Page 34 of Kidnapped By the Boss

“Leave her.” I stood up. “No guard should spend extended time here, only give her food and leave. Other than that, guards should stand watch from the outside. I’ll designate someone specific to come in here and instruct them thusly, for now, leave her alone to carefully consider her next moves.”

Devrick, Katya and I left the room, and I let the soldier who was currently guarding the containment unit to stand watch onstrictinstructions not to go inside. I’d be sure to find one of my female soldiers to oversee bringing Lyn her daily meals—someone who wouldn’t be moved by her obvious attempts to wield her sexuality to get a leg up.

The next few weeks were quiet as far as The Wreckers were concerned. My staff were all able to confirm the information that Lyn had given us regarding where to locate the different Wreckers crew members, and we were able to take out Henry with ease, as she’d stated. But after that, the others got wise and we stopped being able to corner them the way we were able to corner Henry. Still, I felt good about having crippled The Wreckers to the degree that we had, and the subsequent silence convinced me that perhaps “Ant” had learned his lesson and wouldn’t be an issue anymore, at least not that big of one.

Which was the exact reason why I was so surprised when I suggested we take our honeymoon now to Katya and she curtly replied, “Now’s not the best time.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“We agreed we wouldn’t go until we dealt with The Wreckers.” She was right in the middle of playing with Sascha and wouldn’t even look at me as we were speaking.

I furrowed my brow. “We haven’t heard anything from them in weeks. We could have gone on our honeymoon twice in the time since we last heard from them. Lyn isn’t an issue right now. We’d be fine.”

“What if they’re just laying low and waiting for us to leave?” Katya asked. “I really think we should wait a little longer. If a couple more weeks pass with nothing, then maybe I’d feel comfortable.”

So I waited two more weeks. We still hadn’t heard anything from The Wreckers, and work was getting going at the speakeasy. Things were going pretty well. Still, when I was curling Katya against me for bed one night, I asked again.

“I think we should wait longer,” she said.

“That’s what you said last time,” I responded. “You told me to wait, so I did. How long are we going to wait?”

“I just really want The Wreckers to be totally dealt with.”

That excuse was starting to get old. “Katya, define ‘dealt with.’ For me? I really think they’ve gone cold. Having us take a bat to their knees scared them off.”

But she just shook her head. “I don’t think Antonio is that kind of person. I’m worried for my mom and for Sascha.”

“That’s why we’re bringing them with us,” I said.

She turned her back to me and curled against her pillow. “I’m tired, Vince. Being a new parent is exhausting, don’t forget. Let’s just focus on work and raising Sascha for now. We’ll get to our honeymoon. Now just isn’t the time.”

Her suddenly cold behavior was jarring. I didn’t know where this was coming from all of a sudden. “When is the time?”

“I don’t know. Maybe next month?” she replied. “I’m going to sleep now.”

So I waited another month. In fact, to be safe, I waited three more. I let the season change from summer to fall and started to think that with the holidays on the horizon, now was as good a time as ever to take some time to ourselves. Katya was right. Being a new parent was hard, and between that and work, finding time together was proving increasingly difficult—hell, that was the reason I was pushing so much for our honeymoon in the first place.

It was my hope that if I didn’t bring it up for a while, and let things calm down and get back to normal, that whatever sudden opposition she had to taking our honeymoon would fade and we could finally go.

“Sascha didnotwant to go down,” Katya said. “The closer he gets to a year, the harder it is to convince him to nap.

“So he’s entering his terrible ten months is what you’re saying?” I joked and she laughed at me. It felt like a warm break in her icy demeanor lately. “Hey… Can I ask you about something?”

“Sure.” She started to change out of her clothes for the day and into something more comfortable to sleep.

“The holidays are coming up, and I’m going to want to give the staff some rotating time off to spend with their families. We get to be together every day, so it only feels fair,” I started.

She slipped on her nightie and then sat down on the bed and looked up at me with a smile. “I think that’s a great idea.”

“Yeah, so it just feels like ifwe’regoing to take any sort of vacation, we should do it before then,” I said. “Maybe… Barbados?”

A frown crossed her face that I didn’t like. “Vince…”

“Katya, we’ve been so busy lately we’ve barely had any time together,” I said. “We could even turn it into a mini family vacation as well. You and I do Barbados for a week to celebrate our honeymoon and then spend the second week with your mom and Sascha? I think that could be really nice.”

“We should not leave for two weeks right now, Vincent,” Katya said.

“Why not?” I huffed. “And do not say it’s The Wreckers because they’ve been silent for months now, and your mom has proven she’s okay with Sascha on her own, so she can handle it for a week, especially with Kari’s help. We said we’d go when things calmed down, and they have, we should go.”