be. I was out of line earlier.”

Still nothing.

“I don’t want to fight with you. I just… I miss you. We used to talk, and now it feels like you’re a million miles away even when you’re sitting right next to me.”

The light under her door goes out, and I take the hint. She doesn’t want to hear my apologies tonight, and I can’t blame her.

I retreat to my room and lie awake staring at the ceiling, replaying our argument and hating every word that came out of my mouth. Dmitri was right; I’m so convinced she’s going to leave that I’m driving her away myself.

Tomorrow I’ll apologize. I’ll explain that my jealousy got the better of me, that I trust her judgment even when I don’t understand her choices. I’ll prove to her that I’m not Troy, that I can love her without controlling her.

But when morning comes, Alyssa is nowhere to be found.

“Have you seen Alyssa?” I ask Harrison as he serves breakfast for one.

“I’m afraid not, Sir. Her bed appears to have been slept in, but she wasn’t in her room when I went to check on her this morning.”

“Maybe she went for a walk,” I suggest, more to myself than to my butler.

“Perhaps. Though I did notice her car keys are missing from the hook by the kitchen door.”

I sit up straighter and ask, “Her car?”

“The small sedan we acquired for her use. It’s not in the garage.”

I check the garage myself and confirm what Harrison already knows. The blue Honda I bought for her three weeks ago is gone, along with any sign of where she might have headed.

Back in the house, I take the stairs two at a time and burst into her room without knocking. Her overnight bag is missing from the closet, along with several changes of clothes and her toiletries.

She’s gone.

Not just out for the day or running errands. She’s packed up and left, probably sometime after our fight last night, while I was drinking myself into oblivion.

Shit.

After weeks of watching her pull away, after nights of lying awake wondering what I’d done wrong, she’s finally done what I was afraid she’d do all along.